Proofreading Awareness
This site has been constructed as a result of a research project supported by a British Academy small grant (SG 46939) awarded to Joan Turner at Goldsmiths. The project was entitled 'Perspectives on Proofreading' and sought the views of academic staff in a range of disciplines, writing specialist staff in English for Academic Purposes, and students themselves, on the issue of proofreading and of students having their work proofread.
This site draws on the perspectives of students, as they presented them in focus groups conducted by Carolin Gerlitz and Matthew Dennis, who were funded by the grant.
Introduction:
Proofreading is normally thought of as being insignificant. It’s a necessary, but a relatively easy final stage of making sure there are no typos, misspellings, etc. in a text before submission, whether to a publisher or to a lecturer, if you’re a student. While the coherent construction of an argument is always going to be more important, what we want to highlight here is how significant it is also for a text to be well proofread. It is an integral part of being well written.
However, proofreading has become a very contentious issue in contemporary higher education. On the one hand, your lecturers want to read texts that have been meticulously proofread. As one professor put it:
I would see proofreading as being about making sure that all those irritating minor errors are expunged from the text.
On the other hand, they want to be sure that what you have written is all your own work. In many institutions, it is against the regulations to use a professional correction service.
Drawing on students’ perspectives, we look at what some of the issues are, and urge you to take proofreading seriously, and above all to take responsibility for texts you submit. Readers tend to look favourably on well-written texts, and that includes not having their reading flow disrupted by mistakes of form.