3 Key steps for Effective Proofreading

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On a previous article, we talked about What is Proofreading? and now we want to take a look at the 3 key steps for Effective proofreading.

These 3 steps are very important steps for effective proofreading because they help you narrow down to simple things you can do when proofreading, they also serve as a checklist or to-do list while proofreading. They are also seen as guidelines for those not too familiar with the whole proofreading idea and it makes it easy for them by breaking it down to 3 easy stages you can remember, which are;

  1. Overview Editing
  2. Error Checking
  3. Credits/Sources/References accreditation

With each step proofreading becomes easier to do. Once you are done with the overview step, you move on to checking errors and finally tell others where you got some of your content from or who inspired you by accrediting your sources. I will explain these 3 steps to make you understand better.

  • Overview Editing

This is the first and easiest step which simply means slow and careful reading of the document to know it has meaning or carries the intended meaning.

In this step you are required to read through your document as an end reader and try to ascertain if the document passed across any message, lessons or  made an sense or if it was easy to understand.

  • Error Checking

In the second step of proofreading, you need to check through the document for two kind of errors which are grammatical errors & typographical errors.

  1. Grammatical errors include errors made in sentences and incorrect use of words in a sentence.
  2. Typographical errors are spelling errors. Check for proper word spelling, punctuation.

  • Credits/Sources/References Accreditation

Accrediting your sources is very important and something most professionals do which is seen as the right thing to do when you write a document. Credits, sources or references are all external factors you used or mentioned in your paper like quotes, citations, website or blog posts, books and so on.

I remember when I wrote my final year school project paper, we were asked to use APA referencing style, it was a challenge at first but I understood it and applied it well in my final year project which made my paper more solid.