Essential Proofreading Skills You Must Know

Hello and welcome to the next lesson. Today we're going to get into editing and proofreading. So let's take a look at what we're going to look at, which is a lot to be honest. We're going to look at what editing is exactly and how that's different from proofreading. We're also going to look at what editing does and what proofreading does, how much passive voice is acceptable in an essay versus uh what does proofreading check specifically and tips for proofreading and editing effectively. Then you are going to have your writing assignment of course. So let's dig in. What is editing? Editing is revising a text and suggesting ways to improve its quality, voice, style, format, and flow by decreasing wordiness and employing more efficient terms. Okay? So there is a lot that happens in editing and often your second draft that goes in into editing is very different on the other side. Okay? Now, a lot of what you saw me do in the second draft. What I showed you the comparison between the two is that I did some editing. I was doing editing as I went. I was checking for spelling and stuff like that too, but just because I automatically do it honestly. But with editing itself, you saw how I was working around. I was highlighting problems that I could see, things that weren't that just didn't sound right. They didn't contribute to the direction that I was going or it was just too much or it needed more. I was looking at the content. I was specifically zeroing in on the content. That's what editing does. It makes one's essay more straightforward, more precise, less repetitive or awkward, and more professional overall. If we were going to get into what it is specifically, cuz I could tell you this and just leave it there, but it's not going to be enough to show you what it really is and to give you what you need in order to be able to do it. So, let's look at it. You need to be looking through and exchanging weak terms for words and phrases that best capture the author's intent or your intent. if you're editing your own essay. So, you are going to be taking things that are overused, like for example, for example, you'll be taking out things like very and actually and really and replacing them with just stronger overall terms, making your adjectives more pungent, making your adverbs more descriptive and and clear so that it stands out in the writer's mind and the reader's mind what exactly you're talking about. um you need to be ensuring the appropriate tone and voice that is utilized throughout the paper, throughout the essay, throughout the email. It would be really strange to open something very formally and then put a very informal section in there or to switch between using the third person by talking about the researcher did this and then switching to but I found it more nifty to do this, this and this or I found it more precise to measure in this way rather than that way. Okay. You don't need to be switching between your pronouns. You don't need to be switching between they and them and the researchers. And you don't and then switch back to me and you. You need to make sure that's consistent throughout. You also need to make sure that you're not mixing formality. Again, informal opening and then very formal body or vice versa. It doesn't make sense to do that. But then again, too, if you are writing an essay to inform your audience, okay? or if you're writing a book, for example, or a short story, you need to always have in mind a type of person you're talking to. And one of the best ways to do that is to visualize that person in front of you and you're writing for them, like you're speaking to them and you just write down what you say. Basically, imagine standing in front of a bunch of people at a university, if you're trying to write something higher level, more formal, then what you would say to them, masses, is more likely what you should be writing and the t the style and tone you should be doing. If you practice this by visualizing your audience as you go throughout this process, you are going to be far more likely to maintain a consistent tone. But if you switch between, oh, what if my mom reads this or I think that might offend somebody else, like if I'm writing something primarily for female bosses, for example, I think that might offend some men, so I need to soften that. Don't do that. Write for the people that you are targeting. If somebody else reads it, that's whatever. Okay? If you're writing for your professor, write for your professor. If you're writing to people much like your friend, then imagine your friend sitting there. Place the passive voice strategically. Do not overuse this. It is commonly used in polite material, but again, not in semiformal or informal settings. We tend to stick to using the active voice as much as possible. Mixing the passive in there so that we're kind of confused on who's doing what action. It that's not okay. And if you have multiple different characters in your story, in the case you are writing fiction, you don't need to be unclear with that. You don't need to be unclear with okay, but who did it? We have multiple characters in the same room. So these are some things that are very important to keep in mind, particularly with academic writing. So if you are writing a research report or an experiment report and you have multiple members on the team, it needs to be clear who did what and when. And there will be times in that paper where it will be more important to specify the results or the method rather than the people themselves. So there are times where it is appropriate to attribute action to a specific person on that research team and there will be times in your report where you will not. So pay attention to that. You can ask questions. Your professor will like be very helpful in explaining it to you or pointing you to the writing center where you can get some really specific pointers on the type of writing you are doing. Editing also whittleles down wordiness and confusing phrases. So, if you ever get to the where you're reading something and just like I was in my draft that I was looking through, things did not always make sense or I repeated something or as a result and so that were in the same sentence. Both of those transition phrases do the same thing. So, it doesn't