Proof reading your essay is one of the most crucial steps in writing an essay. Most students fail to proof read and end up in loosing grades when submitted. Even if they have proofread the essays it will still have a lot of errors as people have a tendency of taking their write ups for granted. The most common errors in an essay are grammatical errors, punctuation marks, spelling errors, omitted words or extra words and typos. When you allot time for each section of your essay, proof reading should be given a considerable amount of time.

The first thing that you need to do after completing your essay is take a little break, you should not go proof reading immediately. When you are ready to proof read your essay, make a proof reading log which lists what kind of errors you are going to check in your essay so that you do not miss any possible errors.

You must check essays for spelling errors, if you use a word processing program, most of them will have automatic spell checker, use them to find out the spelling errors and correct them. You can also use grammar checker in the word processor to find out grammatical errors. Many a grammar checking software will be able to check for punctuation errors, passive sentences, tense problems, subject verb agreements and more. Once you have done with the spelling and grammar check on computer take a print out as it’s easy to find errors on paper than on a computer. Read your essay aloud, you will be able to find out if your essay makes sense, clear and easy to understand, does your points support your thesis and more. You should make sure your introduction is concise and have a tone of your essay which continues throughout the essay. Next, check out the paragraphs for relevant information that support your point and you must check for transition sentences in each paragraph. When comes to conclusion, you must make sure that it is consistent with the argument of your essay.

When you proof read your essay on a printout, one technique which you can use is use a red ink pen to mark the spelling errors, blue ink for punctuations and green inappropriate sentence format. You can also use some more colors to mark other errors so that you will know what to correct in your essay on the computer screen.

One another best approach to proof read your essay is to get someone, a relative or a friend to read your essay and suggest the changes. Others may be able to find errors that you were not able to identify. They can also tell you if your essay conveys the thesis properly or if they understood the argument or thesis in your write-up. Reading your essay loud or get someone else to read your essay for you will give a complete idea of how your essay has been arranged and if the points are interconnected and supportive. As you put a lot of effort in developing an essay, you should not let simple errors which can be corrected through proof reading make your essay look poorly written.