reading essay backwards

Editing and Proofreading

What this handout is about.

This handout provides some tips and strategies for revising your writing. To give you a chance to practice proofreading, we have left seven errors (three spelling errors, two punctuation errors, and two grammatical errors) in the text of this handout. See if you can spot them!

Is editing the same thing as proofreading?

Not exactly. Although many people use the terms interchangeably, editing and proofreading are two different stages of the revision process. Both demand close and careful reading, but they focus on different aspects of the writing and employ different techniques.

Some tips that apply to both editing and proofreading

• Get some distance from the text! It’s hard to edit or proofread a paper that you’ve just finished writing—it’s still to familiar, and you tend to skip over a lot of errors. Put the paper aside for a few hours, days, or weeks. Go for a run. Take a trip to the beach. Clear your head of what you’ve written so you can take a fresh look at the paper and see what is really on the page. Better yet, give the paper to a friend—you can’t get much more distance than that. Someone who is reading the paper for the first time, comes to it with completely fresh eyes.
• Decide which medium lets you proofread most carefully. Some people like to work right at the computer, while others like to sit back with a printed copy that they can mark up as they read.
• Try changing the look of your document. Altering the size, spacing, color, or style of the text may trick your brain into thinking it’s seeing an unfamiliar document, and that can help you get a different perspective on what you’ve written.
• Find a quiet place to work. Don’t try to do your proofreading in front of the TV or while you’re chugging away on the treadmill. Find a place where you can concentrate and avoid distractions.
• If possible, do your editing and proofreading in several short blocks of time. Your concentration may start to wane if you try to proofread the entire text at one time.
• If you’re short on time, you may wish to prioritize. Make sure that you complete the most important editing and proofreading tasks.

Editing is what you begin doing as soon as you finish your first draft. You reread your draft to see, for example, whether the paper is well-organized, the transitions between paragraphs are smooth, and your evidence really backs up your argument. You can edit on several levels:

Have you done everything the assignment requires? Are the claims you make accurate? If it is required to do so, does your paper make an argument? Is the argument complete? Are all of your claims consistent? Have you supported each point with adequate evidence? Is all of the information in your paper relevant to the assignment and/or your overall writing goal? (For additional tips, see our handouts on understanding assignments and developing an argument .)

Overall structure

Does your paper have an appropriate introduction and conclusion? Is your thesis clearly stated in your introduction? Is it clear how each paragraph in the body of your paper is related to your thesis? Are the paragraphs arranged in a logical sequence? Have you made clear transitions between paragraphs? One way to check the structure of your paper is to make a reverse outline of the paper after you have written the first draft. (See our handouts on introductions , conclusions , thesis statements , and transitions .)

Structure within paragraphs

Does each paragraph have a clear topic sentence? Does each paragraph stick to one main idea? Are there any extraneous or missing sentences in any of your paragraphs? (See our handout on paragraph development .)

Have you defined any important terms that might be unclear to your reader? Is the meaning of each sentence clear? (One way to answer this question is to read your paper one sentence at a time, starting at the end and working backwards so that you will not unconsciously fill in content from previous sentences.) Is it clear what each pronoun (he, she, it, they, which, who, this, etc.) refers to? Have you chosen the proper words to express your ideas? Avoid using words you find in the thesaurus that aren’t part of your normal vocabulary; you may misuse them.

Have you used an appropriate tone (formal, informal, persuasive, etc.)? Is your use of gendered language (masculine and feminine pronouns like “he” or “she,” words like “fireman” that contain “man,” and words that some people incorrectly assume apply to only one gender—for example, some people assume “nurse” must refer to a woman) appropriate? Have you varied the length and structure of your sentences? Do you tends to use the passive voice too often? Does your writing contain a lot of unnecessary phrases like “there is,” “there are,” “due to the fact that,” etc.? Do you repeat a strong word (for example, a vivid main verb) unnecessarily? (For tips, see our handouts on style and gender-inclusive language .)

Have you appropriately cited quotes, paraphrases, and ideas you got from sources? Are your citations in the correct format? (See the UNC Libraries citation tutorial for more information.)

As you edit at all of these levels, you will usually make significant revisions to the content and wording of your paper. Keep an eye out for patterns of error; knowing what kinds of problems you tend to have will be helpful, especially if you are editing a large document like a thesis or dissertation. Once you have identified a pattern, you can develop techniques for spotting and correcting future instances of that pattern. For example, if you notice that you often discuss several distinct topics in each paragraph, you can go through your paper and underline the key words in each paragraph, then break the paragraphs up so that each one focuses on just one main idea.

Proofreading

Proofreading is the final stage of the editing process, focusing on surface errors such as misspellings and mistakes in grammar and punctuation. You should proofread only after you have finished all of your other editing revisions.

Why proofread? It’s the content that really matters, right?

Content is important. But like it or not, the way a paper looks affects the way others judge it. When you’ve worked hard to develop and present your ideas, you don’t want careless errors distracting your reader from what you have to say. It’s worth paying attention to the details that help you to make a good impression.

Most people devote only a few minutes to proofreading, hoping to catch any glaring errors that jump out from the page. But a quick and cursory reading, especially after you’ve been working long and hard on a paper, usually misses a lot. It’s better to work with a definite plan that helps you to search systematically for specific kinds of errors.

Sure, this takes a little extra time, but it pays off in the end. If you know that you have an effective way to catch errors when the paper is almost finished, you can worry less about editing while you are writing your first drafts. This makes the entire writing proccess more efficient.

Try to keep the editing and proofreading processes separate. When you are editing an early draft, you don’t want to be bothered with thinking about punctuation, grammar, and spelling. If your worrying about the spelling of a word or the placement of a comma, you’re not focusing on the more important task of developing and connecting ideas.

The proofreading process

You probably already use some of the strategies discussed below. Experiment with different tactics until you find a system that works well for you. The important thing is to make the process systematic and focused so that you catch as many errors as possible in the least amount of time.

• Don’t rely entirely on spelling checkers. These can be useful tools but they are far from foolproof. Spell checkers have a limited dictionary, so some words that show up as misspelled may really just not be in their memory. In addition, spell checkers will not catch misspellings that form another valid word. For example, if you type “your” instead of “you’re,” “to” instead of “too,” or “there” instead of “their,” the spell checker won’t catch the error.
• Grammar checkers can be even more problematic. These programs work with a limited number of rules, so they can’t identify every error and often make mistakes. They also fail to give thorough explanations to help you understand why a sentence should be revised. You may want to use a grammar checker to help you identify potential run-on sentences or too-frequent use of the passive voice, but you need to be able to evaluate the feedback it provides.
• Proofread for only one kind of error at a time. If you try to identify and revise too many things at once, you risk losing focus, and your proofreading will be less effective. It’s easier to catch grammar errors if you aren’t checking punctuation and spelling at the same time. In addition, some of the techniques that work well for spotting one kind of mistake won’t catch others.
• Read slow, and read every word. Try reading out loud , which forces you to say each word and also lets you hear how the words sound together. When you read silently or too quickly, you may skip over errors or make unconscious corrections.
• Separate the text into individual sentences. This is another technique to help you to read every sentence carefully. Simply press the return key after every period so that every line begins a new sentence. Then read each sentence separately, looking for grammar, punctuation, or spelling errors. If you’re working with a printed copy, try using an opaque object like a ruler or a piece of paper to isolate the line you’re working on.
• Circle every punctuation mark. This forces you to look at each one. As you circle, ask yourself if the punctuation is correct.
• Read the paper backwards. This technique is helpful for checking spelling. Start with the last word on the last page and work your way back to the beginning, reading each word separately. Because content, punctuation, and grammar won’t make any sense, your focus will be entirely on the spelling of each word. You can also read backwards sentence by sentence to check grammar; this will help you avoid becoming distracted by content issues.
• Proofreading is a learning process. You’re not just looking for errors that you recognize; you’re also learning to recognize and correct new errors. This is where handbooks and dictionaries come in. Keep the ones you find helpful close at hand as you proofread.
• Ignorance may be bliss, but it won’t make you a better proofreader. You’ll often find things that don’t seem quite right to you, but you may not be quite sure what’s wrong either. A word looks like it might be misspelled, but the spell checker didn’t catch it. You think you need a comma between two words, but you’re not sure why. Should you use “that” instead of “which”? If you’re not sure about something, look it up.
• The proofreading process becomes more efficient as you develop and practice a systematic strategy. You’ll learn to identify the specific areas of your own writing that need careful attention, and knowing that you have a sound method for finding errors will help you to focus more on developing your ideas while you are drafting the paper.

Think you’ve got it?

Then give it a try, if you haven’t already! This handout contains seven errors our proofreader should have caught: three spelling errors, two punctuation errors, and two grammatical errors. Try to find them, and then check a version of this page with the errors marked in red to see if you’re a proofreading star.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Especially for non-native speakers of English:

Ascher, Allen. 2006. Think About Editing: An ESL Guide for the Harbrace Handbooks . Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Lane, Janet, and Ellen Lange. 2012. Writing Clearly: Grammar for Editing , 3rd ed. Boston: Heinle.

For everyone:

Einsohn, Amy. 2011. The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications , 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lanham, Richard A. 2006. Revising Prose , 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Tarshis, Barry. 1998. How to Be Your Own Best Editor: The Toolkit for Everyone Who Writes . New York: Three Rivers Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to Read Backwards

Last Updated: February 17, 2024

This article was co-authored by wikiHow Staff . Our trained team of editors and researchers validate articles for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow's Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article is backed by trusted research and meets our high quality standards. This article has been viewed 69,375 times. Learn more...

We all know the importance of exercising our bodies, but what about exercising our minds? Reading words backwards helps to keep your mind active and improve your reading skills. As English readers and writers, we are accustomed to reading left to right. To challenge your brain, try reading from right to left, instead.

Reading from Right to Left

• Because you are accustomed to reading left-to-right, your brain naturally prefers this direction; essentially what you are doing is re-teaching it how to track from right to left (called "directional tracking").

• Practice reading several times over the next few days. Spacing out your practice over time helps you feel more comfortable reading and recognizing words from the opposite direction, from right to left rather than left to right.

• Practice makes perfect! Here's an example. Try to figure out what it says.
• snoitalutargnoC .sdrawkcab gnidaer era uoy siht daer nac uoy fI

Using Visualization

Reading Mirror Image Text

• Mirror image writing is different from right to left backwards writing. In mirror image writing, each individual letter appears backwards, but the letters are still in left to right order.
• You can see the effect if you hold up regular text to a mirror.

• Write your text on a piece of paper in normal writing.
• Have a friend hold it in front of a mirror.
• Use a piece of tracing paper to trace over the mirror image of your text.
• The text on the tracing paper will be your message, in mirror image backwards writing.

Community Q&A

• Also practice reading in a mirror and reading upside-down. Both activities are good practice at reversing the order of letters. Reading a word through a piece of paper by holding it up to the light is the same as holding it up to a mirror [2] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• When you know lots of words backwards, test your friends and family! Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Try writing something backwards and leave it for a target to get confused. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://www.education.com/reference/article/reading-development-stages-Chall/
• ↑ https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-25/edition-10/mirror-writing

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center for writing | student writing support | writing process | editing & proofreading strategies

Editing & proofreading strategies

Editing and proofreading are essential aspects of effective writing. However, they are the later steps in the ongoing process of brainstorming, planning, drafting, and revising. Writers who rush or ignore any of these earlier steps can end up with a paper that is unclear, underdeveloped, and very difficult to correct in the later stages of the writing process. When you are ready to proofread and edit your draft, you should do so carefully and thoroughly. While it is important to review your work and seek feedback, the following strategies may also prove useful.

