Eight Ways to Steer Clear from Research Paper Mistakes
IF VETERAN journalists and sought-after writers commit mistakes in their published materials, then why a student like you cannot make errors in a research paper?
Mistakes in research papers are just normal. As the tired old saying suggests, “Nobody’s perfect,” so accept research paper mistakes for what they are and follow these proofreading pointers:
Learn to differentiate the words “editing” and “proofreading” from one another. Proofreading a research paper simply means reviewing of texts, spotting of errors and even marking them with proof correction symbols to make your copies clear and consistent; while editing means revising parts of sentences or paragraphs or changing the whole thing.
Read the actual page proofs. Don’t just proofread the draft of your research papers over the computer. What you see in your PC monitor is different from what you can read in real page proofs.
Proofread your research paper backward. This may sound funny, but we can spot errors when reading the pages from right to left, instead of left to right, and from bottom to top, than the usual way around.
Get a second opinion. Believe it or not, but detecting your own mistakes in will be two times harder than in other’s work. Might as well get a “fresh set of eyes” not only to correct your output, but to get clarifications and suggestions for improvement.
“Let’s get loud!” Read all the words in your research papers forcefully, loud enough to hear mistakes in subject verb agreement or clauses, as well as repeated and missing words. You do not only take advantage of your sense of seeing, but also of your sense of hearing. Did you know that in some publication companies, proofreaders are allowed to read their works at the top of their voices?
“Bigger is better.” Why not enlarge the font types and sizes of your preliminary draft? Why use black font color when you can also try pink, violet or orange? Doing this is very elementary, but that’s the essence of it all: Altering the overall look of your research paper will make it less familiar to you, so you have to have a fresher set of eyes. Just don’t forget to put it back to its previous appearance when you’re all done.
Use helpful icons in your PC. And these include the word count, spell checker, grammar checker and Thesaurus all found in the Microsoft Word program in your computer. But don’t depend on them totally as they don’t get to catch every single mistake in research papers all the time.
Follow your instinct. Even if the final output of your research paper has already been printed, if you are still in doubt, then check it out! Beware of repetitive mistakes such as misspelled words (occasion not ocassion, millennium instead of milennium, tomorrow and not tommorrow, and so on); typing errors (“form” which means “from”); and how to use which and that, can and could, will and would, shall and should, may and might, etc.
As mentioned earlier, errors in research papers are just normal. But what isn’t normal is when you keep on doing these boo-boos all over again.
Brush up your proofreading skills: It’s like giving importance to the minutest details in your research paper that brings out the difference.
About the Author: Nina Mercado began her fascination for writing research paper through witty post-it notes on her father's computer. She was only 9 then, but there's no stopping her after that. She's now taking on Literature at Brown University, and plans to author a dark fantasy novel by the time she turns 25.
More articles by Nina Mercado
Print Article | Download PDF | 65 views | Jun 04 2008
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