by: Brianna Barron-Moreno
Proofreading is the uttermost important technique in order to produce great writing, this is the final step that a writer should always check through in order to make sure that their final piece doesn’t have any errors or mistakes; such as having spelling errors, poor paragraphs and sentence structure, and bad grammar. Rephrasing sentences that don’t flow in with one another, adding details, removing unnecessary information, adding commas, and correcting the tense are a few things that I’ll be explaining throughout my given examples and reasonings.
When going back to look at your final product keep in mind to always read your work double in order to find those small spelling errors or bad grammar that you might’ve missed the first time reading it. Here’s an example that shows some errors that people might’ve missed at first and went back to proofread:
As you can tell, in red, they took out some words that sounded repetitive or didn’t sound right while reading. This can be seen in the sentence “to which economics can be applied and be used to understand” instead of having “be applied and be used” just take out the unnecessary words and focus on the conjunction “and” instead. With that, you don’t need the extra “be”. The sentence would sound smoother as “be applied and used…”
Then, they would fix their bad grammar by inserting commas into some sentences to separate a series of words and avoid confusion. This can be seen in the sentence “to my surprise the daily news which I used to watch was now not just a means of watching new people debate but also a learning experience, I was able to…” At first this sentence sounds too long and just seems like it’s a run off sentence, not having any pauses, which could confuse the reader. Instead, adding commas in the appropriate areas can create a smoother and more direct sentence.
After you’ve made sure to look and fix your small errors, start to look at the bigger picture which sentences need arrangement, removement, and added details.
Take the same paragraph, but this time look at the red words, observe how many of these sentences and words have been corrected, removed, or even rearranged in order to make the sentence structure sound smoothly while reading. Take the sentence “in 11th standard I along with some of my friends and my economics teacher, created a WPI index, by taking average prices of a basket of commodities from different wholesale markets to measure inflation.” Here they’ve corrected the tense, added details, rearranged the sentence, and replaced a word with a more relevant one, building the paragraph’s structure into a smoother, nicer flow.
In conclusion, proofreading is a technique that produces great writing, it helps improve your final product by giving it a nice written content flow that helps address the correct message towards your audience. When you’re done with your writing make sure to always read your work double this can help you pin point some spelling errors, bad grammar, words that don’t sound good or are repetitive, and even sentences that don’t flow in with one another and may need to be rephrased.