Leave yourself plenty of time for all steps of the writing process, including editing.

By making and following a timeline for the paper, you are more likely to have time to finish everything with the proper amount of care and attention. Also, keep in mind that it may be best to lay your paper aside for a day or so before proofreading and editing, as you may be more likely to catch errors or notice structural problems if your writing isn’t so “fresh” in your mind.

Get acquainted with your resources.

You don’t need to memorize every grammar or citation rule that may apply to the genre or discipline in which you’re writing—you can look them up. Take advantage of the resources available to you: dictionaries, thesauruses, handbooks, citation guides, handouts from class, librarians, and writing center consultants.

Know your weaknesses.

Keep a list of errors you tend to make: it will help you know what to look for when you edit. You can also read the paper once for each error type—if you’re only looking for one thing, you’ll be more likely to notice it.

Print a copy of your paper to use when editing and proofreading.

It is much harder to catch errors on a screen than on paper.

Read your paper out loud.

Often, when we read silently, our eyes skip over small errors, awkward or run-on sentences, and typos. By reading out loud, you force yourself to notice everything from spelling and word choice to the structure of sentences. You can also have someone read your paper aloud and tell you where they are confused.

Read your paper backwards.

Another way to force yourself to notice small details is to take things out of context. Try reading your paper backwards, sentence by sentence or paragraph by paragraph, so that you are focusing on the text, not the ideas. This technique is especially helpful for catching sentence fragments.

Check the punctuation .

Look over the paper on a sentence-by-sentence level to see if your punctuation is correct. Are commas in the right places? Are there any run-on sentences? If you aren’t sure about how to use certain kinds of punctuation, look in a manual, explore other quicktips, and/or ask a writing consultant for help.

Check the citations .

Check each in-text citation for correct format, and verify that the source is in the Works Cited or References list. This is also a good time to double-check the spelling of authors’ names, book or article titles, and so on.

Reread quotations.

It is all too easy to mistype when copying words.

Get feedback from other people.

Because we are such a part of what we write, it can be difficult to step outside our work and view it critically. When you seek outside opinions, you can break free of the isolation and absorption of writing and receive perspectives and insights that you may have otherwise missed. You are no longer left wondering whether you followed the guidelines of the assignment, whether your structure and language are clear, etc. By asking for feedback from other people, you are taking essential measures to improve your writing and to develop as a writer.

Don’t rely solely on computer help.

Spell-check and grammar-check tools are useful, but they do not constitute or substitute for proofreading. Develop and follow your own editing strategies, and don’t be fooled into thinking that computer tools alone are adequate for the job.

Rest. Relax. Reread.

Leave your paper alone for a day or two. Having some distance from what you’ve written can make your proofreader’s eye more clinical and perceptive. In addition, you may find changes you would like to make after you read your text later.

Adapted from The University of Minnesota’s Student Writing Guide , 2004, p. 29, and from The College of Education & Human Development Writing Center’s handout, “Editing and Proofreading Strategies.”

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Reading Backwards

Insightful Authors Through the Ages - 

When you read backwards, you will come to understand some of the stereotypes and misconceptions of the present. You will develop a better sense of what is universal and what is relative, what is essential and what is arbitrary.

Note:  We recognize that this list of authors represents a decidedly Western worldview. We therefore  recommend, once you have grounded yourself in deeply insightful authors from the Western world,   that you then read works by the great Eastern authors.  

Here are some authors we recommend:

• More than 2,000 years ago: Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus,  Aristophanes
• 1200s: Thomas Aquinas, Dante
• 1300s: Boccaccio, Chaucer
• 1400s: Erasmus, Francis Bacon
• 1500s: Machiavelli, Cellini, Cervantès, Montaigne
• 1600s: John Milton, Pascal, John Dryden, John Locke, Joseph Addison
• 1700s: Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Pope, Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, Samuel Johnson, Goethe, Rousseau, William Blake
• 1800s: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, John Henry Newman, John Stuart Mill, Leo Tolstoy, the Brontes, Frank Norris, Thomas Hardy, Emile Durkheim, Edmond Rostand, Oscar Wilde
• 1900s: Ambrose Bierce, Gustavus Myers, H.L. Mencken, William Graham Sumner, W.H. Auden, Bertolt Brecht, Joseph Conrad, Max Weber, Aldous Huxley, Franz Kafka, Sinclair Lewis, Henry James, Jean-Paul Sartre, Virginia Woolf, William Appleman Williams, Arnold Toynbee, C. Wright Mills, Albert Camus, Willa Cather, Bertrand Russell, Karl Mannheim, Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Simone De Beauvoir, Winston Churchill, William J. Lederer, Vance Packard, Eric Hoffer, Erving Goffman, Philip Agee, John Steinbeck, Ludwig Wittgenstein, William Faulkner, Talcott Parsons, Jean Piaget, Lester Thurow, Robert Reich, Robert Heilbroner, Noam Chomsky, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Nader, Margaret Mead, Bronislaw Malinowski, Karl Popper, Robert Merton, Peter Berger, Milton Friedman, J. Bronowski

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Tips For Effective Proofreading

Proofread backwards. Begin at the end and work back through the paper paragraph by paragraph or even line by line. This will force you to look at the surface elements rather than the meaning of the paper.

Place a ruler under each line as you read it. This will give your eyes a manageable amount of text to read.

Know your own typical mistakes. Before you proofread, look over papers you have written in the past. Make a list of the errors you make repeatedly.

Proofread for one type of error at a time. If commas are your most frequent problem, go through the paper checking just that one problem. Then proofread again for the next most frequent problem.

Try to make a break between writing and proofreading. Set the paper aside for the night — or even for twenty minutes.

Proofread at the time of day when you are most alert to spotting errors.

Proofread once aloud. This will slow you down and you will hear the difference between what you meant to write and what you actually wrote.

Try to give yourself a break between the time you complete your final version of the paper and the time you sit down to edit. Approaching your writing with a clear head and having at least an hour to work on editing will ensure that you can do a thorough, thoughtful job. The results will definitely be worthwhile.

Ask someone else to read over your paper and help you find sentences that aren’t clear, places where you’re being wordy, and any errors.

Try reading backwards, a sentence at a time. This will help you focus on the sentences, rather than getting caught up in the content of your paper.

Know your own patterns. Your instructor can probably help you identify the errors you’ve made most often in your previous papers, and then you can focus your attention on finding and fixing them.

Read through your paper several times , once looking just at spelling, another time looking just at punctuation, and so on. Again, this can help you focus so you’ll do a better job.

Use the spell-checker on your computer, but use it carefully, and also do your own spell-checking. Computer spell-checkers often make errors – they might suggest a word that isn’t what you want at all, and they don’t know the difference between there, their, and they’re, for example.

Get help. If you’re not sure if you need that comma or whether to use “affect” or “effect,” look it up in a writing handbook, or ask your instructor for help.

Remember that editing isn’t just about errors. You want to polish your sentences at this point, making them smooth, interesting, and clear. Watch for very long sentences, since they may be less clear than shorter, more direct sentences. Pay attention to the rhythm of your writing; try to use sentences of varying lengths and patterns. Look for unnecessary phrases, repetition, and awkward spots.

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Proofread Using the Top Five Most Useful Techniques

Ouch follow the rules below and you're sure not to end up in the same position..

Proofreading is a drag—after having come up with a thesis, found evidence to support that thesis, and structured the essay to best support your ideas, you have to find and fix all of the mistakes you made along the way. I also find proofreading stressful; I worry that small mistakes will undermine all my hard work. Luckily, over time I’ve developed a series of techniques, which help me proofread;  I’ve collected here five of what I believe to be the most useful proofreading techniques, all of which are great used alone, or in combination.

1. Read Aloud

Reading aloud is, without a doubt, the single most issue revision practice. Doing so you will not only notice small mistakes—missing words, misused words, misplaced (or missing!) punctuation—but you will also notice issues of phrasing and pacing.

2. Change the Font

Another thing that can make it difficult to catch mistakes is being overly familiar with your writing and the way it looks—mistakes and all—on the page. I’ve found that changing the font of what I’m working on can be a good way of making the document unfamiliar once again.

3. Print it out

To catch mistakes in your writing, it is absolutely necessary to read slowly and deliberately. This can often be hard to do while working on a computer (I don’t know about you but I tend to distractedly skim much of what I read on my laptop!). A good way to get yourself to slow down is to print out your essay and sit down to reread it in a distraction free (i.e., laptop, phone, music, friend, and fun free) environment. If I know I’m going to have to do a lot of this sort of proofreading—during finals week for instance—I like to buy myself neon colored pens to make the whole process just a bit more engaging.

Another pro-tip: If you think you’re going to need to make substantial changes—adding whole clauses, entire sentences—it can be helpful to make the right hand margin extra wide (2 ½ to 3 inches) before printing it out so that you have space to write these changes in.

4. Read Backwards

It might make you feel like a crazy person, but reading your essay backwards sentence by sentence is an excellent way of catching run-ons and fragments.

5. Use a Text-to-Speech Service

An issue that I have run into while I proofeead is that even if I am reading aloud I will often simply read over mistakes— using a text to speech program is awesome not only because it is mid-90’s retro but also because it will force you to hear exactly what you’ve typed. I like to use the Read&Write plug in for Google Chrome.

There you have it! Use these techniques to proofread and you'll have yourself a mistake free essay. Happy proofreading!

For more tips and tricks on expository writing, check out these other blog posts written by our writing tutors in New York and Boston: The Vital Importance of Writing Badly , Transitioning From One Paragraph to the Next , and How Do I Write a Good Thesis? Looking to work with an expository writing tutor on your essays? Feel free to get in touch ! Cambridge Coaching offers private in-person tutoring in New York City and Boston, and online tutoring around the world.

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Editing is the very final step in writing an essay. Think of editing as the icing on the cake. This is where a writer will make the final product look great. Students should not begin editing until they are sure that the draft is exactly how they want it.

Submitting papers to a service like Turnitin or Grammarly can help students find grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. However, while Turnitin and Grammarly are both wonderful options for helping you edit your papers, understanding the basics of grammar will help you to make better editing decisions.

Whether you are new to the English language or a native speaker, learning the rules of grammar might seem intimidating. However, it’s important to remember that, if you are speaking English, you are using grammar. You might not know the terms to talk about how you speak, but the knowledge is there. If you are a native speaker, you likely know whether or not something sounds correct.

Here is a great checklist to use prior to submitting a final draft:

Editing Checklist

Editing Checklist for Academic Essays

• Appropriate headings and page numbering are used
• Margins are correct: 1/2 inch from top to right header, 1 inch all around
• Spacing is set to double, with no extra line spaces between headings and title, title and body, or between paragraphs
• Within the essay, parenthetical citations are used (Lastname 13).
• A works cited page is included when appropriate, with all necessary information.

Mechanics: Spelling, Punctuation, Grammar, Syntax

• Did I run spell-check?
• Did I check homonyms? (Example: to, too, and two)
• Did I look up difficult words?
• Did I proofread aloud to catch obvious errors?
• Are all sentences complete (subject & verb, complete thought)?
• Did I use one verb tense throughout (unless there was a good reason to switch)?
• Did I use present tense verbs to discuss texts?
• Have I checked for run-on sentences and comma splices?
• Does my paper flow when read aloud? Did I use different sentence lengths and styles?

“ Editing Checklist ” from The Word on College Reading and Writing by Babin, et al licensed by  CC NC 4.0 .

