Online university instructors expect that your writing will be free of surface errors involving spelling, punctuation, grammar and word choice. The following rules and examples, taken primarily from The St. Martin’s Handbook, 3rd ed., by Andrea Lunsford and Robert Connors, may help you find and correct some of the most common errors in your writing.
The following four steps should help you become a better proofreader.
- Familiarize yourself with the errors you commonly make by looking over writing that has already been marked. Make a list of your errors, and check your writing for each of them.
- Carefully and slowly read your writing out loud. Often, your ear will hear what your eye did not see.
- Read your writing, sentence by sentence, from the last sentence to the first sentence. This technique interrupts the logical flow of the prose and neutralizes any impression of correctness arising from your knowledge of what you meant to say.
- Use a dictionary to check any words of which you are unsure, and to check for correct prepositions, verb tenses, and irregular forms.
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