Editing & Proofreading – Approach to writing an A+ grade assignment

Generally, once you have already gone through the rigorous steps of planning your assignment and structuring as well as writing your assignment, you might tend to take this editing and proofreading step lightly. However, a thorough editing and proofreading of your assignment can make a huge contribution to your grade. So, how much ever you feel this step to be redundant, you should follow this meticulously. And, when you plan for managing time for your assignment you should always keep sufficient time for editing and proofreading. You should also get familiar with other steps of producing a top quality assignment, to understand the importance of editing and proofreading.

What is meant by editing and proofreading, are these are same?

Both editing and proofreading, loosely, refers to revising your work, or looking at it again to ensure that it’s well-written, reads smoothly and make sense to the reader. Although most of the students tend to take both these steps as the same thing and use them almost interchangeably, both these steps are quite different and very distinct purposes.

• Editing means checking your assignment to ensure that it is clear, logical, well-written, factually correct, and forms a meaningful whole.
• On the other hand, proofreading generally employed after editing and generally, mistakes in grammar, spelling and formatting are checked.

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Different components of editing:

• Content:

1. Re-read
   • Your assignment sheet
   • Marking criteria sheet
   • Other information from your lecturer
2. Check whether you have answered the question properly or not.
3. Create a checklist for all the requirements of your assignment to see whether you have covered all the points or not.

• Structure: You should check whether different components of your essay are serving their purposes You can cross check all the points below.
  1. Introduction:
     • Should contains your
     • The structure of the essay should be outlined.
     • The scope of the essay should be discussed.
  2. Body:
     • Each paragraph should develop only one idea which is stated as the topic or the thesis statement.
     • All the arguments are based with evidences.
     • Linking words or phrases are used throughout the article to create a smooth flow between the paragraphs.
  3. Conclusion:
     • Repeat the main point of the essay.
     • Restate your thesis, and express your view about it.

• Academic style: You always write your assignment in academic style. Means, you should
  1. Use object tone
  2. Focus more on evidences and facts, rather than opinion
  3. Consider different points of view.
• Sources: For this you should ask yourself “have I indicated the source of every piece of information I have used in the assignment?”. Remember, that
  1. Any used source should be mentioned in the in-text citation and in
  2. Sources should be recent and from authentic sources.

Proofreading: Once you are done with editing, you should move on to proofreading. Proofreading is done at the following levels.

• Word choice:
  1. Be concise.
  2. Use specialized word or jargon where necessary.
  3. Remove slang and colloquial word.
• Grammar: You can use a software for checking the grammar. Otherwise, you can see whether all the sentences are complete and are these making sense?
• Punctuation: Check whether you have punctuated all the sentences properly.
• Spelling: The last but not the least thing is to check the spelling. Generally, now all word processing software has the auto correct feature. In this regard, pay attention to whether your instructor follow the American or Australian English spelling and maintain the consistency throughout the assignment.

You should get familiar with different best ways to edit and proofread. Also, check this quick study guide for editing and proofreading for a structure and a checklist to make your editing and proofreading.