Editing and Proofreading

When you have made some revisions to your draft based on feedback and your recalibration of your purpose for writing, you may now feel your essay is nearly complete. However, you should plan to read through the entire final draft at least one additional time. During this stage of editing and proofreading your entire essay, you should be looking for general consistency and clarity. Also, pay particular attention to parts of the paper you have moved around or changed in other ways to make sure that your new versions still work smoothly.

Although you might think editing and proofreading isn’t necessary since you were fairly careful when you were writing, the truth is that even the very brightest people and best writers make mistakes when they write. One of the main reasons that you are likely to make mistakes is that your mind and fingers are not always moving along at the same speed nor are they necessarily in sync. So what ends up on the page isn’t always exactly what you intended. A second reason is that, as you make changes and adjustments, you might not totally match up the original parts and revised parts. Finally, a third key reason for proofreading is because you likely have errors you typically make and proofreading gives you a chance to correct those errors.

Editing and proofreading can work well with a partner. You can offer to be another pair of eyes for peers in exchange for their doing the same for you. Whether you are editing and proofreading your work or the work of a peer, the process is basically the same. Although the rest of this section assumes you are editing and proofreading your work, you can simply shift the personal issues, such as “Am I…” to a viewpoint that will work with a peer, such as “Is she…”

As you edit and proofread, you should look for common problem areas that stick out, including the quality writing components covered in sentence style, word choice, punctuation, mechanic, grammar, sentence building. There are certain writing rules that you must follow, but other more stylistic writing elements are more subjective and will require judgment calls on your part.

Be proactive in evaluating these subjective, stylistic issues since failure to do so can weaken the potential impact of your essay. Keeping the following questions in mind as you edit and proofread will help you notice and consider some of those subjective issues:

• At the word level: Am I using descriptive words? Am I varying my word choices rather than using the same words over and over? Am I using active verbs? Am I writing concisely? Does every word in each sentence perform a function?
• At the sentence level: Am I using a variety of sentence beginnings? Am I using a variety of sentence formats? Am I using ample and varied transitions? Does every sentence advance the value of the essay?
• At the paragraph and essay level: How does this essay look? Am I using paragraphing and paragraph breaks to my advantage? Are there opportunities to make this essay work better visually? Are the visuals I’m already using necessary? Am I using the required formatting (or, if there’s room for creativity, am I using the optimal formatting)? Is my essay the proper length?

Key Takeaways

• Edit and proofread your work since it is easy to make mistakes between your mind and your typing fingers, as well as when you are moving around parts of your essay.
• Trading a nearly final version of a draft with peers is a valuable exercise since others can often more easily see your mistakes than you can. When you edit and proofread for a peer, you use the same process as when you edit and proofread for yourself.
• As you are editing and proofreading, you will encounter some issues that are either right or wrong and you simply have to correct them when they are wrong. Other more stylistic issues, such as using adequate transitions, ample descriptive words, and enough variety in sentence formats, are subjective. Besides dealing with matters of correctness, you will have to make choices about subjective and stylistic issues while you proofread.

More Editing Tips

• Work with a clean printed copy, double-spaced to allow room to mark corrections.
• Read your essay backwards.
• Use spell-check and Grammarly, but be aware of each change you are making (they are not always accurate).
• Read your essay out loud.

1. Write a one-page piece about how you decided which college to attend. Give a copy of your file (or a hard copy) to three different peers to edit and proofread. Then edit and proofread your page yourself. Finally, compare your editing and proofreading results to those of your three peers. Categorize the suggested revisions and corrections as objective standards of correctness or subjective matters of style.

2. Create a “personal editing and proofreading guide” that includes an overview of both objective and subjective issues covered in this book that are common problems for you in your writing. In your guide, include tips from this book and self-questions that can help you with your problem writing areas.

The following checklist shows examples of the types of things that you might look for as you make a final pass (or final passes) through your paper. It often works best to make a separate pass for each issue because you are less likely to miss an issue and you will probably be able to make multiple, single-issue passes more quickly than you can make one multiple-issue pass.

• All subheadings are placed correctly (such as in the center or at the beginning of a page).
• All the text is the same size and font throughout.
• The page numbers are all formatted and appearing as intended.
• All image and picture captions are appearing correctly.
• All spellings of proper nouns have been corrected.
• The words “there” and “their” and “they’re” are spelled correctly. (Or you can insert your top recurring error here.)
• References are all included in the citation list.
• Within the citation list, references are all in a single, required format (no moving back and forth between Modern Language Association [MLA] and American Psychological Association [APA], for instance).
• All the formatting conventions for the final manuscript follow the style sheet assigned by the instructor (e.g., MLA, APA, Chicago Manual of Style [CMS], or other).

This isn’t intended to be an all-inclusive checklist. Rather, it simply gives you an idea of the types of things for which you might look as you conduct your final check. You should develop your unique list that might or might not include these same items.

• Often a good way to make sure you do not miss any details you want to change is to make a separate pass through your essay for each area of concern. You can conduct passes by flipping through hard copies, clicking through pages on a computer, or using the “find” feature on a computer.
• You should conduct a final overview with isolated checks after you are finished editing and proofreading the final draft.
• As you are writing, make a checklist of recurring isolated issues that you notice in your work. Use this list to conduct isolated checks on the final draft of your paper.

Complete each sentence to create a logical item for a list to use for a final isolated check. Do not use any of the examples given in the text.

1. All the subheadings are…

2. The spacing between paragraphs…

3. Each page includes…

4. I have correctly spelled…

5. The photos are all placed…

6. The words in the flow charts and diagrams…

• Content adapted from “ Chapter 8: Revision ” licensed by CC BY NC SA .
• Content from The Worry Free Writer and licensed under CC-BY NC SA. 
• Content created by Dr. Sandi Van Lieu and licensed under CC-BY NC SA. 

The RoughWriter's Guide Copyright © 2020 by Dr. Karen Palmer and Dr. Sandi Van Lieu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Writing a Paper: Proofreading

Introduction.

Proofreading involves reading your document to correct the smaller typographical, grammatical, and spelling errors. Proofreading is usually the very last step you take before sending off the final draft of your work for evaluation or publication. It comes after you have addressed larger matters such as style, content, citations, and organization during revising. Like revising, proofreading demands a close and careful reading of the text. Although quite tedious, it is a necessary and worthwhile exercise that ensures that your reader is not distracted by careless mistakes.

Tips for Proofreading

• Set aside the document for a few hours or even a few days before proofreading. Taking a bit of time off enables you to see the document anew. A document that might have seemed well written one day may not look the same when you review it a few days later. Taking a step back provides you with a fresh (and possibly more constructive) perspective.
• Make a conscious effort to proofread at a specific time of day (or night!) when you are most alert to spotting errors. If you are a morning person, try proofreading then. If you are a night owl, try proofreading at this time.
• Reviewing the document in a different format and having the ability to manually circle and underline errors can help you take the perspective of the reader, identifying issues that you might ordinarily miss. Additionally, a hard copy gives you a different visual format (away from your computer screen) to see the words anew.
• Although useful, programs like Word's spell-checker and Grammarly can misidentify or not catch errors. Although grammar checkers give relevant tips and recommendations, they are only helpful if you know how to apply the feedback they provide. Similarly, MS Word's spell checker may not catch words that are spelled correctly but used in the wrong context (e.g., differentiating between their, they're , and there ). Beyond that, sometimes a spell checker may mark a correct word as wrong simply because the word is not found in the spell checker's dictionary. To supplement tools such as these, be sure to use dictionaries and other grammar resources to check your work. You can also make appointments with our writing instructors for feedback concerning grammar and word choice, as well as other areas of your writing!
• Reading a text aloud allows you to identify errors that you might gloss over when reading silently. This technique is particularly useful for identifying run-on and other types of awkward sentences. If you can, read for an audience. Ask a friend or family member to listen to your work and provide feedback, checking for comprehension, organization, and flow.
• Hearing someone else read your work allows you to simply listen without having to focus on the written words yourself. You can be a more critical listener when you are engaged in only the audible words.
• By reading the document backwards, sentence by sentence, you are able to focus only on the words and sentences without paying attention to the context or content.
• Placing a ruler or a blank sheet of paper under each line as you read it will give your eyes a manageable amount of text to read.
• If you can identify one type of error that you struggle with (perhaps something that a faculty member has commented on in your previous work), go through the document and look specifically for these types of errors. Learn from your mistakes, too, by mastering the problem concept so that it does not appear in subsequent drafts.
• Related to the previous strategy of checking for familiar errors, you can proofread by focusing on one error at a time. For instance, if commas are your most frequent problem, go through the paper checking just that one problem. Then proofread again for the next most frequent problem.
• After you have finished making corrections, have someone else scan the document for errors. A different set of eyes and a mind that is detached from the writing can identify errors that you may have overlooked.
• Remember that proofreading is not just about errors. You want to polish your sentences, making them smooth, interesting, and clear. Watch for very long sentences, since they may be less clear than shorter, more direct sentences. Pay attention to the rhythm of your writing; try to use sentences of varying lengths and patterns. Look for unnecessary phrases, repetition, and awkward spots.

Download and print a copy of our proofreading bookmark to use as a reference as you write!

• Proofreading Bookmark Printable bookmark with tips on proofreading a document.

Proofreading for Grammar Video

Note that this video was created while APA 6 was the style guide edition in use. There may be some examples of writing that have not been updated to APA 7 guidelines.

• Mastering the Mechanics: Proofreading for Grammar (video transcript)

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Writing > Tips for proofreading and editing essays

Tips for proofreading and editing essays

Proofreading and editing your essays before submitting them is essential. You’d be surprised how many typos and grammatical errors can go undetected by spellcheck. Learn more on how you can proofread and edit your essay to earn a higher grade.

While spellcheckers are reliable, they’re not always perfect. If you want to get the grade you deserve for on your paper, you’ll need to proofread and edit it. It’s normal to need two to three drafts (or sometimes more!) before handing in your essay. Follow these proofreading and editing tips to nail your next essay.

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How to proofread and edit an essay

Re-read the prompt and requirements.

Before you pore over your essay, re-read the prompt and essay requirements from your teacher or professor. It’s easy to get carried away and go off-topic while writing an essay. It’s also easy to forget to use the right font or font size your instructor requested. By re-reading the prompt, you’ll have the requirements fresh in your mind, so you don’t lose points over preventable mistakes.

Read your essay out loud

Reading your paper aloud can help you identify choppy sentences and grammatical errors you might not have discovered if you proofread your paper silently. Make sure to read your essay out loud slowly to catch any mistakes. Once you find an error, fix it right away so you don’t get distracted and forget to fix it. You can also use the Read Aloud feature in Microsoft Word for proofreading, which will read what you’ve written out loud for you.

Read your essay from end to beginning

While reading your essay backwards might sound illogical, it’s a great way to identify spelling issues or confusing sentences. Start by reading the last sentence of your paper for errors, then move on to the second to last sentence, and so on. Reading your paper out of context can help spot any issues in your writing.

Double-check your sources

Make sure you appropriately cite all the sources in your paper. Cite your sources when you use a quote, summarize or paraphrase someone else’s idea, or share research that was conducted by someone else. Learn how to navigate different citation formats and tailor your writing to your essay’s requirements.

By re-reading your paper, you can identify sentences you may have forgotten to cite. Plagiarism can have major consequences, so avoid it at all costs.

Check the structure of your essay

An unorganized essay can feel messy and confusing. Check that you structured your paragraphs in the correct order and made seamless transitions between each paragraph. As you read through each paragraph, make sure they correspond with your thesis.

