The Most Overlooked Writing Center Resource? Proofreading Tips

When I was a student, I wrote a lot of papers, and I really do mean A LOT! In addition to course papers, I wrote discussion posts and other shorter assignments. Eventually, of course, I wrote both a master’s thesis and a doctoral dissertation to complete the final written work for these degrees. I can’t even imagine how many pages I wrote collectively. If it’s not clear, while I loved writing about my topics, the writing itself could, admittedly, sometimes be somewhat time consuming and even burdensome, despite my passion for the topics I wrote about and reminding myself about one of my final goals: graduation. 

In the Writing Center, we often talk about the writing process as a reiterative, sometimes nonlinear, process, which includes various forms of pre-writing, drafting, revising, and proofreading or editing. This was my process for each and every document I wrote as a student, especially as a graduate student when both the stakes and expectations were higher. However, as I noted, this process could sometimes take its toll, especially towards the end when it was time for the final proofreading and editing of my work. After all, I had read each of my documents several times throughout the process of my writing them, so I wasn’t sure I could take one more look and really be able to see where I needed to make final edits. Yet, if I didn’t do final proofreading and editing to my work, I would have missed some minor but important issues that could have cost me a grade in the end and/or made my professors take me and my work less seriously. 

I think our page on proofreading—usually the final stage of the writing process—is one of the most overlooked Writing Center resources. I imagine, like me, many students find this a difficult stage of the writing process because they have read their own work multiple times and the deadline for the document is coming up with additional documents to be written in the future to begin working on. Proofreading doesn’t have to be a difficult or burdensome final step in the writing process, though. On our proofreading page, we offer tips to help students make this final step easier, productive, and, I would argue, enjoyable.

For instance, one of the first suggestions we provide for proofreading is to distance yourself from your work. Not only will this give you a better chance at looking at your document again with fresher eyes, it will give you a chance to reflect on what you have accomplished. I know that once I returned to a document I wrote, I felt a sense of accomplishment which made me want to make sure that I took the time to polish my work. I worked so much on the document already; I didn’t want all that work to go to waste on some typos or other errors that could have easily been avoided if I took the time to proofread my final draft. 

A couple other tips we suggest are to have someone else look over the document and or read your document aloud to you. This is a great way to distance yourself from your work as well because this allows you to focus on what is being said, allowing you to be your own critical listener or having your own outside critical reader. Having support during your degree program is important, so I suggest making sure that you have a classmate or family member you can rely on to support you not only emotionally, but also critically. To be clear, make sure that the people you choose to read your work are those who are going to provide you with the critical feedback you need. Positive feedback is always great, but critical feedback is what can help you develop your scholarly writing skills. 

I only covered a few of our proofreading tips, so check out our page on proofreading for more. Let us know what Writing Center proofreading tips worked for you and/or any proofreading tips you have of your own!

Veronica Oliver is a Writing Instructor in the Walden Writing Center. In her spare time she writes fiction, binge watches Netflix, and occasionally makes it to a 6am Bikram Yoga class.

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