BEFORE YOU PROOFREAD:
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Don't make corrections at the sentence and word level if you still need to work on the overall focus, development, and arrangement of the paper, of sections in the paper, or of individual paragraphs.
Establishing some distance between the writing your paper and proofreading it will help you identify mistakes more easily.
Throughout your paper, you should try to avoid using inflated diction if a simpler phrase works equally well. Simple, more precise language is easier to proofread than overly complex sentence construction and vocabulary.
Make a list of mistakes you need to watch for based upon the comments of your professors on previous drafts of your paper or for papers written in other classes. This will help you to identify repeated patterns of mistakes more readily.
To help ensure that you identify all the errors in your paper, consider the following:
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Besides sparing your eyes the strain of glaring at a computer screen, proofreading from a printout allows you to easily skip around to where errors might have been repeated throughout the paper.
This is especially helpful for spotting run-on sentences, but you'll also hear other problems that you may not have picked up while reading silently. Reading your paper out loud also helps you play the role of the reader, thereby encouraging you to understand the paper as your audience might.
…to cover up the lines below the one you're reading. This technique keeps you from skipping over possible mistakes.
This forces you to pay attention to each mark you used and to question its purpose in each sentence or paragraph. This is particularly helpful strategy if you tend to misuse or overuse a punctuation mark, such as a comma or semi-colon.
Using the search [find] feature of your word processor can help you identify common errors faster. For example, if you overuse a phrase or use the same qualifier over and over again, you can do a search for those words or phrases and in each instance make a decision about whether to keep it or not or use a synonym.
Move from the most to the least important, and following whatever technique works best for you to identify that kind of mistake. For instance, read through once [backwards, sentence by sentence] to check for fragments; read through again [forward] to be sure subjects and verbs agree, and again [perhaps using a computer search for "this," "it," and "they"] to trace pronouns to antecedents.
But remember that a spell checker won't catch mistakes with homonyms [e.g., "they're," "their," "there"] or certain typos [like "he" when you meant to write "the"].
Since many errors are made and overlooked by speeding through writing and proofreading, taking the time to carefully look over your writing will help you catch errors you might otherwise miss. Always read through your writing slowly. If you read through the paper at a normal speed, you won't give your eyes sufficient time to spot errors.
Offer to proofread a friend's paper if they will review yours. Having another set of eyes look over your writing will often spot errors that you would have otherwise missed.
Adapted from the University of Southern Californa, http://libguides.usc.edu/content.php?pid=83009&sid=1037992
