English - weak. Practice on Points of English Grammar (ESL/EFL) Top Ten Proofreading Tips. Hear what Mark Twain had to say on the subject of proofreading, and then consider our ten tips for proofreading effectively. The difference between the almost-right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning-bug & the lightning. Mark Twain's well-known observation appears at the top of the "Language/Writing" page of a university's continuing education website--just above a blurb for "Mistake-Free Grammar & Proofreading. " Except that Twain's line is misquoted, and the word lightning is twice misspelled as lightening. Twain himself had little patience for such errors. "In the first place God made idiots," he once wrote. "This was for practice. Yet as an old newspaper reporter, Twain knew full well how hard it is to proofread effectively.
No matter how carefully we examine a text, it seems there's always one more little blunder waiting to be discovered. Ten Tips for Proofreading Effectively Give it a rest. 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. Proofread for one type of error at a time. Try to make a break between writing and proofreading. Proofread at the time of day when you are most alert to spotting errors. Proofread once aloud. 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. 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. Know your own patterns. Read through your paper several times, once looking just at spelling, another time looking just at punctuation, and so on. Get help. SYSTRANet. Conjugaison anglaise. Dico synonymes.