Proofreading is Essential by Kayla Gaffney

Mistakes are common in all forms of writing. Our in-class proofreading exercise required us to watch a video of Erin McKean and transcribe what we could. After finishing our assignment, we were asked to review our work and correct our mistakes. After finishing my own assignment, I could not believe the range of mistakes that had made their way into my writing. From wrongly capitalized letters to incorrect paragraph indents, proofreading is essential to writing. Without perfecting proofreading skills, individual pieces of writing would be riddled with mistakes. 

Jennifer  Kerr makes a profound closing statement in her blog post regarding proofreading by stating that "It's a lot less frustrating to proofread when the task is rewarded abundantly by a large quantity of errors to be corrected." Jennifer may have come across another point without realizing it. Reward is a wonderful incentive to make anyone do more work than they want to. Creating a personal reward after proofreading will make proofreading an enjoyable activity, thus improving skill and releasing endorphins. Creating a "feel-good" effect will make a writer want to take part in proofreading more often. This will increase the grades of students and help editors screen for grammatical flaws.