If you take some time to correct grammar errors in your academic writing, it can improve the quality a lot. Even a few grammar and spelling mistakes in the content can spoil its overall look and make it look amateurish.
Proofreading and checking the content, etc., can sound a bit daunting, but it’s not really that difficult to do. Plus, other than that, there are some other ways or “hacks” that you can follow to correct the grammar in your content. In this post, we’re going to be looking both at how you can effectively proofread and edit your content as well as some other hacks that you can follow for grammar correction.
Contents
Grammar correction hacks and tips
1. When you want to proofread your content, give it a bit of time
This is an important tip and a good hack that you should keep in mind regarding proofreading.
When you write something, especially a long academic document, your mind is somewhat used to it. It is all stored in your short-term memory.
When this happens, proofreading becomes a bit difficult. Since you know how all the sentences progress and how all the passages are formed, you can fly and flit over them all without taking in the meanings. That way, even if there is a word missing in a sentence, your mind will automatically fill in the blanks, and you will read it normally.
To avoid this, you should write your content and then give it some time before you proofread it. If you have a lot of time at hand, you can even give it a couple of days. But if you are sitting in an exam or doing a test, even 10 or 20 minutes can be enough.
2. When you’re proofreading, look for specific errors and issues
Giving your academic content a general overview is fine and everything, but if you want to make the process more effective, you should look for specific errors every time you read it.
For example, if you are proofreading the content for the first time, you should keep a special eye out for punctuation errors. You can look for the areas where you have added a wrong comma or a colon, etc. If you keep your eyes peeled for specific errors like this, you can spot them quickly and more easily.
On the second proofreading run, you can keep an eye out for wrong spellings. And so forth.
We have tried this ourselves, and we’ve found that looking for specific errors makes them stand out more clearly.
3. Use online grammar checkers to make the process easier
This is a grammar correction hack that you can follow nowadays. There are quite a few different grammar checkers available online that you can use for free. The grammar checkers basically scan the content for any errors it may contain and then provide the suggestions that have to replace them.
The benefits of using grammar checkers are multifold and numerous. For one, they don’t take up a lot of time. You can have whole pages of content checked in a matter of seconds. If you have a long and lengthy assignment, it can take a few minutes at most.
Another benefit of using these tools is that you can learn from them. In other words, you can look at the suggestions and improvements that the tool suggests and then understand the logic behind the error and the correction. This will help you improve your own understanding, which will then help you avoid those mistakes in the future.
The benefit and efficacy of using online grammar checkers are reliant on you choosing a reliable one. There are a lot of them available on the Internet, and you have to be picky about the one you choose. We personally recommend using either Grammarly or Grammarcheck.ai because they are both free and work fairly accurately.
Common grammar errors to keep an eye on in your content
Those were some of the grammar correction methods and hacks that you can follow to improve the quality of your write-ups. But, if you want to make the most out of the whole proofreading process, you should be aware of the common grammar mistakes that you can make in the content.
Before we wrap this post up, here are some mistakes and errors that you should pay special attention to.
1. Misuse of comma
The misuse of comma is a grammatical error that is committed quite frequently by beginner writers. There are different ways in which a comma can be misused, such as:
- Comma splices: A comma splice is an instance when a comma is used to join together two independent clauses that should either be two separate sentences or joined with a coordinating conjunction or a colon/semicolon.
- Missing comma in a compound sentence: A compound sentence is a sentence that contains two independent clauses. When the two independent clauses are joined together with a coordinating conjunction, there has to be a comma in between them. For example, “I was running but I was not tired” would be incorrect since there is no comma. The correct version would be, “I was running, but I was not tired.”
- Missing comma that affects the meaning: Another misuse of commas is when it is not added in a sentence, which, leads to the meaning getting changed. For example, the sentence “Let’s jump, Adrian!” means that the speaker is inviting Adrian to jump. But if the comma is removed, then it becomes “Let’s jump Adrian,” which means that the speaker is inviting some other people to rob Adrian.
2. Misuse of Apostrophe
Misusing the apostrophe is a common but easily fixable issue. The concept behind it is very simple.
Apostrophes are used when you have to show the possession of a noun over another noun or a verb, etc. If you are addressing a single object, for example, you can write “the man’s leg.”
When using the apostrophe, a lot of people can have trouble understanding the rule of plural objects and the special rule of the word “it.”
These two points can be explained thus:
- When you want to use an apostrophe with multiple objects, you have to put it after the ending “s” or “es.” For example, it would be said “the officers’ breakroom” to address a breakroom allocated to a specific group of officers.
- On the other hand, when it comes to the word “it,” the apostrophe rule is reversed. The word “it’s” does not show possession. Rather, it shows the contracted form of the word “it is.” On the other hand, if you have to show possession, the word would be “its.”
3. Confusing homophones
Homophones are words that are written differently and have different meanings but are pronounced the same way. Some of the common homophone confusions in writing include:
- Using “their” in place of “they’re”
- Using “your” in place of “you’re”
- Using “who’s” in place of “whose”
And vice versa in all cases.
The only solution to preventing and fixing these types of errors is to carefully study all these confusing words and understand their meanings separately. Here is a post about all the homophones that are commonly confused with one another.
Final Thoughts
On that note, we’re going to end this post.
Keeping your content clear and clean from grammar errors is an important step to establishing its quality. There are different things that you can do to maintain grammatical perfection in your content. In the post above, we’ve discussed a few effective techniques.
We hope you learned something from this post, and that you will be back for more in the future.