Advanced Editing and Proofreading for English Language Learners

Strategies for Individual and Peer Editing

1. Editing for Style
• writing appropriately for audience, purpose and form.
• using the appropriate level of formality, (tone, voice, word choice, source citations).
• creating continuity in a piece of writing, (unity, coherence, logic).
• creating variety,
• structure: sentence type, sentence opening, sentence length, sentence order, clause order, phrase placement, transition placement;
• diction: making points in different ways.
2. Editing for Conciseness
• using words effectively by replacing
• weak or boring words
• words with inappropriate connotation or level of formality
• inappropriate slang expressions or jargon
• imprecise, ambiguous or confusing words
• meaningless words
• clichés, trite and overused words
• avoiding wordiness by eliminating
• redundancy
• repetition
• unnecessary words, phrases or clauses
• overdeveloped elaboration
3. Editing for Accuracy
• using correct grammatical forms
• writing correct syntax
• using correct words and word form
• avoiding mechanical errors
4. Proofreading for Errors
• identifying and correcting grammar errors, e.g.: verb tense, verb form, modals, number, agreement, word order, word form, pronoun reference, prepositions, articles, possessives, modifiers, tense, person or number shifts, parallelism.
• identifying and correcting structure errors, e.g.: coordination, subordination, logic, fragment, run-on, comma splice, parallelism, confused phrasing.
• identifying and correcting diction errors, e.g.: wrong word, inappropriate word, wrong word form.
• identifying and correcting mechanical errors, e.g.: punctuation, spelling, capitalization, use of quotations, underlining, format (titles, headings, margins, indenting, etc.), handwriting.
5. Using basic editing tools on a word processor in order to identify where errors occur in writing.

Classroom Skills

1. Taking responsibility for:
• attendance and punctuality
• classwork and assignments
• participation and teamwork