Every student knows that editing and proofreading is crucial for getting high scores. And still some students think that looking through the paper briefly is enough to edit it properly. Of course, their assumptions are false. The reality is that you need to spend at least even 15% of the whole time that you spend on completing your assignment. In this article, we’ll share the algorithm of paper editing. Primarily, we’ll talk about editing papers, such as essays and research papers with a length of up to fifteen pages.
What’s the difference between editing large and short papers? Typically, the difference is that you can examine short texts more times than long texts. Therefore, when you edit short texts you can divide your activity into small processes. One time you can check you text for orthography mistakes, the next time you can look for punctuation mistakes, and so on and so forth. Before moving to steps that you need to follow to create a perfect text, we’d like to provide you with definitions for editing and proofreading. Check out the next paragraph to find out this once and for all.
Editing and Proofreading: Is It the Same?
Have you ever thought of the process of publishing books? There are so many people involved in this process, including a proofreader and editor. Before you buy a book in a bookstore it is edited for many times. Before you submit written assignments you should also edit your paper many times.
We will tell you about these two activities in more detail in further paragraphs. The only thing we will explain to you now is the following: editing text means to improve its content and proofreading means correcting grammatical mistakes.
5 Simple Steps to Make Your Text Perfect
Step 1: Make notes about tricky spots
This step concerns the period when your text isn’t written yet. Many students while writing have doubts on how to write certain words or whether to put punctuation marks. Don’t waste your time while writing. Underline sentences that contain tricky spots and move further. You will come back to them in the end.
A tip: turn off the autocorrect feature on your computer so that it doesn’t accidently change the meaning of sentences.
Step 2: Return to tricky spots
Your first task is to find out whether your doubts about the tricky spots you marked were reasonable or not. Your tricky spots might concern certain words or usage of tenses, or any other points. Find suitable information that will help you to cope with all of them.
Step 3: Paper Editing
Now, you need to check your text for following points:
- Consistence
- Word usage
- Redundancies
- Structure
We would like to facilitate this task for you so we’ll provide you with a table that contains typical mistakes that you might run into. So here it is:
| # | The mistake | How to correct it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Too long paragraphs | Divide your text into paragraphs with the length of approximately 100-150 words. That way, your text will be more readable. |
| 2 | No subheadings | Divide your text into sections according to the amount of pages and the specificities of information. Actually, you should know how many sections you’ll have before you write. |
| 3 | Too vast sentences | Complex sentences (that consist of several parts of simple sentences) are inherent for scientific prose style. However, your text should be easy to perceive. Try to rewrite all the complex sentences so that they contain no more than three simple ones. |
| 4 | Simple language | Look for appropriate synonyms to simple words. Make sure that they are appropriate for your text. Find the examples with synonyms that you are going to use, and check if they have the same meaning as your original words. |
| 5 | Tautology | Look through the whole text thoroughly and find out whether you have the same data in different paragraphs or sections. Exclude redundant information. This can be just words, sentences, or even whole paragraphs. |
Step 4: Proofreading
It’s time to check your grammatical and spelling mistakes. You should consider these points:
- Spelling. This point is quite simple to cope with because your computer can help you with this. Also, you should use reliable dictionaries, such as an Oxford dictionary.
- Letter case. Make sure that all the words that should be uppercased are really uppercased.
- Punctuation. A full stop, a dash, a comma — all these and other punctuation marks should be used correctly. If you are not sure about a specific case, look for the example in books. If you can’t find a similar case, try to rebuild the sentence in the way that allows you to avoid usage of the punctuation mark.
- Articles. A/an, the, or no article — which to use? This question worries dozens of students, especially ESL (English as second language) students.
- Tense usage. The most common tenses that you are likely to use are present simple, past indefinite, and present perfect.
- Pronouns. Check if all personal and possessive pronouns are at the right places.
Step 5: Checking for format requirements
According to your teacher’s preferences, the requirements of your college and your department, you should use the specific format style. For example, if you study at the journalism department, you will need to complete your text in APA style. Make sure that your text is written in accordance with all the requirements.
Last Caution
We presented you steps which will help you to make your work the most effective. If you don’t divide the whole process into smaller ones, you increase chances to overlook some mistakes. So, we insist that you edit your text step by step.
For Those Who Need More Help
Our simple steps on paper editing can help you to make your text much better than it was. However, some mistakes you might overlook because you are not a professional writer. If you would like to submit a perfect text, you can apply to WritingCheap.com for help. On our website, you have the ability to receive cheap college papers that are completed in accordance with all academic requirements. Our team of well-qualified and experienced writers is able to provide you with assistance any time. Just contact us and feel free from your burden!