Local revisions aim at refining the language and style of your writing in order to make your work more pleasant to read. This requires a great deal of patience and accuracy. You may have to revise essays several times before you decide that they are satisfactory and meet all the requirements defined by your course instructor.
1. Proofreading
Proofreading means examining your text carefully to find and correct typographical errors and mistakes in grammar, style, and spelling. 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 is better to work with a definite plan that helps you to search systematically for specific kinds of errors.
Here is some advice on your proofreading advice:
·Do not 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 not 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.
·Read slowly, 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.