Proofreading is essential! You've worked so hard on your paper up to this point—why would you waste all that time and effort by skipping the step that will help to make your paper the best it can be?
Written communication is much harder than most people think. When you're talking to your friends or family, you use words, of course, but you have other tools to help get your message across. Your facial expressions, vocal inflections, and gestures help convey your meaning to your listeners. But when you write, you only have your words. You need to make sure that you have said what you mean to say. That's when proofreading can really help.
There are several ways to proofread:
When you go through the proofreading process, you may discover that one or more of your points need further substantiation or support. If that happens, here are two courses of action that can help:
For assistance, call 214-333-5221 or email us at lib_ref@dbu.edu.
You've finished writing your paper, congratulations! BUT WAIT! You're not finished, yet. There's still more work to do.
Look at it this way: Suppose you are a woodworker, and a client has ordered a custom-built chair. You've made the parts and put the chair together, but it's not ready for delivery yet. You need to test it, to make sure it can hold up when someone sits on it. You need to sand it, to make sure there are no splinters or rough edges that will injure your client or ruin his clothes. You need to stain or seal the wood to protect it, and then polish it until it shines. After this important work has been accomplished, you're finally ready to deliver your product.
The same is true with your paper. Before it's ready to turn in, you need to:
Your paper is not ready for "delivery" until all these steps have been accomplished. Here is a link to another website that discusses the importance of revising and rewriting your original draft: