ARTICLE

Proofreading Without Spoofs! (A Few Useful Tips)

Proofreading is a pain. There's no doubt about it. It can be tedious and boring--if you approach it as correcting errors. But proofreading isn't correcting errors so much as it involves reviewing the paper for ideas and for readability. It allows you to read your draft, to consider what you've written, and to change your mind. It's an opportunity to clarify--for yourself as well as for your reader--what you've said and to make some choices. Proofreading is in your control, no one else's. No one, really, can proofread for you because the kinds of changes that come form proofreading are changes in your meaning, your intent, and your purpose in the draft. But while no one can proofread for you, others, a classmate, or a writing assistant at the Writing Resource Center, can help you proofread; they can help you assess the draft, propose some alternative solutions, and make some choices. So, while proofreading can be tedious, it doesn't have to be lonely.
This handout covers two different kinds of proofreading:
Proofreading for revising or rewriting, this involves major reworking of the paper: rearranging the order of paragraphs, cutting material, adding new paragraphs and sections, and so on.
Proofreading for editing, this involves working primarily with sentences: rephrasing them, clarifying them, and correcting grammatical and mechanical mistakes.
Each kind of proofreading involves different strategies. Many writers, however, have developed only one technique to cover both revising and editing.
This handout doesn't address "true revision" - which involves a global re-thinking of the purposes and intents of the draft. Instead, the strategies offered here are designed to help you review a paper that is beyond the invention stage.
The first set of strategies address proofreading for Revising: How to review a draft for the presentation of ideas. Use this section to help you work with a paper that is still in draft that needs work with the ideas. Keep in mind that at this stage there are no hard and fast "rules" to appeal to. Instead, you need to be flexible. Use this section to help you review a draft with an eye to focusing, organizing, and developing it.
The second set of strategies address proofreading for Editing: how to review a near-final version of your paper to ensure that you have provided cues for the reader to help him or her read the text easily. This section deals with things such as clarity in sentences, as well as addressing some common sentence errors people make. We don't present the "rules" of grammar here; instead, we present some strategies for finding and fixing some common sentence problems. Use this section to help you review a near-final version of a paper with an eye to polishing it.

General Strategies for All Proofreading
Allow yourself some time between writing and proofreading. You need the time so that you can get some distance from what you have written and return to it with a fresh mind and eye.
Keep in mind that you're writing for people who are not present and often not very willing to put a lot of effort into making sense of the paper. You can't expect them to get inside your head and understand what you mean to say; you can't expect them to guess at what you might mean; and you can't expect them to fill in gaps or connect ideas you haven't explicitly connected yourself. You have to make sure you say all you need to say so that your readers can understand you without having to work too hard at it. Many teacher-readers value clarity and explicitness. They value being able to get to the ideas in the paper without being hindered by sentence-level errors; and they value writing that makes connections between ideas and presents the implications of those ideas.
Don't try to proofread for everything at once. Make a number of passes through the paper. First, make a number of passes to proofread for revising. Then, after you've made any changes you need, make another set of passes to proofread for editing, watching for a different problem or concern each time.
Keep in mind that in proofreading for editing, you're not trying to change every sentence that you've written. If you find you're doing so, you might need to proofread for revising! Editing a draft for everything is tedious and boring. Use the adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." If a sentence or a paragraph seems adequate, leave it. Keep yourself focused on the difficulties you encounter.

Specific Strategies for All Proofreading
Read the paper all the way through silently. Don't necessarily look for errors. Instead, check for general readability. Do you stumble over phrases or find it difficult to understand a particular sentence? Do you find yourself getting lost in a difficult passage or paragraph? If so, don't fix it right away but mark the margin so you can return to the passage later. Keep reading. Return to the marked passages after you have read the entire paper through.
Read the paper aloud. This doesn't require an audience. Instead, listen to yourself. Are the sentences varied enough in length to avoid monotony? (You'll sense this if you sound monotonous!) Is there needless repetition of ideas? Does the draft seem to drift from the point and then back again? Do you become lost or confused about what it says? Again, don't stop to fix anything but keep reading all the way through. Mark the margin where you happen on problems and come back to them later.