In our previous lessons, we discussed the writing process and its stages. One of the stages is editing, where writers need to check their text for grammatical and spelling errors. In this lesson, we will discuss editing in detail.
First, let us consider the need to edit by looking at an example. Most of us enjoyed reading Frank L. Baum’s ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’. Imagine if the first paragraph of the story was written like this:
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great kansas prairies with uncle henry who was a farmer and aunt em, who was the farmers wife. There house was small. For the lumber to build it had to be caried by wagon many miles. There was four walls a floor and a roof which made one room. and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cuboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chair and the beds. Uncle henry and aunt em had a big bed in one corner, and dorthy a little bed in another corner.
Would you have wanted to continue reading the book? Perhaps not. The spelling and grammar mistakes would have made it difficult to get past even the first page of the book! Thus, editing your work is very important since it directly impacts readability. Furthermore, readers are likely to take a badly edited text less seriously. They might infer that you are a careless or lazy person who didn’t bother to re-read your text even once. So, no matter how boring or time consuming editing might be, it is extremely important to go over your work and ensure that you haven’t made grammatical or spelling mistakes.
Now that we have established the importance of editing, let us look at a checklist that we can use to edit our written work.
Punctuation
I have ended my sentences with a period and my questions with a question mark.
I have used commas only where necessary. That is, I have used commas to:
separate words in a list
separate an introductory word or phrase from the rest of the sentence
set off a word, phrase or clause that interrupts the main idea of a sentence
separate adjectives
separate two clauses in a compound sentence
I have used an apostrophe only to indicate possession (e.g. the farmer’s wife) or in contractions (e.g. there’s, it’s ).
Capitalization
I have capitalized the first letter of the first word in every sentence.
I have capitalized all proper nouns and titles of books, reports and so on.
I have capitalized ‘I’ even if it is in the middle of a sentence.
Grammar and usage
I have used complete sentences.
I have not used run-on sentences; that is, two independent sentences that are joined without appropriate punctuation or a conjunction.
I have used correct transition words.
I have used the correct tense throughout my text.
I have used pronouns correctly and checked if they refer clearly to a noun in the same or previous sentence.
I have checked if the verbs in my sentences agree with the subjects.
I have used a variety of sentence patterns.
Spelling
I have not used SMS spellings, such as ‘2moro’ or ‘l8r’, or short forms in my text.
I have checked if I have used spellings of similar sounding words instead of the right spelling. E.g right vs. write, there vs. their, too vs. to and so on.
This checklist includes some of the most
commonly made mistakes in writing. Using a checklist makes editing a simpler
task.
In our previous lessons, we discussed the writing process and its stages. One of the stages is editing, where writers need to check their text for grammatical and spelling errors. In this lesson, we will discuss editing in detail.
First, let us consider the need to edit by looking at an example. Most of us enjoyed reading Frank L. Baum’s ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’. Imagine if the first paragraph of the story was written like this:
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great kansas prairies with uncle henry who was a farmer and aunt em, who was the farmers wife. There house was small. For the lumber to build it had to be caried by wagon many miles. There was four walls a floor and a roof which made one room. and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cuboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chair and the beds. Uncle henry and aunt em had a big bed in one corner, and dorthy a little bed in another corner.
Would you have wanted to continue reading the book? Perhaps not. The spelling and grammar mistakes would have made it difficult to get past even the first page of the book! Thus, editing your work is very important since it directly impacts readability. Furthermore, readers are likely to take a badly edited text less seriously. They might infer that you are a careless or lazy person who didn’t bother to re-read your text even once. So, no matter how boring or time consuming editing might be, it is extremely important to go over your work and ensure that you haven’t made grammatical or spelling mistakes.
Now that we have established the importance of editing, let us look at a checklist that we can use to edit our written work.
Punctuation
I have ended my sentences with a period and my questions with a question mark.
I have used commas only where necessary. That is, I have used commas to:
separate words in a list
separate an introductory word or phrase from the rest of the sentence
set off a word, phrase or clause that interrupts the main idea of a sentence
separate adjectives
separate two clauses in a compound sentence
I have used an apostrophe only to indicate possession (e.g. the farmer’s wife) or in contractions (e.g. there’s, it’s ).
Capitalization
I have capitalized the first letter of the first word in every sentence.
I have capitalized all proper nouns and titles of books, reports and so on.
I have capitalized ‘I’ even if it is in the middle of a sentence.
Grammar and usage
I have used complete sentences.
I have not used run-on sentences; that is, two independent sentences that are joined without appropriate punctuation or a conjunction.
I have used correct transition words.
I have used the correct tense throughout my text.
I have used pronouns correctly and checked if they refer clearly to a noun in the same or previous sentence.
I have checked if the verbs in my sentences agree with the subjects.
I have used a variety of sentence patterns.
Spelling
I have not used SMS spellings, such as ‘2moro’ or ‘l8r’, or short forms in my text.
I have checked if I have used spellings of similar sounding words instead of the right spelling. E.g right vs. write, there vs. their, too vs. to and so on.
This checklist includes some of the most
commonly made mistakes in writing. Using a checklist makes editing a simpler
task.
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