Basic Proofreading
Verb Errors
- Agreement: "The causes of global warming have been determined."
- Tense: "Prior to the conference, the paper will have been completely revised."
Noun Errors
- Possessives: "The participants' opinions were valued."
- Plurals: "The seven types of oxen were included."
Preposition Errors
- of, with, to, from, for, etc.
Article Errors
- a, the (missing or superfluous)
Pronoun Errors
- its, I/me, his/him, her/hers
Punctuation Errors
- Commas (in series, to set off non-restrictive clauses, in compound sentences)
- Colons (to introduce list; to expand or explain)
- Semicolons (to form parallel structure; not to introduce lists)
- Periods (after citations in APA style; in abbreviations)
- Hyphenation (compound adjectives, compound words)
Sentence faults
- Run-on sentences
- Sentence fragments
- Faulty parallelism
- Misplaced modifiers
- Dangling modifiers
Here's a sample of an essay that needed only basic proofreading.
There are a few wording errors, a run-on sentence is corrected, a hyphen is added, and a missing space is inserted. Note that although only a few changes are required, every word and every sentence has been carefully reviewed.
Click here to see an advanced essay editing sample.