Proofreading Vs Revising Essay

This essay is written in response to Nancy Sommers’ article “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers” in order to summarize the stark differences in revision between inexperienced, student writers and experienced, adult writers, and to complement it with my own personal revelations and opinions of her theory. Sommers begins by comparing two modern paradigms of writing, describing both as moving from discrete stages, before concluding that they are too linear by design. This forms the basis of Sommers’ argument that the act of revision is entirely present throughout writing and not mere linguistic “corrections” edited in as afterthoughts. She expands upon this argument by detailing the contrast between speech and writing: “The spoken word cannot be revised. The possibility of revision distinguishes written text from speech.”

Revising is another significant activity that I acquired from the course. As a writer, I have to fix some logical mistakes in my essay, check on the missing steps, the awkward transitions, and any confusing organization or outline. Proofreading is another step for the writing process, where English 1101 demand individuals to read out the revised paper loudly, to identify any mistakes that need correction. The last step is formatting, which has an aim of making the essay perfect. I discovered that I have to make sure my essay is appropriately formatted, meeting all the MLA style requirements.

Before submitting a research paper, essay, or any other written document, it is essential to carefully look over it. Proofreading is the final step that is taken before a paper can be viewed as finished. Proofreading allows the writer to decide whether or not what is written relays the message. A paper that is not written well will not communicate the message effectively to the reader.

While progressing through Introduction to University Writing, there were several important pieces of information that served as reminders on how to write properly. Looking back on all of the information provided, the most important guidance I gained was proofreading my writing. No matter how many times I proofread my work, it seems there are more mistakes to be found.

I think that reading your writing out loud will help with clarity and revision, because you will be more aware if you are listening to it.

I have modified my writing process since the beginning of the semester. I have always written multiple drafts but if I was lucky I would have someone else read my paper last minute to catch any blatant mistakes. Now I leave myself multiple days to revisit and work on my essay. In this time, I reread my essay, take it to the writing center, then read it one or two more times. The writing center has been extremely beneficial. They read my draft outload and we look for structural organization, grammar errors, and spelling errors. This also allows another perspective to analyze my essays to see if they make sense. Usually I agreed with the constructive criticism and change

I will revise drafts for coherence, organization, use of simple and compound sentence, and audience, so that my essays are writing correctly for my readers.

Revising is ensuring your essay is organized and reflects your thesis, while editing is done to ensure your words and message are clear. To revise an essay, the writer should make sure each paragraph relates to the thesis, that the essay is structured well with complete sentences and paragraphs, and that the essay includes an introduction and conclusion. One way to help revise your essay is to, “…consider putting yourself in the shoes of your readers when you revise and trying to determine whether what you have written will be clear and understandable to your audience” (Connell, 2013, p. 9.2). This helps ensure your thoughts are well organized and flow well. Revising checks the writer’s accuracy for focus, structure, organization, completion,

Over the past few weeks, I have learned a great deal about the writing process. Applying different revision techniques to my own writing enabled me to learn more about myself as a writer. As I employed the writing process, I became intimately aware of the various steps involved, which both helped me to improve my own writing and enabled me to teach my students about developing their writing.

What I've always wanted is to be a good writer and in order to do this I know I need to learn how to grasp revision. Editing, proofreading, revising, fixing grammatical errors, and re-reading, are important in revising. Writing used to be a chore to me until I found my own style and started writing creatively while keeping my interests in mind. After writing and finding out a certain style doesn't work, it leads me to try something different. I used to think of revision as re-writing and changing text and documents, until I learned what revision truly is and the importance of this process.

Proofreading is an essential part of the writing process since this step ensures that written documents contain no mistakes when it’s distributed. Proofreading involves thorough revision of written documents to identify and correct mistakes such as grammar, spelling, punctuation or vocabulary. Proofreading is the final stage before the message or document is sent to the intended audience therefore it is the last chance to perfect the message. For this reason, it is an important part of the writing process, it ensures that the writer carefully reviews the document and makes corrections where necessary to produce a clear and concise message for the audience to clearly understand what was intended by the writer.

For this week's discussion I was glad we are learning more about proofreading and editing a paper. I choose the article written by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this was a great article are shared many tips when editing and proofreading a paper. A tip that stood out to me, which I will try using when reviewing a paper, is to read your paper backwards to find any spelling errors. I have become so reliant on spell check and paper editor's, that I feel most errors will be known once checked. Reading this article I became more skeptical on solely relaying on these editor's, I will add this tip to my normal routine when proofreading my papers. Along with this method of checking a paper the article goes on to explain other ways

Many people are under the misconception that proofreading is only done for book manuscripts, the fact is that any form of the written word has to be thtoughly experience amongst reader with errors. In many publication the error proofreading is given the title of copy-editor, implying the need to edit the copy to eradicate-rectify-all errors.

Ellen Brock discussed a video on different types of necessary editing in her video, “What Are The Different Types of Edits for Novels”. Proofreading for me was natural as it is something I have done in the past, however, when I realized I was line editing, I was somewhat intimidated that I would make an incorrect correction. I cleaned up some of the writing by deleting repetitive words and phrases that would allow the paper to sound easier to read.

The two revisions techniques that I found helpful was reading my work aloud and asking a friend to read over my work. Anytime I am doing some form of writing whether it’s for work, school, or for personal use I always go back over work just take make sure there are no spelling or grammar errors. There have been times when I found myself reading over it a second time and found small errors that I missed the first go around. When I do read my work aloud it’s kind of hard reading everything from a computer screen sometimes so I will print the document so that I am able to mark the errors that I have found. Asking someone else to look over your work is always helpful because there may be times when they find a mistake that I wasn’t able to find.