1.) How to Proofread Your Writing Yourself

The Proofreading Checklist

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1.) Capitals/ lower case letters; periods and commas.

i – Titles

Is the first word in the title capitalized?

Are all the nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the title capitalized?

Make sure your title does NOT have a period.

ii – Your writing

Check all sentences start with a capital letter, and also all people, and so also should all proper nouns (important or unique (or special) places, for example Chosun University has a capital ‘C’ and ‘U’, but ‘the beach’ does not).

NOTE: All other words should not start with a capital letter.

All sentences should finish with a period (or ‘full-stop’).

Special NOTE: Conjunctions are spelled with small letters, and have a comma before them, like this:

…, and …, but …, so …, therefore …, however …,

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2.) All sentences should have a verb. (Watch out for ‘fragments’ or ‘dependent clauses’!)

Are all your verbs the correct tense (past, present, or future)?

In those tenses, are the simple forms enough, or is the continuous better? [ie. “I drink…” or “I am drinking…” – ?]

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3.) Nouns and their articles

Most nouns need an article.

Articles: a, an, the, and we can use ‘some’ as a plural-type article, sometimes.

For example: a banana; an apple; the orange; some grapes.

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4.) Most sentences start straight after the previous sentence finishes. They are in groups called paragraphs.

What is a good ‘topic sentence’ (or introduction sentence) for that paragraph? What is a good ‘concluding sentence’ for that paragraph? (Think of the ‘bread on top and underneath the sandwich!)

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5.) Please ‘double check’ using the ‘Proofread Writing’ function here on your WordPress.com blog.

Completely finished? Well done!