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Contact UsHere are some helpful online resources:
Our favorite, from 聽This resource distinguishes between editing and proofreading and gives specific, applicable proofreading pointers. At the bottom is suggested reading for ESL students trying to correct grammar.
:聽Basic strategies include taking a break and reading your paper out loud. This website offers a list of common problems and how to identify them and fix them (parallelism, subject-verb agreement, etc.)鈥� helpful!
This one is a fun, sort of cheeky website:聽. It offers advice like 鈥淲alk away, Ren茅e,鈥� 鈥淚magine you鈥檙e not you鈥� and 鈥淟isten to your high school English teacher 鈥� except when it鈥檚 best to tune her out.鈥�
Other tutor-tested proofreading methods:
- Read backwards. Read from the last sentence of the last paragraph to the first sentence of the first paragraph. By reading each sentence totally out of context, you鈥檒l likely catch grammatical mistakes and strange wording.
- Highlight every sentence in a different color. If every sentence is a different hue, you鈥檒l be more likely to read sentences on their own, separate from one another. And hopefully you鈥檒l catch typos.
- Get out the scissors. That鈥檚 right 鈥� cut up every paragraph and then rearrange all of the paragraphs on a large, clean surface. Your paper will automatically get an organizational facelift as you figure out what is out of place, what REALLY needs to go first, and what sequence makes the most logical sense.
- Make a dumpster document.聽As you鈥檙e drafting, don鈥檛 be afraid to pull out entire paragraphs and stick them in a separate 鈥渄umpster鈥� document. If you decide you鈥檇 like to go back later and integrate whatever you took out, you can go dumpster diving in this doc. This way you won鈥檛 be afraid to lose those great nuggets, but won鈥檛 be so attached to them that you leave them where they don鈥檛 necessarily fit.
- Use the (often hilarious) text-to-speech readers.聽 Macintosh users have probably already played around with the British, Australian and other ambiguous accents in the speech-reading tool. If you鈥檙e a PC user, find a free text-to-speech reader and use it. You鈥檙e guaranteed to catch mistakes when you hear your writing in someone else鈥檚 voice.