make sense to have them inside the same sentence because it's like as a result, as a result is essentially what I'm saying in that case. So, make sure you're using a variety of transition phrases and you're not using the same type of transition phrase within a sentence because that's too wordy, too confusing because it's unclear what you're really drawing and emphasizing. Make formatting exact. So, in this case, you'll be breaking out your paragraphs. If you are one of those people that just write everything in one giant block, it'll be time to space these out a little bit. You typically want to have at least five sentences and probably no more than 10 in a paragraph. Different styles and citation methods will do different things. If you're writing a blog or any kind of online content, you definitely need to break it down even smaller because as people read your blog on mobile, it's going to make that 5 to 10 sentence paragraph even longer and seem just like endless words. So, you actually want to keep it to three lines or less if you are writing a blog. So, just keep these things in mind. It really matters who you're talking to and how you're talking to them. make fix content order confusion. Okay, so when you have an outline, you should be writing according to that outline. And if you make adjustments to the structure, if you find that as you're writing, it makes more sense to put the most important supporting point at the beginning rather than at the end, then you need to also change your outline so that you can keep that in mind. Because if you are writing a research paper, let's say you're writing a 30-page research paper as your senior thesis in your undergraduate program, okay? because you're an honor student or something like that. You're going to be writing that paper over a long period of time. You're going to be planning it and researching for it for a long period of time over the entire semester, maybe even your entire senior year. You do not need to be making changes in the writing itself and in the draft itself without reporting them on your outline, structural changes. So, make sure you keep your outline up to date with your edits so that you can visually see and think about it more strategically. Okay. How much passive voice is acceptable? I already spent a little bit of time on this, but this is entirely dependent upon the type of writing you are doing. Before I was talking mainly about academic writing research papers, use the third person. To avoid using first and second person pronouns, you don't want to use those in the abstract. Sometimes this is appropriate. You're going to have to ask your department or look in your course syllabus for specific instructions. But generally speaking, we do not use first and second pronouns at all in academic writing. Blog posts should use very little passive voice on the other hand. They are like the exact opposite of research papers. You do not have to be very precise. You have to have personality and be entertaining. And that means using wordier phrases and using idioms and engaging your audience in ways that not quite the way you speak, but almost. Whereas research papers are very much as precise and robotic as possible. Polite emails, automated emails, and quick project updates are often in the passive voice. your order has been received. Your package has been shipped. Okay, these are passive voice. What is important is the thing itself or the action itself or the update itself, not who did it. They're not going to give you the employee name of who shipped your package. Okay, so this is something that is really important to keep in mind. If you are in this kind of realm where you're writing automated emails for a company, this is something to keep in mind. Essays in language, the humanities and history tend to be primarily in the active voice talking about even using past tense. Okay? So, he went to here, he graduated from there. Okay? Instead of this university had him graduate or something like that. It would just be kind of odd to always speak in the passive voice. It would not make sense in the humanities. So, keep in mind that the active voice is more actionable. There is no confusion about who did what because that is important. However, the passive voice means it doesn't matter who did something, just that the thing was done. Keep those things in mind and you will be far more effective in how much passive voice you use. Okay. So, what is proofreading? Now, we see that editing is like the big one. This is the heavy lifter. This is the one where people spend the most time. Proofreading is something where you do many many waves over the paper, but it doesn't take as much time. This is the final step in the process. After this, you will have your final draft. Proof reading involves fixing grammar, punctuation, capitalization, spacing, and spelling. You saw me doing some of these kind of simultaneously with editing, mainly because I've written hundreds of papers in my life. So, I kind of melded these two together. But for you, it might be more efficient for you starting out, just like it was for me starting out, to separate these two processes. During proofing, you are not concerned with the content. This is the main thing with editing. You are looking at the mechanics of the paper. You're looking at the flow. you're looking at how it structures, how it's structured, and how well it fulfills your purpose. But in proofing, you you're just making sure it's exact. You're just making sure that the the wheels turn properly. You're making sure that the grammar, punctuation, capitalization, spacing, and spelling are proper. Proofing includes triple-checking citations. So, if you are writing a paper for school and you have citation requirements, you need to prove where you got things. You need to show where you got your sources, what your sources were and where you are quoting those sources and where you you are inspired by those sources. You need to show where you are getting your information. So, you've got to trouble check these. These have to be exact. They have to be correct and formatting to adhere to style guidelines. So, if you're using APA 7 versus MLA, it's going to be very different requirements. So, make sure you take take time to study what method you are supposed to use in your studies. Grammar and