Editing and Proofreading

Editing your work is an important skill to master no matter where you are in your academic career, so let's take a few moments to discuss what you should be looking for as you edit your work.

• Spelling and grammar. For the most part, you're going to be typing your papers, so you have the advantage of built-in spelling and grammar checkers. Your teacher is going to a lot less forgiving of obvious spelling errors in your type-written work than in your hand-written work. It's also important to note that as you get older, your teacher's standards are going to climb higher and higher. The quality of work you produced in first grade is simply not going to fly in fifth. As you learn more about writing, grammar, and spelling, your academic advisors, tutors, and teachers are going to expect your work to reflect this progress. 
• Watch out for common spelling mistakes and tricky words. I personally have trouble spelling the word 'apocalypse,' which is unfortunate because I end up needing to use it at least once or twice a day. Thankfully, I have my word processor and spell check to help me out. Confession: about 10% of this page was underlined in red before I went back and fixed it. The lesson there is that you don't need to be a perfect speller to write well and be understood. You just need to edit. 
• Try not to confuse then/than, too/to/two, their/there/they're, and affect/effect. 
• I'm not sure how other programs work, but in Word grammar mistakes are underlined in green. However, Word often suggests imperfect replacements for errors and commonly marks perfectly correct grammatical arrangements as errors. When it doubt, read the original sentence and the suggested corrections aloud to see what sounds more natural.
• Read your work aloud, especially if you are a native English speaker. If it sounds strange, awkward, or just plain wrong, you want to fix it. Also ask yourself, 'Does my essay flow well? Does it make sense? Did I use transitions between paragraphs? Did I avoid run-on sentences? Can I make anything clearer or more concise? Is there a better way of saying this? Did I use enough detail and add enough examples? Did I prove the point I was trying to make? Did I complete the task?' If you find any errors, be sure to fix them before turning your work in to your teacher, especially if your teacher is expecting a polished final draft. 
• Remember that the purpose of writing is ultimately communication. If you want a good grade, you need to write something that your teacher is going to be able to understand easily. If you go back to your work and find out that something doesn't make sense to you, your teacher isn't going to stand a chance at figuring out what you meant to say. 
• Also remember that you're going to want to write in a fairly formal tone. Try not to use contractions (don't, wasn't, etc) or slang words. Text speak is also a definite no. You're writing for your teacher, not your friend. 
• You might want to ask for a copy of the rubric your teacher is going to be using to grade you. Try to take a step back and look at your work objectively. Put yourself in your teacher's shoes and ask yourself what grade you would give your paper. Be brutally honest, and correct for any favoritism you might be showing towards yourself by knocking off five points (or a half a letter grade). Then ask yourself if you'd be happy with the score you gave yourself. If you gave yourself an 85 or above, fantastic. If you gave yourself a 70, you might want to go back and edit some more. If you gave yourself anything less than that, you might need to ask a parent, guardian, older sibling, tutor, classmate, or teacher for help.