Everyone who writes knows how important it is to write a text without mistakes. Of course, you can always make a mistake, but it is important to keep this possibility to a minimum.
Essay writing can often be a daunting task for students. However, this does not have to be the rule, because there are various tricks and tips that can help you turn an essay into fun. The purpose is to bring closer to the reader the understanding and attitudes of the author on a given topic. The text is usually in the form of a report, short story, or poem in prose, and often as an article or discussion.
If your essay is full of errors then it can lower your performance. Errors can mislead readers and as a result, there will be a misinterpretation of your discussion mentioned in the text. So, any kind of errors need to be removed through editing and proofreading. Proofreading happens to be the last thing that you need to do to your work before submitting the essay. In simple words, it is the final check for spelling, punctuation, accuracy, grammar, and consistency. Thus, it is highly recommended that you proofread your work before you hand it in. But how can you do that accurately and efficiently? Well, read on to know easy yet effective ways to proofread your essay like an expert, especially if you decide to use the Omnipapers’ services.
1. Have A Plan
If you try to do everything all at once then there is a risk of missing something important or leaving some things out. Thus, you need to chalk out a plan first. You need to have a proofreading checklist. You need to make sure that you stick to this checklist. It may seem like a lot of work or boring, but focusing on different parts of the essay at different stages of proofreading will definitely ensure that you can catch any kind of errors.
2. Getting A Printout
You should start with setting your document to double line spacing and then make a printout. You can even break the copy into chunks if you are dealing with thousands of words. Then you have to set the mood to proofread which means you have to get rid of all kinds of distractions. So, switch off your phone or music playing in the background. Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Then all that is left to do is grab a pen/pencil or highlight and carry on with the proofreading.
3. Taming Your Eyes
Your eyes move in jumps when you are reading and this is known as saccades. When you are reading quickly your eyes do not focus on every single word. Your eyes tend only to focus on a point every few words. So, only some words will appear in peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is not ideal when you need to proofread text for correctness. It becomes easier to unnoticed things as your peripheral vision happens to fill in details and take for granted correctness. Try reading slowly or use a pen or your fingers to trace under each word to ensure you are not missing anything.
4. Punctuation
Most experts follow a style to check the punctuations of the essay they are going to proofread. They go through the entire essay and circle each punctuation mark. After that, they only concentrate on punctuation. They then circle each mark and highlight each error and correct it accordingly.
5. Spelling
You will be surprised to know how many people submit essays that are full of spelling mistakes. Having spelling mistakes will lower the quality of your work. One of the major reasons to have unnoticed spelling mistakes is when your word processor is set to English US when you need English UK or another way around. Thus, you have to make sure that you have everything set correctly. Read each word correctly and take the help of a spell checker to make sure your essay is free from silly spelling mistakes.
6. Pay attention to the length of the essay
If it is stated that the written text should have 1000 words, it certainly does not mean that it must have exactly that many, but that the text should not be shorter than 10% of the maximum and 10% longer than the maximum, which in this case would be between 900 and 1100 words. In professional essays, it is not recommended to paraphrase long quotations or explain them in your own words. Instead, it is recommended that you enclose the text in quotation marks, and indicate the source.
7. Vocabulary
Make sure your vocabulary is as rich as possible, and use formal expressions, not colloquial words and slang. It is also important that you do not repeat the same word over and over again, but that you use synonyms. This will affect the quality of writing and will contribute to the uniqueness of the text.
8. Check For Consistency
To improve the quality of the essay you need to stay consistent throughout the whole essay. You need to make sure you are not changing or chopping between different options on issues like:
- Using full stops after bullets or not.
- Using “double” or single’ quotation marks.
- Technical Vocabulary capitalization that might or might not be capitalized.
- Policy on spelling writing numbers as numerals or words.
9. Checking More Than The Body Text
According to experts, errors often tend to hide in places like:
- Endnotes/Footnotes.
- Chart, captions, and figure labels.
- Reference sections/Bibliography.
- Titles
Do make a point of checking these separately when you proofread to ensure you do not let errors slip through in any of these places.
10. Make Use Of Available Tools
There are plenty of paid and free tools that can help you to proofread effectively. You should take advantage of them and use them accordingly. From spell checks to grammar error detection tools, there are plenty of tools to help you make your essay free from any kind of errors. Download them and use them when you are proofreading; they will surely be able to assist you properly.
There you have it; these were some simple yet effective ways to proofread your essay like an expert. Follow these above-mentioned tips and tricks to ensure your essay is as flawless as possible.
11. Details
Before you finish the job, you need to pay attention to all the details. Check the paragraph layout. Note that the strongest arguments must be in the foreground, which in this case means the first and last paragraph in the main body of the text. Different essays must have different formats and you must double-check the instructions to make sure your essay is in the desired format.
Final thoughts
The bottom line is to close the topic and summarize your overall ideas while giving the final perspective to your topic. Your conclusion should contain three to five strong sentences. Simply review your main points and provide reinforcement for your work. In this part of the text, you emphasize the topic itself and the most important items.
And finally, what you have left is to double-check that you have followed all the instructions for writing the essay (if you have received them).
