Week Thirteen: Proofreading

The final stage of the writing process involves making sure that your essay accurately represents your command of the codes and conventions of English grammar and syntax. This involves more than pressing the "spell check" button-though that's not a bad place to start! It requires that you review each of your sentences and make certain that each one has been formed to advance your project. This final step is the one that is most frequently skipped over by beginning writers, even though spending time on this final part of the process can significantly improve the final assessment of the writing under consideration.

So, why bother with going back over each of your sentences? By eliminating the typos in your paper, by smoothing over the infelicities in phrasing, and by clarifying your transitions, you remove the distracting elements from your writing that might pull your readers' attention from your argument. You sned a clear signal that you value your own ideas. By doing a good job of proofreading, you are implicitly saying that you recognize that there is an important relationship between whta you have to say and how you say it!

Well, what do you think? How did you react to the fact that in the last two sentences in the previous paragraph the typographical errors "sned" and "whta" weren't corrected? Did the uncorrected typos give you the impression that this piece had been hastily put together? Did the fact that the typos appeared in key sentences in the introduction make you think that we weren't really that interested in what we had to say?

We're guessing here that you probably reacted negatively to these typos. And that's just the way of the world: the best ideas wrapped in the sloppiest prose may never get an audience. While writing teachers are trained to focus on the ideas first, this is not the way most people read: indeed, we receive a good deal of feedback from employers who tell us that they just throw away applications that haven't been proofread. So, it's important to recognize that all readers, in one context or another, are inclined to judge a failure to proofread in negative terms. And in the writing classroom what this means is that your work will almost certainly be downgraded if you fail to proofread.

You should do all of the following before you hand in the final draft of your paper:

• Use both the spelling and grammar check features in your word processing program. These programs are not infallible, however. For example, a spell check will not catch a mistake such as typing "form" for "from" nor will it be able to distinguish between an unfamiliar word, like "Postrel" and a misspelled version of that word.

• After you have used the spell check and grammar check features on your word processing program, you should read your entire paper out loud. This will allow you to hear awkward sentence constructions and gaps in your explanations. Mark sentences to be re-worked as you read.

• Turn to the last page of your essay. Beginning at the bottom of the page and working up to the top, read each sentence and check for grammar and spelling errors. This isolates each sentence so that you concentrate only on grammar.

• Review the marginal and end comments on your previous papers. Do you get any repeated comments on your grammar, such as "run-on," "sentence fragment," or "comma splice?" If so, look up your specific problem in a grammar book and follow the advice about how to correct the problem. Then reread your paper looking for that particular problem and make corrections as needed.

Proofreading is the final step in the writing process. By taking the time to perform this final step well, you insure that your carefully thought out and well-organized argument is presented in prose that reflects your mastery of the codes and conventions of written English.