5 Reasons Why Proofreading Is a Necessary Component of Academic Writing
November 13, 2017| Category: Writing Tips
Academic writing is any piece of writing that is given for the purposes of academic growth or assessment.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re writing because you were assigned to do it, or you want your research to be published, all your efforts may be vain if your work is weak in terms of spelling, grammar and punctuation. The best way to get rid of these problems is to proofread your work. It can be done by yourself, by the person your trust or by the professional service or specialist.
Definition of Proofreading
Proofreading is a method, which is utilized to improve a piece of writing to the point where it is free from punctuation, grammatical and spelling mistakes. However, proofreading is used not only to fix these errors, but also to check the solidity of structure, logic and the validity of the presented material. Here are the top five reasons why your academic writing can’t go far without proofreading:
1. You Need It to Get a Good Grade
You should have no doubt that for every course that you take you will need to show a certain level of academic excellence to succeed. For some reason, many students have a faulty thinking pattern that unless it’s a writing assignment or a paper, they don’t have to proofread it. The truth is that any assignment needs to be proofread because if it is sloppy and full of errors, there’s no way you can get a good grade for it. There’s a great probability, that if you give to your professor an assignment that wasn’t proofread, he/she will find the errors that you haven’t fixed and will think of you as about an unmotivated and lazy person. With a mindset like this, the professor will have a more critical attitude for you in the future. Do you want it?
2. You Need It in Order Not to Get Your Work Rejected
It is difficult to find a professor that will put “perfect grammar” on the list of requirements. But it’s only because this rule is always implied and should be perceived as an unspoken norm. Any writing that has a label “academic” on it should be professional, and perfect grammar is a part of that professionalism. It’s unthinkable for any professional to give something to their partners, boss or clients that wasn’t proofread. The same is true for your professor – he won’t accept a writing assignment if it’s incorrect, sloppy and contains a lot of errors.
3. You Need to Avoid Costly Errors
As we have already mentioned, when proofreading, it is important not only to check spelling, grammar, and punctuation but also the validity of your arguments and information. If you’re giving any data or stats from one or more researches, it is your job to make sure that it is quoted correctly and was given a proper acknowledgement. Avoid costly mistakes like this and make sure that information in your paper is correct and quoted properly.
4. You Need It to Make Sure That Your Argument is a Valid One
Thesis statement is your main argument and if it’s not valid, you can’t expect a good grade. Even if you prove it rigorously throughout your whole paper, if it’s not a strong one – you’re probably just wasting your time. First, make sure that your argument is valid, credible and strong and only then work further to provide enough evidence to prove it. While proofreading, it is also important to make sure that you haven’t made any statements that you can’t prove. Pay the most attention to your conclusion and introduction, as these are the main parts that can contain problems with the validity of the argument.
5. You Need It Because Computers Aren’t Ideal Too
A lot of people think that they don’t need to proofread anything because grammar and spellcheckers in their word processors do this job for them. Of course, these programs are good, but the truth is that they can’t check all the errors and they can’t find problems with structure and logic. They are only good at what they were made to be good at, and this is probably only a quarter of what needs to be checked. A lot of mistakes will remain unnoticed if you rely only on grammar and spellcheckers in your word processors.
Conclusion
Being a part of the academic process requires you to be professional at all levels, and that supposes that all of your written works should be free from grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors, as well as inconsistencies with structure and logic. The only way to achieve it is by proofreading. One more very important element of proofreading is that it should include a thorough examination of the strength and validity of your argument and the trustworthiness of the information that you have used.
The only way to see if you have acknowledged the sources in a proper way is to double check it. In case your sources are not cited correctly, or your statistics are incorrect, you may face some serious problems with people who are following your argument tightly.
No matter if you proofread your work yourself or give it to a friend or specialist, make sure that it is proofread correctly.