Analyze your essay’s tone

As you read through your paper, make sure the tone is formal. Scan your essay for the following examples:

• Generalizations (“all” or “many”)
• Exaggerated adjectives (“brilliant” or “genius”)
• Adverbs (“simply” or “obviously”)
• Inflammatory or emotional language (“evil” or “heartless”)
• Qualifiers (“sometimes” or “usually”)

If you find any of the above in your paper, be sure to revise: this language should be avoided in academic writing.

Take breaks while proofreading

Give yourself time to reset with a break for a few minutes (or even a few hours) while reading through your essay. You’ll pick up on any typos or issues in your paper once you return to it with a fresh mind.

Get a second pair of eyes

If you can, get a peer to review your essay. Sometimes, a third party can point out spelling errors or mechanical issues you wouldn’t have noticed on your own. They can also let you know if you accurately answered the essay prompt and made your message clear.

Proofreading and editing your essays are key to avoiding preventable mistakes and earning better grades. To continue taking your writing to the next level, check out tips for mastering the essay , brainstorming effectively , and how to build trust with your audience .

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How To Proofread: 19 Foolproof Strategies To Power Up Your Writing

by William Wadsworth | Feb 3, 2023

by William Wadsworth

The Cambridge-educated memory psychologist & study coach on a mission to help YOU ace your exams . Helping half a million students in 175+ countries every year to study smarter, not harder. Supercharge your studies today with our time-saving, grade-boosting “genius” study tips sheet .

Proofreading: it’s the final hurdle on your race to the submission deadline, and a crucial step in creating a polished document. But how exactly do you proofread effectively and efficiently?

Whether you’re working on an essay, thesis, dissertation, research paper or article, take a deep breath. This is your one-stop “how to proofread” guide:

We’ve got 19 clever proofreading steps and strategies to take your skills to the next level and fine-tune your document for maximum marks. Because after all that hard work, don’t let careless mistakes drag your essay (and your grade!) down!

Proofreading and editing: what’s it all about?

Before we get down to those 19 strategies, what do we mean by “proofreading”?

The difference between editing and proofreading is actually pretty simple:

• Editing is a process that you begin after your first draft – it’s all about refining the quality, tone, word count, clarity and readability of your writing
• Proofreading is done to your final draft (once your content is ready, structured, signposted and feeling awesome!)

It’s all about checking that the elements of your essay or paper are consistent, presented correctly and free from errors . Think: spelling and grammar, punctuation, formatting, references and citations, figures and tables .

Essentially, you don’t want your examiner to be distracted from your winning argument by a sloppily presented document – and proofreading is the answer.

Here’s an example of the difference careful proofreading can make to your essay:

That all might sound daunting, but I promise it’s not! Especially if you work strategically and follow these 19 steps:

How to proofread: 19 killer strategies

Proofreading is a process, sure. But I don’t want you to get overwhelmed!

 So I’ve grouped these top 19 proofreading strategies into 3 sets: preparation and mindset , checking every element , and making the most of your proofreading tools .

Part 1: Get into the groove with the right preparation and mindset

1. Leave yourself plenty of time

Hopefully you’re not reading this article the night before your deadline ( and if you are – good luck !).

Because our first proofreading strategy is all about time.

Proofreading can be a tedious process of spotting and correcting small errors – definitely time-consuming ! And the longer your essay, thesis or dissertation, the more time this process will need .

Plus, if you’re hoping for external help (whether friend or professional), you’ll need to leave them time to work too.

In my opinion, it’s best to give yourself a solid week for proofreading and corrections – if you can! That way, you’ll have time to …

2. Take a break before you start

Your brain and eyes need to be fresh if you’re going to proofread accurately.

You don’t want to be anticipating what you’ve written, rather than actually concentrating on the words on the page!

So, don’t jump straight from writing to proofreading – take a break !

If you can, take a few days away from your essay or thesis. If not, have a coffee and stroll around the block first. Get your mind clear and ready to focus.

Psst: Don’t forget to take plenty of short breaks whilst proofreading longer assignments too!

Ready? Perfect: you’ll be primed to dive into …

3. The proofreading mindset

It’s time to put your proofreading hat on!

Try and separate yourself from the “you” that wrote the essay . Try to pretend you’re marking an essay written by a friend you want to help get top marks!

Going to a different location can really help create this kind of psychological distance between “you” the author and “you” the proofreader.

If you can, move to a desk or armchair in another room, or take your essay to a library or quiet corner in your favourite coffee shop . Just make sure your environment is distraction-free – you’re going to need to concentrate!

If you really want to go to town on this, you could literally wear a different hat! It sounds silly, but when we look or behave differently, it can send powerful signals to our mind that it should be thinking differently too.

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4. Print it out

This is a proofreading strategy I always do:

Many people (me included!) find it much easier to read closely when text is on a printed page rather than when it’s on a screen. So grab that stack of paper, a nice bright pen and settle into your chosen spot …

Psst : I know we all need to do our bit to keep printing to a minimum to help the planet, but when your grade is on the line, I think you can cut yourself some slack. Just make sure you recycle your printing when you’re done…

If that’s not your style, why not try reading your essay aloud to help you spot mistakes?

5. Slow down and tame your eyes

When we read, our eyes move in jumps called “ saccades ”.

Essentially, our eyes don’t focus on every single word in turn. Instead, they focus on a point only every few words, which means some words only ever appear in peripheral vision. If you read quickly, the majority of the words in your essay are only appearing in your peripheral vision.

And that means it’s easy to miss things ! Your peripheral vision fills in details and assumes correctness (especially when you’re familiar with the argument).

So, to proofread effectively, you need to force your eyes to slow down and focus on each word in turn .

Try these methods for reading slowly and systematically:

• Use your finger or a pen to trace under each word as you read it
• Or have a ruler or piece of paper to hand to move down the page, revealing only one new row at a time

You might be surprised how many more errors you pick up!

6. Read backwards

Still struggling with slowing down? Here’s one more strategy for making sure you proofread carefully:

Read your essay backwards!

That might sound tricky, but it’s actually pretty clever and simple.

Often, our brains will trick us into reading a correct spelling based on the context of the rest of the sentence, and whatever word we’re “expecting” should appear next.

Solve the issue by reading each paragraph backwards, sentence by sentence. Start from the final word of the paragraph and move in order to the first. Those misspelt words will have nowhere to hide!

Psst : This is a great proofreading tip for hand-written essays where no spell-check is available (such as in an exam), particularly if you know you’re weak on spelling!

7. Know yourself

Our final proofreading strategy to get you prepared and in the groove is this:

Make sure you’re aware of the most common errors you make all the time when writing. Why not make a list to check off!

Maybe you always misspell “theorem”, get in a muddle about when to add commas or know you aren’t consistent about using en-dashes between dates (1914 – 1919).

If you’re not sure about the correct way to do something, check the guidelines set out by your institution, ask your teacher or lecturer, or look at the style guide for your discipline (such as the Chicago Manual of Style).

Part 2: How to proofread every element in your essay, dissertation or thesis

Feeling daunted by how many things you need to check for accuracy? Don’t be. You can do this!

Think of it a little like breaking down a big study goal into milestones : all you need is this checklist, a plan of action and a little time .

Top tip: It’s often a good idea to take several passes through your document – especially if it’s a longer essay or you know you struggle with accuracy. That way you can deal with each element individually! Pass one: headings, pass two: references and citations … and so on!

8. The big stuff: overall structure

You’ve probably done lots of editing as you’ve improved your essay or thesis, so make sure to take the time and check everything is still in the right order and place! Introduction, Part 1, Analysis … etc!

It’s so easy for cut-and-pasted paragraphs or sentences to have actually just been copied – and now exist twice! Or for edited paragraphs to end abruptly mid-sentence …

Trust me, we’ve all done it!

Adding signposting to your essay is another crucial editing step that can easily get things out of order. Plus signposting often produces in-text references that are vital and need to be correct for things to make sense to your editor! (That’s when you say “ see Section Two ” or “ as mentioned in the preceding three sections ”).

Once you’ve made sure that everything still makes sense and flows in a logical progression it’s time to move onto the little details:

9. Spelling, grammar and punctuation

The most obvious check you need to make when proofreading your essay is for mistakes in your spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Don’t forget to check that you:

• Are using the correct capitalisation of words
• For example, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) can later be referred to as the BBC

I’m not going to list every possible type of mistake you should be checking for. But here a handful of common examples to get you started with your proofreading:

• Misspellings that are real (but very different) words, e.g. field and filed . Your spellchecker won’t spot these!
• It’s and its
• You’re and your
• There , they’re and their
• Affect and effect
• Principle and principal
• Tense consistency within sentences (not switching between present and future)
• Verbs agreeing with their subjects
• Using commas and semicolons accurately
• Missing punctuation: does every sentence end with a full stop?

10. Formatting: from headers to italics

This next proofreading strategy is all about appearances.

A big part of how to proofread your essay, thesis or dissertation is getting the formatting right and consistent .

Psst: Chances are, if you’re writing a bigger assignment such as a thesis or dissertation, your institution will have provided you with a style guide that includes acceptable formatting for submission. Make it your ally!

The formatting includes lots of elements that contribute to the layout of your document:

• Are you capitalising them?
• What font and style should they have?
• Are they numbered (consistently)?
• Are you giving them indentation and/or justification?
• Are your paragraph breaks the same?
• Create your own style guide page with body, figure, heading and subheading fonts laid out!
• Are they consistent and suitable for printing and binding your thesis?
• Do your page numbers continue correctly after any blank pages?
• Are there any pages with only 1-2 lines of text? Avoid these!
• Are there rules in your discipline for how you use italics?
• Has it spread beyond the phra se you meant to italicise?
• Double  spaces
• Spaces before punctuation .
• Mixing up m-dashes, en-dashes and hyphens

Make a list of the things you need to check for – especially if you spot a frequently recurring mistake!

11. References and citations

In my experience, referencing is one of those things that just makes people groan. It’s nit-picky, careful work. But worth doing right – you don’t want to plagiarism police at your door!

Proper referencing is a big part of academic writing, so make sure you’re following the correct method for your discipline. ( Ask your teacher or supervisor for advice if you’re unsure !)

When checking your references, ensure that your citations match the references in your bibliography! Any quotations should also conform to formatting and referencing rules for your field .

And don’t forget to check the little details when proofreading, for example:

• Are your author initials spaced or unspaced? (e.g. C.S. Lewis vs C. S. Lewis )
• Which date format are you using? (e.g. 27th August 1854 vs August 27th 1854 vs 27/08/1854 )
• If you have footnotes or endnotes, are your numbers all in order?
• Do you have any outdated in-text references to footnotes or endnotes?

Depending on your referencing format, it might be easier to do a separate proofreading pass through your essay to check for citation errors!

12. Figures and tables

Whether you’ve got charts, tables, figures, illustrations or graphs: don’t forget to check your captions and placement.

This is another key place where outdated in-text references might be hiding , particularly if you’ve been editing your document structure. Find where you say things like “ see Figure 6 ”: are these numbers still correct?

Don’t let errors slip through and cost you marks!

13. Check for consistency

Our next proofreading strategy is an important one!

Sometimes, you need to make stylistic decisions in your writing, and which option you choose matters less than staying consistent throughout your essay.

Remember: if in doubt, refer to any guidelines your teacher or institution have given you, or the official style guide for your discipline (e.g. Chicago Manual of Style).

Check you’re not chopping and changing between different options on issues. Here are some examples you might catch when proofreading:

• When to use ‘single’ or “double” quotation marks
• Full stops after bullets. Or not
• Are you using the US English or British English spellings of words?
• Whether you prefer – ise or – ize endings
• Is there any Technical Vocabulary that might be capitalised inconsistently?
• e.g. you might spell out “one” to “nine”, and use numerals for 10 and above
• Or your figures might use roman numbers e.g. Figure IV
• If your headings and subheadings are numbered (e.g. 1.1, 1.2), check they’re consistent, and that order is correct against the table of contents!

