essay editing and proofreading

essay editing and proofreading

The Importance of Essay Editing and Proofreading

1. Introduction

Welcome to the importance of essay editing and proofreading. This article provides ideal information about the proper explanation of this topic. The title “The Importance of Essay Editing and Proofreading” is very interesting and attracts readers to gain a deep understanding of essay quality improvement. This article was written by Chris William, a literature tutor in university and college. He always strives to deeply understand essays through his daily activities. He is very interested in his job because he can share his knowledge with others without reducing the main function of his expertise. He wrote this article with the goal of explaining how to improve essay quality in simple steps. He wrote it in a sequential manner, starting from the first step until the last step. This article is very useful for college and university students who have assignments from their lectures to make reports, essays, and final tasks. With these simple steps, this article can help them produce quality essays for their tasks. The article is well-written and thorough, as the writer always expresses his opinions in every step with many reasons. What’s even more interesting is that the article writer answers the question “how to make a quality essay”.

2. Benefits of Essay Editing and Proofreading

It involves checking over the work for any small errors that may have been missed during the editing stage. It is particularly important because it is often very difficult to find own errors no matter how many times the work is read through. Misprints in spelling, grammar, or punctuation can come across as a lack of attention to detail or a lack of language understanding and be detrimental to the mark that a piece of work will receive. This can be disappointing if the content of the work is of a high calibre but marks are lost because of errors in grammar or spelling. This is particularly relevant for an international student studying in an English-speaking university who has written a piece of work in English. They may have very good ideas, but be let down by their lack of language skills. An error in their work may cost them in understanding they could lose a lot of confidence and ultimately lose direction in their studies.

By now it is generally acknowledged that the editing and proofreading stage is crucial for the final version of an essay. Editing is needed at various times throughout the writing process and for a variety of reasons including; global changes, and slight changes to the wording or phrasing. Often, students do not intend the meaning of what they are writing to be misinterpreted. Words and sentences may have come out differently than what they had planned in their head. Editing provides an opportunity to ensure that the meaning which the writer would like to portray is understood by the reader. Proofreading, on the other hand, is the final stage in the writing process.

Research has shown time after time that the most successful students are those who exhibit the highest level of precision in writing. Nearly all of these students spend almost equal time editing and proofreading their work as they spend writing – (i.e., if you write a paper for 10 hours, and then you know you should spend 10 more hours on editing and proofreading). In all honesty, some students do not value the importance of editing and proofreading and end up submitting work which they know could have been of a higher standard. This is often due to the fact that they found the writing and ideas an arduous task and gave it minimum input, just wanting to get the task done as quickly as possible. This is the main problem; it is hindered with lack of effort, time and concentration on what needs to be done to make the written result better. This article will discuss the ideas of editing and proofreading and the methods by which a student can utilise a specialist service to facilitate them in their endeavours.

3. Common Mistakes to Look Out For

The third area to look at is emerging with ideas. Here is where very successful students begin to stumble. Ferris (1985) found that the most prevalent error in a group of successful students’ papers was that the conclusion was a simple repeat of information already stated in the paper. Next in descending order were errors involving the omission of a concrete result in the thesis/claim, failure to support a warrant, insufficient data to support a warrant, the minimum generalization or hasty conclusion and a weak or missing connection between the ground and the warrant. (p. 78, 79) All of these parts are necessary components of an argument. Failure to accomplish any of these tasks spells disaster for an argument and one weak link dramatically increases the likelihood that the reader will not be convinced. Going through each part of the paper and asking questions and brainstorming will help ensure that all necessary components are fulfilled. Ede and Lunsford suggest that a writer makes a double-spaced list of all topics and subtopics covered in the paper. Under each topic/subtopic, the writer should list how, why, where or when of that topic. This will help ensure that the paper is sufficiently detailed and will also help generate content for any undeveloped areas. (p. 109-110)

4. Effective Editing and Proofreading Techniques

The more time you can allow between the writing and the revising, the better. This will give you a fresh perspective when you come to edit and proofread. It is more effective to check written work when some time has passed. Editing and proofreading effectively needs an adequate amount of concentration. It is difficult to concentrate on lots of different things in one go. It is more effective to tackle editing and proofreading in short blocks of time. This will allow for greater concentration. Do not rely entirely on any spelling or grammar check tools; these can be helpful up to a point, but can also be very unreliable. These tools cannot be entirely accurate due to the complexity of human language. A good dictionary and thesaurus are essential tools for editing and proofreading. Check also for the correct word usage and that you have used the word in the right context. A common mistake is using a word that sounds the same but has a different spelling and meaning (e.g. their/there).

5. Conclusion

A well-structured and grammatically perfect essay is an academic and professional necessity. It is also crucial for essays being submitted as coursework or for publication. There are, however, many students who underestimate the importance of the content of an essay and fail to realise that it is one of the determining factors which can lead to the success or failure of their intended piece. It is an unfortunate reality that many students fail to seek any form of essay help, leading to a decrease in the quality of their essays and a resulting decrease in grades. This is due to the fact that whether you like it or not, proofreading and editing your own work is a difficult task as you can overlook the most obvious errors. Spelling and grammatical errors can be a cause of lowered grades, so it is well worth the effort in editing an essay for the purpose of seeing your work published comes to fruition. Editing an essay should involve a careful reading of the written document. This will help to spot errors that can often be overlooked by the writer of the essay such as grammatical errors, incorrect punctuation, and misspelt words. It also involves checking for consistency in things like headings, use of tense, and the formatting of the document. It is important to take your time; as your main objective is to make sure that your essay is at its best. This will lead to a definite increase in your chances of being successful in the completion of your degree and better still, it can also result in getting a top grade.