To err is human. Even the most prominent and skilled writers that have a huge number of publications confess that, in general, they are constant offenders. Every writer can “boast” of having a certain mistake, like a particular misspelled word or logically wrong phrase that pops up in their materials from time to time.
No matter how perfect your final draft may seem to you, how many times you’ve already checked it for grammar, style and spelling errors, you have to always give time for a final proofreading before you submit the project.
You, as the author of the project, should always take time to print out your project, and then put it aside for several minutes, hours, days or even weeks if possible. Then take your paper and proof it with a fresh eye.
Usually, trying to carefully proofread the paper, students fail to notice the mistakes they made in the process of writing like writing “may” when you actually meant “way”. The thing is that your mind keeps information you meant and never notices what you have really written. Ask some of your pals to proofread your paper and check his own instead. Someone else will 100% highlight the things you miss.
Read sentence by sentence from the end of the paper till the very beginning. This method helps students to catch the things you miss while reading the paper in a standard way.
As we already know, it is way easier to proofread somebody else’s paper rather than the one you’ve accomplished. Thus, your task is to make a copy of your paper that differs from the one you have. Change the font, the size and the style of the content. Perhaps it will have a strange appearance, but still this will be helpful!
Editor’s flags help writers to mark the content blocks that need special attention or to highlight the elements you’ll have to double check before printing out the final paper variant. When the content is 100% proofread, remove the flags and print out the paper.
Remember, computer machines are quite powerful, but still they are not able to catch every single mistake. For instance, if you write the word “word” meaning “world” PC checker won’t highlight it.
If you’re not pressed for time, put your paper aside for several days and focus on something else, go out with friends or just fool around. You need to sleep well, eat well, and have time for pals. Never exhaust yourself – your health is above all!