14. Check twice after every tweak

And finally, our last tip in this section on how to proofread absolutely everything in your essay is …

I think the single biggest thing I’ve learned about how to proofread an essay is to be super, ultra, incredibly careful about errors creeping in after editing .

You know how it goes: you’re on your final proofread before submission, and you spot a clunky sentence that could be tidied up with a little rewrite. You make the change, but don’t check it properly, and leave a fresh mistake in your work.

By all means, make a small tweak here and there in the proofreading phase, but make sure you check the amended paragraph at least twice afterwards!

If you find you’re making a lot of major edits, pause the proofread phase entirely to give your essay a round of editing. Only return to proofreading for accuracy once you’ve done all your edits .

Part 3: Make use of available tools

The third and final set of “how to proofread” strategies is all about making use of the tools available to you. And trust me, when it comes to proofreading, there are plenty of services, websites and plugins and even Word functions you can use to make your life easier!

15.  Get the most out of Word’s editing functions

If you’ve typed your essay or thesis in Word then you’ve got plenty of proofreading firepower at your fingertips!

And it’s not all about those handy grammar and spellcheckers either – although they are a great place to start:

• Remember: they’ll catch some (though not all) mistakes. Homophones and misspelt words that are still real words – definitely weak spots and up to you to catch!
• Not every detected “error” actually is a mistake: you’ll sometimes need to use your judgement

So how else can Word help you to proofread thoroughly?

• Setting your language correctly can be a big help to the spellchecker’s effectiveness – US and UK English have plenty of subtle differences!
• The Navigation bar is also a handy place to count through numbered headings and make sure you don’t have Section 1.1 twice!
• Making your own style guide page can be a big help in seeing how it all looks and works together
• If you have a friend helping you to proofread – or if you’ve just got your proofreader hat on – the “Track Changes” and “Comments” features can be a great assistance when it comes to actually making all the tiny corrections!

16. Get proofreading with Grammarly

Another great online tool to assist you with proofreading your essays and dissertations – in fact, any piece of writing! – is Grammarly .

I’ve recently added Grammarly * to my writer’s arsenal and wish I’d done it years ago. It’s a proofreading strategy I definitely recommend.

It acts like a turbo-charged version of the standard Word grammar and spellchecker, helping me catch a much broader range of mistakes.

The ability to set your audience, level or formality and language ( academic, email, casual etc ) is a great feature that helps with any awkwardness of writing in a more formal academic style.

Honestly, it’s not perfect and will often flag perfectly correct words and phrases as errors. But I’d much rather that way round than it missed out on flagging potential errors to me.

Plus – it’s free to create an account! I’m using the pro version now as writing is such an important part of my life, but even Grammarly’s free version * is a big improvement when it comes to proofreading your essays and theses.

17. Avoid plagiarism like the plague

You don’t want to be caught copying others’ work.

Universities and Colleges often run essay submissions through tools like Turnitin which will put a big red flag against essays with too high a percentage of text which matches source material online.

Even if you didn’t intend to “cheat”, sometimes a careless late-night library moment can allow a passage you copied into your research notes to somehow end up in your finished essay.

Avoid this problem by having a rule that you’ll never copy text directly from articles or books , unless it’s a clearly marked direct quote.

For extra peace of mind, consider running important submissions through a plagiarism checker .

18. Find a proofreading buddy

Of course, your friends and family aren’t exactly proofreading “tools” – but this is an important strategy for when you’re stuck!

But when you’re stuck in writing and editing mode and can’t get enough space between you and your essay to put your neutral proofreading hat on …

Then finding a proofreading buddy can be a great help – especially if you can swap assignments and offer them a little assistance too!

Having an external eye brings some much-needed objectivity to the proofreading table – your buddy is far more likely to spot mistakes you miss because your brain is seeing what it expects to in your familiar argument (see #5!).

19. Seeking professional help

Of course, there’s also the option of finding a professional proofreader. Whether you’re aiming for top marks or getting accepted for publication, there’s often lots on the line when it comes to polished submissions!

First up, it’s important to check what your institution allows , and whether you need permission. Don’t forget – you don’t want to be accused to collusion or cheating!

Sometimes hiring a professional isn’t permitted – or perhaps it’s simply not in your budget. If it is however – that can be great news. Remember: you’ll need to budget in plenty of time for them to work – its slow work!

Getting professional help can also be a smart move if you struggle with reading or writing in English.  

Learning differences such as dyslexia or dysgraphia can make life difficult when it comes to proofreading your essays and assignments. If English is not your first language , or you struggle with writing in academic English, you might be facing similar challenges.

Thankfully, there are plenty of options:

• Your university or college language centre can be a great help – offering courses, advice and even lists of peers to approach as proofreaders.
• There are also many professional proofreading services that cater to academic writing – from local services in your university town, to internationally renowned companies.

Good luck with your submission!

That’s it – 19 comprehensive and foolproof proofreading strategies for flawless writing!

You’ve worked hard, and now you know how to proofread your essay, thesis, dissertation or research paper like a pro! So once it’s ready, don’t put it off, get it handed in, get it off your mind, and relax.

Now your work is ready for the next step, be sure to check out my guide to printing and binding your thesis for submission!

And if you’re not sure if your essay is ready for proofreading quite yet, why not polish your content and grab some extra marks with more of our helpful writing skills guides :

• how to create effective paragraphs
• about the ideal length(s) for your paragraphs
• how to transition between the stages of your argument
• the 70+ top connective words and phrases to improve your writing
• how to signpost your essay for top marks

Until the next one… 😉

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*Please note: Grammarly is one of very few products I’m sufficiently enthusiastic about to recommend to my readers, and I may earn a small commission if you sign up to Grammarly services through the above links.

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Is It Important To Know How To Proofread An Essay?

You could have great research skills, be extremely creative, and know your way with words. You may be a great paper writer in terms of content quality and information presentation. But, if you don’t know how to proofread your essay, all of this could go to waste. Why? Because an essay with mistakes of any kind is considered a poorly written essay, even if it’s “just” a typo.

This explains why is it important to proofread your writing. One should learn how to proofread an essay properly, before one submits it, or else the results of your hard work won’t pay off. You’ll end up with poor grades and will leave a bad impression on the people reading it. This guide helps you understand what it takes to be a skilled essay editor.

What is Proofreading and How to Proofread a Paper?

To learn how to proofread your writing, we first need to learn what exactly is proofreading. Let’s start with the definition:

• Proofreading is the process of reading any piece of written content to detect and mark errors to be corrected.

The same stands for proofreading an essay. The errors you'll be trying to detect and remove could be of different nature:

• punctuation
• inconsistency

The point is, the professors at your university won’t tolerate sloppiness of any kind in your essay assignments. And, without editing, that’s exactly what you’ll give them. So, to avoid submitting an essay that’s not 100% accurate and correct, one have to learn how to proofread like a professional.

How to Proofread an Essay in 10 Simple Steps

So how to proofread your own writing? Proofreading a paper or an essay is not a complicated task if you establish a routine that helps you do it successfully each time. The 10 steps listed below will guide you through this process and teach you how to ensure there's not a single mistake in your essay.

Let it Rest

Proofreading your essay moments after you finish writing is considered bad practice. The content of the essay is still fresh in your mind, and you know every sentence you've written.

This could trick your brain. Instead of analyzing each word, your brain will make content assumptions and recognize fewer mistakes.

To avoid this, one should:

• leave time for letting your essay rest
• take a break between writing and editing
• relax at least a couple of hours long, preferably an entire day

If you don't have enough time to take this break, it's better to find an essay proofreading service to do it for you, than to rush and do a poor job. So, plan your essay writing process to finish at least one day before the deadline.

Print it Out

Essay editing and proofreading directly from the screen of your laptop or computer may be tiring and inefficient. You may think you’ve got it all covered while taking a look at the screen, but mistakes might easily slip by you when you do it this way.

This is why it’s a better idea to print out your essay and be able to make the corrections directly on paper.

When you print out the essay, you can:

• make corrections and notes as you go
• follow the lines and sentences with your finger or a pencil

It’s much more effective than just looking at the screen.

Correct Mistakes by Type

When you’re dealing with essay correction, you can’t just start reading and do it all at once. You should create a strategy that helps you do it better.

So, don't try and check all mistakes at once. Instead, look through it several times. Each time, focus on a different type of mistake. For instance, read the entire essay checking punctuation and concentrate on every comma, question mark, bracket, and colon. Then, read again, checking your grammar.

Repeat the process until you’ve checked all types of mistakes your essay could possibly contain. This ensures you finished a detailed and more successful proofreading process.

Read Backwards

When you’re reading your essay top to bottom, your brain might lose focus over the mistakes you're searching for, and get lost in the content instead. But, when you're reading the essay backward, the content becomes meaningless. This way your brain can:

• focus on the mistakes
• stop making content assumptions and expectations

This type is best when checking spelling, since it allows to focus on each word individually, instead of as a part of the rest of the essay. You could combine this strategy with different proofreading tools that help you proofread essay for free. This ensures you get the best results possible.

Know Your Common Mistakes

The more you proofread, the better you’ll become at recognizing your own mistakes.

Think about your most common mistakes in writing. Are you bad at spelling? Do you often have punctuation mistakes? If you have a weak spot that you know of, pay special attention to it each time you do essay editing.

Check Consistency

When you’re still an inexperienced paper proofreader, you can easily forget to check for content consistency. This may lead to confusion and misunderstandings in your paper, and make certain parts puzzling for the reader.

Inconsistency might be seen in things such as:

• terminology, when using different terms for the same notion e.g. development vs. growth
• formatting, when creating inconsistent heading and subheading types
• verb tenses and agreement
• point of view

If you find this to be too complex for you, look for an essay writer for hire . They assist you by dealing with proofreading and editing until you start doing it on your own.

Check Beyond the Body Text

The body text of your essay is supposed to be your main focus. But, don’t just check this part of the essay. There’s written text in other parts of your essay that you need to check as well. That includes the written text in:

• image captions
• reference list and bibliography

Don’t forget any of this when proofreading your essay.

Check After Editing

It often happens that you finish writing your essay, complete your proofreading, and then still have some editing to do. Even though you've finished proofreading before, you need to repeat the entire process after editing.

This is because you've made changes, added some new content, and created a whole new version of the essay.

Another great way to ensure you’re taking care of each word is to read your essay aloud. This makes you slow down and focus on every word more carefully.

When you’re reading without speaking, you’re going much faster. You’re even skipping some parts without realizing it.

So, read your essay aloud at least once in the process of proofreading. This is especially important if you pay for research papers and have someone else deal with the writing part. You still need to proofread carefully, just to ensure everything’s in order.

Finally, if you just don't know how to proofread a paper, you could do it with the assistance of other people, tools, and resources. You have several choices:

• find a proofreading buddy and proofread each other’s papers
• look for cheap writing services online that do proofread and editing
• use a good website that proofreads essays
• use proofreading tools such as grammar and spell checkers

If you can't do it on your own, there's always another solution available.

Ready to Start Proofreading Your Essay?

Proofreading an essay may not be the simplest task for students. But, with the right strategy and a solid routine, you could do it easily and successfully. The 10 steps provided above are more than enough to assist you by nailing each proofreading session. Start using them as soon as possible, and polish all your essays to perfection.

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Finding Common Errors

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Proofreading is primarily about searching your writing for errors, both grammatical and typographical, before submitting your paper for an audience (a teacher, a publisher, etc.). Use this resource to help you find and fix common errors.

