Proofreading Your Work, Part 1

Tips and Tricks on How to Proofread

Chances are you were told to proofread your work more often than you were told how to proofread your work. For students who pick up on those things easily, that was enough. For most us, though, it was not nearly enough.

The problem for many students is that the idea that they should already know how is so pervasive that they feel they need to hide what they do not know. That makes it very hard to learn. In order to improve your proofreading skills, you will have to practice your proofreading skills. There is no way around it.

This article gives you some areas to work on to improve your proofreading skills immediately and over the long term.

Fix Mistakes as Soon as You See Them

• Never ignore an error thinking that you will change it later.

This is a waste of time and a toxic habit. If you do this, it has probably already failed you. You went looking for a mistake you knew you made but could not find it. Either you turned in the work with the mistake still there or you had to search for it repeatedly until you found.

• Don’t teach yourself to ignore mistakes.

This is what happens when you ignore a mistake thinking that you will fix it later: you are training yourself to not see it or others like it. Proofreading tips mean nothing if you set yourself up to fail with this killer habit.

• When later arrives, there is a good chance that you will be more tired than you are now. At the very least, you might be more tired of the paper or looking for old mistakes.
• Later is closer to your deadline. Do not add to your stress by hiding problems to find later when your nerves are jangling even harder.
• This means do not spend time laboring over the details of a paragraph that may eventually change or be deleted entirely.
• If you see a mistake or omission fix it, as mentioned above, that is how good writing works, but save detailed proofreading for later.
• Stopping the flow of your writing to comb over details tends to sap writers of their excitement.
• While you do not want to knowingly include or keep mistakes, stopping your writing to go on the hunt for mistakes will slow you down too much.
• Separate your writer (the creator, worker, to doer) from your editor (the critical eye).

Don’t Proofread While You Write Your Draft

Be Your Own Gordon Ramsay

Have you ever watched Hell’s Kitchen or another Gordon Ramsay program? You’ll notice that he often expedites for the chefs he is training. This usually includes looking over the plates and analyzing the preparation and presentation of the food. Chefs often look at a plate and see how they felt while preparing a plate and they cannot see that it looks awful until Ramsay shows them.

As much as you can, learn to do that for yourself. Separate how you feel, how hard you worked, and what you think, from what ended up on the page. This is the key to learning how to proofread.

Put as Much Time as You Can Between Writing and Proofreading

• In other words, finish the writing as early as possible.

The value of finishing your writing early is not just that you don’t feel stressed out while writing. Finishing early means that you have time to set the paper aside and do other things so that later you can look at your writing with fresh eyes.

This is often a tough transition for people who have a romantic attachment to their procrastination. The last minute papers make you feel like a hero and you don’t want to give up the rush. It is understandable but it’s still a bad idea. Eventually, this trick will start to fail because the work will get harder or you’ll get sick of it. Start transitioning out of this bad habit before disaster strikes.

Work From a Hard Copy

• Print it out.

After you have scrolled through your paper on your laptop for hours, it can be hard to see it anymore. Don’t print your draft or your unfinished paper; it is too early. Wait until you are sure that you have found everything, seen everything, fixed everything, and then print.

• Change locations.

If printing is out of the question, take your laptop to a coffee shop, library, or wherever else you never work. Putting yourself in a place can make all the difference.

• Change formats.

If you can’t take your laptop somewhere else, change the font and margins so that you can see it anew. Saving it as a PDF is another way to change the look of the paper to help you see it anew. You can even email it to yourself as a letter if that helps! Whatever method is available to you, use it.

• Change devices.

Use a different computer, read it on your phone or your ereader, whatever works. If you don’t have another device, use a computer at the university or public library to look it over one last time.

Now What?

By now, you should see what we’re getting at and have chosen a method or two to try. The important thing is to actually make a change to your work methods that improves them. You don’t need to, and probably shouldn’t, make all the changes at once.

In fact, you’ll notice that our suggestions apply to different chronological phases in your writing, first draft, revision, and final paper. For the first draft, you only need to make sure that you don’t ignore errors or stop writing in order to fuss over details.

Later in your writing when you are revising in earnest, it when you need to practice separating your creator (writer) from your critical eye (editor). After you have taken a break from the paper is when you go in for your final edit, trying different locations or formats to improve your perception.

One final tip, practice these techniques on simple papers that you write easily. Don’t wait to test them on a paper that you think is big enough to merit the extra effort. Practicing them on simple papers will mean that you can use the tools well when it really counts.