wp home > junior year writing > sourcebook for instructors > proofreading

Proofreading/Copyediting

Most writing instructors recommend that students leave proofreading until last. There are several reasons for this. First, it helps keep some students from becoming blocked as they fuss over a comma, losing their train of thought in their writing. Second, it is simply more time efficient. If students are doing a lot of revision, many of the sentences they might spend time cleaning up will simply not exist in the next version. Finally, it helps break up the cognitive task of writing. As many of us have experienced, when we write about a new or very complex topic, even the best writers may construct absolutely horrid sentences as their attention is given more to figuring out their own ideas than to sentence structure. While respecting the conventions of Edited American English is essential to how the quality of a final draft will be viewed, it is best dealt with as its own issue of focus at the most effective stage in drafting.

The other thing we know about “getting grammar and punctuation” right is that knowing a rule does not equate with employing it correctly in one’s own writing. As a result, teaching grammar rules or doing exercises on someone else’s sentences will usually not improve a student’s writing. The most effective site of instruction is with the students’ own texts and the errors they actually commit in their writing. As a result, we suggest several strategies below to help students become better proofreaders and editors of their own work.

Individualized Proofreading Logs

When analyzing student writing, teachers often feel that students have made numerous errors. However, many times a writer may have made the same type of error many times. For example, many students fail to put a comma before a conjunction in a compound sentence. What can seem like 10 comma errors may indeed be 10 instances of the same mistake. Thus, one of the most effective ways to help students develop better proofreading strategies is to read their papers for “error patterns,” point them out to students, and ask them to keep an ongoing list of their own patterns to use as a guide when proofreading their work. Recommend that they read for only one pattern at a time so that they can focus all their attention on one rule.

How to Read for Error Patterns
As you read through a paper, circle errors on the first page or two. On subsequent pages, look to see if any of those you marked initially recur in the ensuing pages. Once you’ve designated a few, look to see if there are any contextual factors that are similar where the error occurs: e.g., is a semi-colon always missing between two independent clauses or only when the first clause is very long, or only when the two clauses form a question? The more you can tell about when an error occurs the more specific you can be in recommending a proofreading strategy.

How to Ensure Students are Using their Logs to Proofread
It is helpful if students know they will be accountable for gaining control over their own error patterns. Many instructors keep track of the 2-3 patterns they have commented on (frequently by a simple abbreviation next to a paper grade in their grade book) and then look specifically to see if that error recurs in the next, graded assignment. If it does, they warn students that the effect on their grade will be more severe for patterns already highlighted and in their logs than for any new ones. This accountability helps ensure students will use their logs and also provides a way of providing steady feedback that will eventually cover most of the patterns you see rather than commenting on all at once, which students frequently find too overwhelming (and frankly, it’s very time-consuming for you as well).

When is the Best Time to Comment on Error Patterns?
Some teachers begin to comment on patterns in later drafts, but most do not want students to equate proofreading with revision so they wait until the first, final draft. While this strategy frequently means not penalizing a student for their errors on the first, graded assignment, it sets up the context for a more severe penalty with the next paper. If you choose to look for patterns at the drafting stage, one of the best ways to do it is to require a draft where the students know you will be reading only for grammar and punctuation. A better option is frequently to teach students to do such pattern analysis to each others’ papers as part of a copyediting workshop.

Copyediting Workshops

Many instructors ask students to copyedit each others’ papers by circling the errors they find in a draft. While students are not always good proofreaders of their own work, they frequently can find errors in someone else’s writing that either they do not make themselves and/or can more readily perceive because it is not their own text. Rather than correcting them for each other, though, the students simply mark what they deem to be an error; it is the writer’s responsibility to look up the rule in a handbook and determine what, if any, correction is needed.

Marginal Marking

Since the goal is to help students become better proofreaders of their own work, many teachers opt for a minimalist approach, simply putting a checkmark in the left margin next to a line that includes an error (or two checkmarks for two errors, etc.). It is then the writer’s responsibility to look at that line closely, find the error, and correct it. Some instructors do this during a drafting stage; others do it on a final draft and ask for the corrections separately and count it as a quiz or homework grade. Whatever approach taken, it is recommended that students keep track (in a proofreading log) of the errors they correct so that they can proofread specifically for that error next time.

Proofing for Common Errors

Just as there are individualized error patterns, there are common error patterns in student writing. Most handbooks provide a list of something like the “20 most common errors” based on research into student writing nationally. Constructing a proofreading workshop that provides strategies for finding and correcting these common errors can frequently help your students catch many of their mistakes. For instance, in the example of commas before coordinating conjunctions used earlier, teachers can recommend students use the “search” function of most word processing programs for all their conjunctions: and, but, for, or, yet. When highlighted, the student needs only look before the conjunction and after and ask if there is a complete sentence. If so, use a comma. Making up a “proofreading cheat sheet” that includes recommendations like this or pointing students to that section of the handbook can save a lot of time. Other instructors make their own list of common errors from what they’ve seen in drafts for a particular class to use in this way.

Updated September 3, 2008

UMail / UDrive / Spark / Spire