Here are some common proofreading issues that come up for many writers. For grammatical or spelling errors, try underlining or highlighting words that often trip you up. On a sentence level, take note of which errors you make frequently. Also make note of common sentence errors you have such as run-on sentences, comma splices, or sentence fragments—this will help you proofread more efficiently in the future.

• Do not solely rely on your computer's spell-check—it will not get everything!
• Trace a pencil carefully under each line of text to see words individually.
• Be especially careful of words that have tricky letter combinations, like "ei/ie.”
• Take special care of homonyms like your/you're, to/too/two, and there/their/they're, as spell check will not recognize these as errors.

Left-out and doubled words

Read the paper slowly aloud to make sure you haven't missed or repeated any words. Also, try reading your paper one sentence at a time in reverse—this will enable you to focus on the individual sentences.

Sentence Fragments

Sentence fragments are sections of a sentence that are not grammatically whole sentences. For example, “Ate a sandwich” is a sentence fragment because it lacks a subject.

Make sure each sentence has a subject:

• “Looked at the OWL website.” is a sentence fragment without a subject.
• “The students looked at the OWL website.” Adding the subject “students” makes it a complete sentence.

Make sure each sentence has a complete verb.

• “They trying to improve their writing skills.” is an incomplete sentence because “trying” is an incomplete verb.
• “They were trying to improve their writing skills.” In this sentence, “were” is necessary to make “trying” a complete verb.

See that each sentence has an independent clause. Remember that a dependent clause cannot stand on its own. In the following examples, green highlighting indicates dependent clauses while yellow indicates independent clauses.

• “ Which is why the students read all of the handouts carefully .” This is a dependent clause that needs an independent clause. As of right now, it is a sentence fragment.
• “ Students knew they were going to be tested on the handouts, which is why they read all of the handouts carefully .” The first part of the sentence, “Students knew they were going to be tested,” is an independent clause. Pairing it with a dependent clause makes this example a complete sentence.

Run-on Sentences

• Review each sentence to see whether it contains more than one independent clause.
• If there is more than one independent clause, check to make sure the clauses are separated by the appropriate punctuation.
• Sometimes, it is just as effective (or even more so) to simply break the sentence into two separate sentences instead of including punctuation to separate the clauses.
• Run on: “ I have to write a research paper for my class about extreme sports all I know about the subject is that I'm interested in it. ” These are two independent clauses without any punctuation or conjunctions separating the two.
• Edited version: " I have to write a research paper for my class about extreme sports, and all I know about the subject is that I'm interested in it ." The two highlighted portions are independent clauses. They are connected by the appropriate conjunction “and,” and a comma.
• Another edited version: “ I have to write a research paper for my class about extreme sports. All I know about the subject is that I'm interested in it .” In this case, these two independent clauses are separated into individual sentences separated by a period and capitalization.

Comma Splices

• Look closely at sentences that have commas.
• See if the sentence contains two independent clauses. Independent clauses are complete sentences.
• If there are two independent clauses, they should be connected with a comma and a conjunction (and, but, for, or, so, yet, nor). Commas are not needed for some subordinating conjunctions (because, for, since, while, etc.) because these conjunctions are used to combine dependent and independent clauses.
• Another option is to take out the comma and insert a semicolon instead.
• Comma Splice: “ I would like to write my paper about basketball , it's a topic I can talk about at length .” The highlighted portions are independent clauses. A comma alone is not enough to connect them.
• Edited version: “ I would like to write my paper about basketball because it's a topic I can talk about at length .” Here, the yellow highlighted portion is an independent clause while the green highlighted portion is a dependent clause. The subordinating conjunction “because” connects these two clauses.
• Edited version, using a semicolon: “ I would like to write my paper about basketball ; it’s a topic I can talk about at length .” Here, a semicolon connects two similar independent clauses.

Subject/Verb Agreement

• Find the subject of each sentence.
• Find the verb that goes with the subject.
• The subject and verb should match in number, meaning that if the subject is plural, the verb should be as well.
• An easy way to do this is to underline all subjects. Then, circle or highlight the verbs one at a time and see if they match.
• Incorrect subject verb agreement: “ Students at the university level usually is very busy.” Here, the subject “students” is plural, and the verb “is” is singular, so they don’t match.
• Edited version: “ Students at the university level usually are very busy.” “Are” is a plural verb that matches the plural noun, “students.”

Mixed Construction

Read through your sentences carefully to make sure that they do not start with one sentence structure and shift to another. A sentence that does this is called a mixed construction.

• “ Since I have a lot of work to do is why I can't go out tonight .” Both green highlighted sections of the sentence are dependent clauses. Two dependent clauses do not make a complete sentence.
• Edited version: “ Since I have a lot of work to do , I can't go out tonight .” The green highlighted portion is a dependent clause while the yellow is an independent clause. Thus, this example is a complete sentence.

Parallelism

Look through your paper for series of items, usually separated by commas. Also, make sure these items are in parallel form, meaning they all use a similar form.

• Example: “Being a good friend involves listening , to be considerate, and that you know how to have fun.” In this example, “listening” is in present tense, “to be” is in the infinitive form, and “that you know how to have fun” is a sentence fragment. These items in the series do not match up.
• Edited version: “Being a good friend involves listening , being considerate, and having fun.” In this example, “listening,” “being,” and “having” are all in the present continuous (-ing endings) tense. They are in parallel form.

Pronoun Reference/Agreement

• Skim your paper, searching for pronouns.
• Search for the noun that the pronoun replaces.
• If you can't find any nouns, insert one beforehand or change the pronoun to a noun.
• If you can find a noun, be sure it agrees in number and person with your pronoun.
• “ Sam had three waffles for breakfast. He wasn’t hungry again until lunch.” Here, it is clear that Sam is the “he” referred to in the second sentence. Thus, the singular third person pronoun, “he,” matches with Sam.
• “ Teresa and Ariel walked the dog. The dog bit her .” In this case, it is unclear who the dog bit because the pronoun, “her,” could refer to either Teresa or Ariel.
• “ Teresa and Ariel walked the dog. Later, it bit them .” Here, the third person plural pronoun, “them,” matches the nouns that precede it. It’s clear that the dog bit both people.
• “Teresa and Ariel walked the dog. Teresa unhooked the leash, and the dog bit her .” In these sentences, it is assumed that Teresa is the “her” in the second sentence because her name directly precedes the singular pronoun, “her.”

Apostrophes

• Skim your paper, stopping only at those words which end in "s." If the "s" is used to indicate possession, there should be an apostrophe, as in “Mary's book.”
• Look over the contractions, like “you're” for “you are,” “it's” for “it is,” etc. Each of these should include an apostrophe.
• Remember that apostrophes are not used to make words plural. When making a word plural, only an "s" is added, not an apostrophe and an "s."
• “ It’s a good day for a walk.” This sentence is correct because “it’s” can be replaced with “it is.”
• “A bird nests on that tree. See its eggs?” In this case, “its” is a pronoun describing the noun, “bird.” Because it is a pronoun, no apostrophe is needed.
• “Classes are cancelled today” is a correct sentence whereas “Class’s are cancelled today” is incorrect because the plural form of class simply adds an “-es” to the end of the word.
• “ Sandra’s markers don’t work.” Here, Sandra needs an apostrophe because the noun is a possessive one. The apostrophe tells the reader that Sandra owns the markers.

Reverse Outlines: A Writer’s Technique for Examining Organization

Download this Handout PDF

Many writers use a reverse outline to check their work. Reverse outlining is a process whereby you take away all of the supporting writing and are left with a paper’s main points or main ideas, sometimes represented by your paper’s topic sentences. Your reverse outline provides a bullet-point view of your paper’s structure because you are looking at the main points of the paper you wrote.

Experienced writers, especially when writing longer papers about a complex subject, need ways to test their drafts for the logical sequence of points: its structure. A reverse outline allows writers to read a condensed version of what they wrote, and provides one good way to examine and produce a successful paper.

A reverse outline can help you:

• Determine if your paper meets its goal
• Discover places to expand on your evidence or analysis
• See where readers might be tripped up by your organization or structure

How to create a reverse outline

• Start with a complete draft to have a fuller picture of the plan you carried out. You can use a partial draft to review the organization of the paragraphs you have written so far.
• Construct the outline by listing the main idea of each paragraph in your draft in a blank document. If a paragraph’s topic sentence provides a succinct version of the paragraph’s argument, you can paste that sentence into the outline as a summary for that paragraph. Otherwise, write a one-sentence summary to express the main point of the paragraph.
• Number your list for ease of reference.

Use your reverse outline to answer questions

Does every paragraph relate back to your main idea.

Your reverse outline will help you think more effectively about your paper’s focus: its big picture. Does every item on your list relate back to your main point?

Many writers find that new ideas or topics appear near the end of a reverse outline. These topic shifts may signal that you need to revise certain paragraphs in you draft to be sure they relate back to your main idea, or they may inspire you to revise your main idea so it takes on some of the new points these paragraphs suggest.

By viewing the structure of your paper from the vantage of a reverse outline, you can make productive decisions about whether to keep certain paragraphs or cut them from a draft.

Where might a reader have trouble following the order of your ideas?

You can use a reverse outline to review a paper’s organization or structure and then make strategic choices for rearranging the paper on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, or for adding or removing paragraphs to improve organization.

Do several of your paragraphs repeat one idea?

If your reverse outline shows two paragraphs that make similar points, consider combining them or revising one so that it does not make too similar a point.

Does one paragraph juggle several topics?

If one item on your reverse outline discusses more topics than other paragraphs, that may be a paragraph your reader will struggle to follow. By dividing its topics into two or more paragraphs, each one discussing a more focused topic or set of topics, you may be able to ensure that your reader follows your meaning.

Are your paragraphs too long? Too short?

By comparing total paragraphs to total pages, you can learn your average paragraph length and more easily spot paragraphs that are unusually long or short.

An example of a reverse outline

For example: say you are writing a paper for an engineering class in which you are exploring the concept of how humans learn to trust technology through individual consumer choices, and your research involves analyzing several television commercials for Apple computers and products.

1. Ever since Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl commercial, customers have seen Apple as creating technology that appeals to our individuality. 2. Over time, Apple has introduced a variety of devices that appeal to our sense of individuality and in our need to connect with other individuals and to our world. 3. With the introduction of the iPod in 2001, Apple began exploring ways to win consumer trust in technology by focusing on how humans can determine the ways they choose to use the technology they purchase. 4. With the opening of Apple stores, Apple began to offer yet another way to explore our trust issues with technology through talking to friendly individual sales people in clean, well-lit stores. 5. In 2007, Apple rolls out the “Hi, I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” TV commercials thus showing the funny side of Apple ads. 6. Apple’s more recent TV commercials show how it easy it is for consumer to maintain their individuality and to trust in Apple’s new technological offerings, most notably, the iPhone line. 7. Apple continues to explore the human connection with technology through their developments and applications of voice-activation and speech technology, which serve to bring out a more intimate, individual experience with their technology.

Take a look at this reverse outline above. What do you see? Most sentences address some aspect of how human trust evolves with Apple’s technological developments, and these choices are individual choices.

However, sentence (5) stands out: Why? Sentence (5), based on the topic sentence, only treats the humor without connecting the way humor can help us alleviate some of our trust issues with technology as individual consumers. What can you do? As the writer, you may need to revise the paragraph to directly connect with the paper’s argument, or, if you determine that the paragraph is serving an important part of your paper’s argument, then you may merely need to revise topic sentence (5), perhaps like this:

In 2007, Apple rolls out the “Hi, I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” TV commercials, and by promoting their funny side, Apple ads help another generation of consumers get over their “trust issues” with Macs by personifying the choices they make as individual personality types and the technologies they are willing to trust.