punctuation, punctuation, spacing. Make sure there's only one space after the final punctuation. Like we talked about before, make sure there there are no words running together. Make sure your verb tense agreement uh is there and it's balanced. Remember, we've talked about balancing verbs a couple of times already. Make sure your clauses are logical and they're placed appropriately. Use consistent voice. With spelling and capitalization, you need to make sure your proper nouns are capitalized. You need to make sure that the sentence starts capitalized, like the very beginning of your sentence. Make sure double letters that you've caught all of those, that you've conjugated them properly. When you are adding uh verbs, for example, that will double the final consonant in order to add e d. You need to make sure that those are all proper. Possessives are very tricky. Make sure you spend time specifically looking for those if you are using them in your writing. Past participles, make sure they are using the past participle form rather than something else. So, make sure instead of gave, you're saying given. Make sure instead of ate, you are saying eaten. Okay? Make sure you're using those properly. Foreign words, make sure those are checked properly. Usually, we put foreign words in italics or quotation marks. It depends on the style guideline you are using. So, make sure those are spelled appropriately as well. So, tips for editing and proofreading effectively. Overall, read out loud. If it's awkward and choppy to say, then it probably needs some revisions. It probably needs to be smoothed out. Make multiple passes for specific things. Grammar and punctuation in one pass, spelling in another, and then capitalization is usually how I tend to do it. Use paper, print it out, physically write on it, highlight it, do what you need to do, and then go back to your computer and update those changes. I tend to do the first few passes on the computer, but then as a final step to my proof reading, I I print it out and I mark it up that way because for some reason, I see more by physically holding the paper and working on it than I do on the computer. Uh, work backwards. If you need to go from the bottom up, this happens when you get so used to your writing that you just start to glaze over. your eyes just kind of go over things without really registering that there's a problem there. So, something that you can do is go backwards. Work from the bottom up and that will probably mix things up. Jumble it up enough to make sense. Do it when you are alert. Okay? Don't try to do this in the middle of the night when you've already had a long hard day. You need to be doing it when you're sharp and ready to go. Take breaks while proofing. Make sure you get up and walk away. Missing things like the e on on v or using the wrong to for example. These happen all the time and they get by people all the time. You might have read a book where something was misspelled or not properly done. Maybe they used the wrong there and that's what happens is maybe the proofreader was really trying to tear through it rather than actually doing a good job. So make sure you take time, take breaks, do it well. Ask someone else to look over it. Make sure it makes sense to them. see if they catch anything with fresh eyes. So yeah, just take your time and do it well. You won't be sorry with the grade that you get. Can I just use Grammarly? Grammarly and similar softwares like it. They use spellch check. They've got grammar checks. They have suggestions for you. They'll suggest swapping out words that are overused. They'll check for tone. They'll check for having a more confident um attitude in your writing. No, this is no replacement for a human being. Though Grammarly and other similar software are helpful for making suggestions, it does not pick up on the subtle inferences and it tries to correct patterns that make our writing more human. If you write a paper that completely satis satisfies Grammarly, you get a 100% score. It's not going to sound very personable. It's going to sound like everything else. It's not going to stand out at all. And honestly, it might have some mistakes. I've I've worked with Grammarly a lot extensively on editing work on proofing work and it's I use it to for suggestions but honestly I don't trust it at all. I don't trust it because if I did adhere to it, it really would be a problem. You can use Grammarly the probably the most helpful function is seeing the I mean seeing the suggestions cuz worst case scenario you just veto it, right? You just say no, don't change that. Um, but you can also see the most helpful function to me, which is checking to make sure it's not plagiarizing any websites on the internet. That is very helpful. But otherwise, and usually with those, it's a wording change. It's a different style of sentence. It's making sure that you're properly paraphrasing and maybe you need to add a source. But other than that, it doesn't help you with books. It doesn't help you with things of that nature, just websites. So, this is something that I strongly suggest that you not do. And if you do, use it for suggestions and just know that it is a suggestion. It is not always correct and nor should it be. Okay, your writing assignment this time is to go back over your second draft to edit and proofread it. I suggest that you go over it in several passes. Like this editing and proofreading, you are probably going to go over your essay maybe 10 times, maybe more. Do what it takes to make it really good. And if you invest the time into doing that every time, you're going to be surprised at how much your mind catches things as you go, so that you will be able to narrow it down to five passes over time. But right now, I suggest you put in the work and you go hard and slow and you do it well because you will be building a skill for future writing. All right. Next, we're going to talk about how to write a comparison and contrast essay. So far, we've done an opinion essay. Um, and that is the groundwork. That is the basis of doing all kinds of writing. Um, but now we're going to learn how to put an extra mechanic in there with comparison and contrast. How we would plan those out, how we would brainstorm them, and then how we would finally write it. So, I'll see you in that next lesson.