Writing Process and Structure

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Getting Started with Your Paper

Interpreting Writing Assignments from Your Courses

Generating Ideas for Your Paper

Creating an Argument

Thesis vs. Purpose Statements

Developing a Thesis Statement

Architecture of Arguments

Working with Sources

Quoting and Paraphrasing Sources

Using Literary Quotations

Citing Sources in Your Paper

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Introductions

Paragraphing

Developing Strategic Transitions

Conclusions

Revising Your Paper

Peer Reviews

Reverse Outlines

Revising an Argumentative Paper

Revision Strategies for Longer Projects

Finishing Your Paper

Twelve Common Errors: An Editing Checklist

How to Proofread your Paper

Writing Collaboratively

Collaborative and Group Writing

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Academic Reading # 211 - When evolution runs backwards

When evolution runs backwards.

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NYC did congestion pricing ‘backwards,’ N.J. lawyer says in court battle over $15 fee

• Updated: Apr. 04, 2024, 7:12 a.m. |
• Published: Apr. 03, 2024, 6:49 p.m.
• Larry Higgs | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

New Jersey’s attorneys argued Wednesday that federal and Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials “did it backwards” by approving an environmental assessment of New York’s congestion pricing plan before the MTA approved the final toll rates last week to charge drivers $15 to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street.

Randy Mastro, an attorney for the state, argued in federal court in Newark that the MTA should have conducted a more comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement study. That study is required by environmental law, he said. It also is warranted by the MTA’s own findings that congestion pricing could create more traffic and air pollution in Bergen County when drivers detour on the George Washington Bridge to skirt the congestion zone in Manhattan’s central business district.

“This is the first congestion pricing program of its kind in national history. Shouldn’t it have undergone a full Environmental Impact Statement?” Mastro asked. “This was done backwards. The agency must do it over.”

Stories by Larry Higgs

• After 2 days of fighting, judge to decide on N.J.’s challenge of NYC congestion pricing
• Truck hits I-95 bridge, halting traffic, NJ Transit rail service
• Who will run this N.Y.C. commuter ferry route remains uncertain after court ruling

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That Viral Essay Wasn’t About Age Gaps. It Was About Marrying Rich.

But both tactics are flawed if you want to have any hope of becoming yourself..

Women are wisest, a viral essay in New York magazine’s the Cut argues , to maximize their most valuable cultural assets— youth and beauty—and marry older men when they’re still very young. Doing so, 27-year-old writer Grazie Sophia Christie writes, opens up a life of ease, and gets women off of a male-defined timeline that has our professional and reproductive lives crashing irreconcilably into each other. Sure, she says, there are concessions, like one’s freedom and entire independent identity. But those are small gives in comparison to a life in which a person has no adult responsibilities, including the responsibility to become oneself.

This is all framed as rational, perhaps even feminist advice, a way for women to quit playing by men’s rules and to reject exploitative capitalist demands—a choice the writer argues is the most obviously intelligent one. That other Harvard undergraduates did not busy themselves trying to attract wealthy or soon-to-be-wealthy men seems to flummox her (taking her “high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out” to the Harvard Business School library, “I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence”). But it’s nothing more than a recycling of some of the oldest advice around: For women to mold themselves around more-powerful men, to never grow into independent adults, and to find happiness in a state of perpetual pre-adolescence, submission, and dependence. These are odd choices for an aspiring writer (one wonders what, exactly, a girl who never wants to grow up and has no idea who she is beyond what a man has made her into could possibly have to write about). And it’s bad advice for most human beings, at least if what most human beings seek are meaningful and happy lives.

But this is not an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying older men. It is an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying rich men. Most of the purported upsides—a paid-for apartment, paid-for vacations, lives split between Miami and London—are less about her husband’s age than his wealth. Every 20-year-old in the country could decide to marry a thirtysomething and she wouldn’t suddenly be gifted an eternal vacation.

Which is part of what makes the framing of this as an age-gap essay both strange and revealing. The benefits the writer derives from her relationship come from her partner’s money. But the things she gives up are the result of both their profound financial inequality and her relative youth. Compared to her and her peers, she writes, her husband “struck me instead as so finished, formed.” By contrast, “At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self.” The idea of having to take responsibility for her own life was profoundly unappealing, as “adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations.” Tying herself to an older man gave her an out, a way to skip the work of becoming an adult by allowing a father-husband to mold her to his desires. “My husband isn’t my partner,” she writes. “He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.”

These, by the way, are the things she says are benefits of marrying older.

The downsides are many, including a basic inability to express a full range of human emotion (“I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that constrains the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him”) and an understanding that she owes back, in some other form, what he materially provides (the most revealing line in the essay may be when she claims that “when someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them”). It is clear that part of what she has paid in exchange for a paid-for life is a total lack of any sense of self, and a tacit agreement not to pursue one. “If he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive,” she writes, “but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials.”

Reading Christie’s essay, I thought of another one: Joan Didion’s on self-respect , in which Didion argues that “character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” If we lack self-respect, “we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us.” Self-respect may not make life effortless and easy. But it means that whenever “we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves,” at least we can fall asleep.

It can feel catty to publicly criticize another woman’s romantic choices, and doing so inevitably opens one up to accusations of jealousy or pettiness. But the stories we tell about marriage, love, partnership, and gender matter, especially when they’re told in major culture-shaping magazines. And it’s equally as condescending to say that women’s choices are off-limits for critique, especially when those choices are shared as universal advice, and especially when they neatly dovetail with resurgent conservative efforts to make women’s lives smaller and less independent. “Marry rich” is, as labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards put it in Bloomberg, essentially the Republican plan for mothers. The model of marriage as a hierarchy with a breadwinning man on top and a younger, dependent, submissive woman meeting his needs and those of their children is not exactly a fresh or groundbreaking ideal. It’s a model that kept women trapped and miserable for centuries.

It’s also one that profoundly stunted women’s intellectual and personal growth. In her essay for the Cut, Christie seems to believe that a life of ease will abet a life freed up for creative endeavors, and happiness. But there’s little evidence that having material abundance and little adversity actually makes people happy, let alone more creatively generativ e . Having one’s basic material needs met does seem to be a prerequisite for happiness. But a meaningful life requires some sense of self, an ability to look outward rather than inward, and the intellectual and experiential layers that come with facing hardship and surmounting it.

A good and happy life is not a life in which all is easy. A good and happy life (and here I am borrowing from centuries of philosophers and scholars) is one characterized by the pursuit of meaning and knowledge, by deep connections with and service to other people (and not just to your husband and children), and by the kind of rich self-knowledge and satisfaction that comes from owning one’s choices, taking responsibility for one’s life, and doing the difficult and endless work of growing into a fully-formed person—and then evolving again. Handing everything about one’s life over to an authority figure, from the big decisions to the minute details, may seem like a path to ease for those who cannot stomach the obligations and opportunities of their own freedom. It’s really an intellectual and emotional dead end.

And what kind of man seeks out a marriage like this, in which his only job is to provide, but very much is owed? What kind of man desires, as the writer cast herself, a raw lump of clay to be molded to simply fill in whatever cracks in his life needed filling? And if the transaction is money and guidance in exchange for youth, beauty, and pliability, what happens when the young, beautiful, and pliable party inevitably ages and perhaps feels her backbone begin to harden? What happens if she has children?

The thing about using youth and beauty as a currency is that those assets depreciate pretty rapidly. There is a nearly endless supply of young and beautiful women, with more added each year. There are smaller numbers of wealthy older men, and the pool winnows down even further if one presumes, as Christie does, that many of these men want to date and marry compliant twentysomethings. If youth and beauty are what you’re exchanging for a man’s resources, you’d better make sure there’s something else there—like the basic ability to provide for yourself, or at the very least a sense of self—to back that exchange up.

It is hard to be an adult woman; it’s hard to be an adult, period. And many women in our era of unfinished feminism no doubt find plenty to envy about a life in which they don’t have to work tirelessly to barely make ends meet, don’t have to manage the needs of both children and man-children, could simply be taken care of for once. This may also explain some of the social media fascination with Trad Wives and stay-at-home girlfriends (some of that fascination is also, I suspect, simply a sexual submission fetish , but that’s another column). Fantasies of leisure reflect a real need for it, and American women would be far better off—happier, freer—if time and resources were not so often so constrained, and doled out so inequitably.

But the way out is not actually found in submission, and certainly not in electing to be carried by a man who could choose to drop you at any time. That’s not a life of ease. It’s a life of perpetual insecurity, knowing your spouse believes your value is decreasing by the day while his—an actual dollar figure—rises. A life in which one simply allows another adult to do all the deciding for them is a stunted life, one of profound smallness—even if the vacations are nice.

• Writing Worksheets and Other Writing Resources

Your paper is a Toolbox: The Art of the Backwards Outline

About the slc.

• Our Mission and Core Values

Ok, you’ve written your paper. It’s done! But it doesn’t feel quite right. You ask yourself: “Is the ‘flow’ off? Do I prove my thesis? Do I stay on topic?” You answer these and similar questions with, “Well…kinda...I think so…”

Often, this means your paper is “nearly there” but isn’t held together tightly enough; you make all the right arguments and have the right points, but they aren’t clearly connected to the thesis.

This is where the toolbox idea comes in. Think of your thesis or main idea as your project, and your body paragraphs as the tools you need to complete it. The way in which you implement these tools will determine the look of the final product.

So how do you make sure you’re using your tools most effectively?

Construct a backwards outline. What’s that? It’s an outline of your paper as it exists now, after it’s all finished. Just write a phrase or sentence that accurately summarizes the main idea of each paragraph. This shouldn’t be hard to find—either your topic sentence, your concluding sentence, or some combination of the two should give you precisely this information. (Never mind what you want to see as the main idea – we’ll get to that later. For now, just write down what’s actually there.)

(Very Basic) Example:


i. thesis:.

Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul  uses intimate first-person narratives and heartfelt solutions to break through teenagers’ loneliness and defensiveness to provide them with ways to cope with daily hardship.

II. BODY 1:

Intimacy of specific details in first-person narratives relates author to reader.

III. BODY 2:

Solutions are not belittling advice from adults, but real, heartfelt experience.

IV. BODY 3:

Even when the stories are about experiences some teens cannot relate to, reading about them in a familiar context prepares them for such experiences.

V. CONCLUSION:

The style of  Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul  encourages its young readers to take its lessons seriously, thus preparing them for the harsh world that they face every day.

Now, let’s see how these tools are being used. Ask yourself: “What does each body paragraph do to ‘prove’ or help explain my thesis?” Does it complicate an assumption? Does it exemplify a change? Does it explain the meaning of or reasoning behind a certain element of the topic? Does it explain why a certain concept is important in the greater context of the topic? … In short, is there a “so what?” for each paragraph?

If the answer is unclear, then it’s time to clarify. Explain specifically what the examples and analysis in each body paragraph have to do with your central claim. What to they prove/illuminate/explicate and how does this contribute to your general argument?

(Very Basic) Example TAKE II:

Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul  uses intimate first-person narratives and heartfelt solutions to break through teenagers’ loneliness and defensiveness to prepare them for the harsh realities of the real world and provides them with ways to cope with daily hardship.

Intimacy of specific details in first-person narratives relates author to reader. So What? … Through sheer honesty about common experiences, the authors are able to reach out to teenage readers and encourage them to pay attention/take the stories to heart.

Solutions are not belittling advice from adults, but real, heartfelt experience. So What? … Teens are more likely to take advice from “their own kind” than to be forced into the submission of authority.

Even when the stories are about experiences some teens cannot relate to, reading about them in a familiar context prepares them for such experiences. So What? … If these topics were addressed in a context outside of teenage familiarity, they would be of little to no interest.

The style of  Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul  encourages its young readers to take its lessons seriously, thus preparing them for the harsh world that they face every day.

The ideas following the “So What”s above function as (drafts of) new topic or concluding sentences for their respective paragraphs. They remind the reader what your examples have to do with the original claim, rather than just providing information and expecting the reader to sort it out and make that extra step to your argument all by himself.

Now, each of the body paragraphs functions as a tool which not only makes a claim related to the thesis, but ALSO shows us just how it is related and why it’s important. Each paragraph, in its own way, brings something to help you complete the main argument, just as well-used tools help you to complete a project.

Pam Krayenbuhl

Student Learning Center, University of California, Berkeley

©2008 UC Regents

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Angel Reese Bids Farewell to LSU, College Basketball With Heartfelt Video Essay

• Author: Karl Rasmussen

In this story:

Angel Reese announced Wednesday morning that she intends to enter the 2024 WNBA draft following LSU's season-ending defeat against Caitlin Clark and Iowa in Monday's Elite Eight .

Shortly after her announcement, Reese bid farewell to the Tigers and all of her fans across the country on a more personal level, sharing a heartfelt video essay to her social media accounts. In the video, Reese thanked her supporters and expressed her gratitude to those who helped her along her journey.

"I'm leaving college with everything I've ever wanted," Reese said. "A degree. A national championship. And this platform I could have never imagined. This is for the girls that look like me, that's going to speak up on what they believe in, it's unapologetically you. To grow up in sports and have an impact on what's coming next.

"This was a difficult decision, but I trust the next chapter because I know the author. Bayou Barbie, out."

Grateful for these last four years and excited for this next chapter. #BAYOUBARBIEOUT pic.twitter.com/EvkzUW08JV — Angel Reese (@Reese10Angel) April 3, 2024

Reese played two seasons at LSU after transferring from the University of Maryland. With the Tigers, she racked up a multitude of accolades and won a national championship last season, vaulting herself into the national spotlight in the process. Across 69 games for LSU, Reese averaged 20.9 points and 14.4 rebounds.

After wrapping up a legendary college career and bidding an emotional farewell to her fans, Reese has officially declared her intention to enter the WNBA draft, where she projects as a first-round pick in what figures to be a loaded draft class.

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Anatomy of a Scene

Watch an Elaborate One-Shot Montage in ‘Música’

Rudy Mancuso, the film’s director, composer, co-writer and star, narrates this sequence, which plays out in real time with movable sets.

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‘Música’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director and composer rudy mancuso narrates a one-shot sequence from his film, in which he also stars..

“My name is Rudy Mancuso. I’m the director, composer, and co-writer of ‘Música.’” [PIANO MUSIC PLAYING] “This sequence that I call the theatrical montage is almost a five-minute oner. So the whole thing is shot in one take. I guess it was always my unorthodox approach to your typical second or third act montage. As you see here, it all starts in Rudy’s bedroom. And Rudy, who’s played by me, based on me with this condition called synesthesia, where he has a unique relationship to sound. And music and sounds turn into rhythm. And the reveal is that we’re on a stage, opens up. And the intention of the scene was for the very chaotic energy of trying to pull off an elaborate oner with movable sets that are flying in and out and being assembled and disassembled in real time reflects the chaos in this character’s life. This is the point in the film where Rudy is juggling the three people he cares about most in his life, and he’s lying to all of them. On the page, it’s actually called the rhythm of lies. As we see here, this is his long-time girlfriend, who’s trying to rekindle things with him, Haley, played by Francesca Reale.” “Later.” “Yeah.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “Next, we see that set disappear and a new set up here that’s meant to emulate Rudy’s house, Rudy’s mother’s kitchen, another woman in his life that he’s lying to, who’s played by my actual mother, Maria Mancuso.” “I promised — I promised Anwar that I would hang out with him.” “Oh, yeah?” “Yeah. But I’ll see you later.” “O.K.” “I love you.” “All right, I love you, too.” - [NON-ENGLISH] “O.K., all right.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “And then, the third, of course, that we’re about to see is his newfound relationship with Isabella, Camila Mendes here, who plays Isabella, who he’s starting to grow really fond of. And what was important to me was that not only that the camera never stopped, because that’s difficult and challenging and Rudy’s life is difficult and challenging, but also have the lighting cues be syncopated to rhythm. So anytime a new light is powered on and another one is off, those cues are actually in time with the music. The other thing that was important to me was for Rudy to change his own wardrobe in real time. And that the big question. How is really going to change outfits? And I said, well, what if he just changes it himself?” - [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] - [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] - [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] “So that background, that piece, which I believe is on wheels, had to be flipped — rotated, flipped. Lights had to fly out. New lights had to fly in. And yeah, it’s a very live performance-y, theatrical approach to a montage, which was — which was always the vision. And at this point, we’re retracing our steps. Basically, we went forward and tracked Rudy from behind, rotated to the right, and then came back to the left. And now we’re going backwards, retracing the steps. Amazonia, which is a subtle nod to our studio — the camera at this point is now rotating a full 180, and we’re trying in this moment to emulate some kind of nightlife, lounge, club environment.” “But I can’t really have a late night tonight. I just have so much.” “Oh, it’s O.K.” “So much stuff. Sure.” “I want to, though.” “That’s fine.” “You understand?” “Yeah.” “And the very last stage location is the one you’re about to see here, which is meant to emulate a movie theater, which we just did with some clever lighting and projection. This whole piece was really well prepared. We didn’t have a lot of time. I guess one never does. But particularly to pull this oner off, because it was very elaborate, we also had my very tall order of wanting it to also syncopate rhythmically. And it all ends where it began, which was also very important to me. It starts and ends in Rudy’s bedroom. And by the time the camera fully flips back around to where we started, it looks like we’re back in the bedroom. You don’t see that divide behind him in the background. So with clever schematics designed by my production designer, Patrick Sullivan, and my amazing DP Shane Hurlbut, and myself, we were able to pull this impossible thing off.” [PIANO MUSIC PLAYING]

By Mekado Murphy

In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel .

What’s the best way to narratively portray a life that has become nearly impossible to manage? How about with a one-take montage sequence that seems nearly impossible to pull off?

That’s what Rudy Mancuso goes for in his debut feature, “Música” ( streaming on Amazon Prime Video ), which he directed, composed, co-wrote (with Dan Lagana) and stars in.

The character he plays, Rudy, has been dividing his attention between the three closest women in his life: his girlfriend, Haley (Francesca Reale), with whom he’s hit difficult times; his mother, Maria (Maria Mancuso), and a new woman he is getting to know, Isabella (Camila Mendes). He’s lying to all three. “On the page, it was actually called the ‘Rhythm of Lies,’” Mancuso said in his narration.

The scene is shot on a warehouse stage, with sets flying in and out to represent the different encounters Rudy has with these women. He moves from setup to setup, changing his clothes along the way, with lighting cues syncopated to the music. (Watch for that moment where Rudy starts a kiss with one woman, freezes in place and finishes the kiss with another woman.)

Mancuso said that he and his crew needed half a day of rehearsal and a half a day of shooting 14 takes to pull it all off along.

“This would not have been possible without the hard work of my production designer, Patrick Sullivan, and my amazing DP, Shane Hurlbut,” he said.

Read the “Música” review.

Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more.

Mekado Murphy is the assistant film editor. He joined The Times in 2006. More about Mekado Murphy

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig have wound in and out of each other’s lives and careers for decades. Now they are both headlining an Apple TV+ comedy of wealth and status .

Nicholas Galitzine, known for playing princes and their modern equivalents, hopes his steamy new drama, “Mary & George,” will change how Hollywood sees him .

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April 2, 2024

Walking Backward Helps You Move Ahead with Joint Health

Experts explain how moving in reverse can take pressure off your knees and improve flexibility

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

Francescoch/Getty Images

Walking backward down the block or in the park might seem like a bizarre way to get around, but a recent TikTok trend is lauding its potential health benefits.

Social media influencers claim that backward walking—or “retro-walking”—strengthens the body and brain. TikTok isn’t always a credible source for health information (remember when people were taking laxatives to lose weight? ), but walking backward is an exercise that at least some health experts can get behind. Physical therapist Kristyn Holc of Atlantic Sports Health Physical Therapy in New Jersey says doctors have been recommending retro-walking for decades; she adds that it is especially helpful for older adults who are more likely to experience joint pain. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , one in four adults aged 45 to 64 have been diagnosed with arthritis. And a number of experts say walking backward can help take you forward when it comes to strengthening the lower body—no matter your age.

What Are the Health Benefits of Backward Walking?

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Retro-walking (or retroambulation, as some scientists call it) moves the joints in reverse; this engages different muscle groups than usual and relieves some pressure on the knees. Walking forward uses muscles on the front of the thigh —the quadriceps, or “quads”—but Holc says these muscles are even more strongly activated when moving in reverse. Greater quad activity causes the knee to stretch more, which can help alleviate knee pain and reduce muscle tightness. Importantly, walking backward relieves pressure on the inner side of the knee, where many older adults develop arthritis, Holc says.

Moving in reverse also works out your butt. It forces your gluteal muscles to repeatedly contract and thus strengthens them over time, Holc explains. Exercising the glutes also creates some extra stretching in the hip flexors, a muscle group involved in posture, balance and stabilizing the lower spine. Stretching this group can help alleviate back pain.Because muscles and joints become less flexible with age, “the muscles within your hips and in your bottom become really important for promoting functional mobility and reducing pain,” Holc says.

Retro-walking exercises also improve proprioception, the ability to sense the body’s movements and position in space, says Tom Holland , an exercise physiologist and author of the book The Micro-Workout Plan . When coordinating movement, the human brain prioritizes visual data over other sensory information, such as hearing and smell. Reflexes and eyesight both weaken with age, however, making older adults more prone to losing their balance and falling. Walking backward challenges you to actively think about where you’re going and forces the brain to collect more information than usual from your other senses, Holland explains.

How to Start Backward Walking Exercises Safely

People can go for a walk almost anywhere, and the same applies to walking in reverse—but safety should be kept in mind. Obviously, the reduced field of vision increases the risk of bumping into obstacles. Holc and Holland both recommend starting on a treadmill, if possible; it eliminates the need to constantly look over your shoulder, and you can hold on to the handrails while getting used to this kind of movement. A person can also use a treadmill’s safety clip to automatically stop the machine if they slip—a helpful feature for older adults who are prone to head injuries and hip fractures from a fall. Holland says that people with preexisting musculoskeletal conditions should consult their doctor or work with a trainer to help them with the exercise.

If you walk backward outside, Holc advises going with a walking buddy. This person walks forward and acts as your eyes, preventing you from running into objects or other people—or entering traffic. People should also choose a familiar route that has few potential obstacles. For example, walking backward on an outdoor track would likely be safer than on a trail in the woods.

Holland recommends starting slowly to get the brain accustomed to walking backward. For a 30-minute walk, he advises alternating between retro-walking and walking forward for two minutes each at about 0.5 miles per hour. As you get more comfortable walking backward, you can extend the time or challenge yourself at different speeds and inclines. The extra resistance while walking backward will lead to greater muscle activation.

If you eventually build up to 10 straight minutes of walking backward three times a week, you could start noticing a difference in balance and joint strength after about four weeks at this activity level, Holc says. But even sparing a minute or two each day to move in reverse can help.