These are five essential checks every student should do before submitting their work to ensure the best quality of their work.
After completing the final version of the article, you will have a sense of pride and success. You worked hard, did your research, wrote everything down, made your changes, and now you are done.
But wait: depending on the assignment and the changes you’ve made before this point, you may want to do more to make sure you get the best score possible.
To that end, there are five essential checks you should make after completing your work but before submitting it. Otherwise, you may submit a paper that is not as perfect as expected, and you may receive unexpected feedback when the graded articles are returned.
1: Fact-checking
With any research paper, it’s clear that you need to cite your sources. If you do it right, verifying authenticity seems pointless as every claim is backed up by a properly cited source.
But what if the source you trust is wrong?
Taking a moment to fact-check your writing can help you uncover any sources of weakness you may have and capture any “facts” you’ve provided that may be controversial. or more nuanced than you previously thought, or that’s just plain wrong.
The way to do this is not to try to find a second or third source that agrees with your opinion, but to try to find a reliable source who disagrees. For example, you can find many sources stating that the speed of sound in air is 331.30 m/s. However, most people don’t realize that this number only works at 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) and that the speed can be significantly faster or slower depending on the air temperature.
If you had made a straightforward claim about the speed of sound without finding an alternative source, you would have misrepresented it. After examining the facts, you may need to go back and add further explanations and nuances.
However, you can only find these flaws by fact-checking and actively working to refute your own claims. Besides being a great way to make sure your writing is solid, it’s also a good method for debate, as it teaches you how to challenge your own claims.
2: Spell check
Spell check seems like a minor issue. Even the most basic word processor includes a spell check feature that underlines suspected errors. However, like most things, technology is a useful tool, but it is no substitute for human analysis.
For one thing, spell-checking systems will produce a lot of false positives, especially if you use scientific, legal, industrial, or other terms that aren’t in the their database. These false positives can make it easy to ignore warnings, even unconsciously.
Second, there are many situations where a word is technically spelled correctly, but it’s the wrong word, misspelled, or some other problem. While homonyms like to, too, and two are well known, there are countless other examples of misplaced words that could be included in an article.
Before submitting an article, go through it again and review each marked spelling mistake to confirm that you are correct. From there, consider browsing through it and looking for common mistakes that the spell checker misses. You can also read the paper upside down or out of order to help you better focus on individual words.
This can help you avoid embarrassing typos.
3: Grammar checker
As with spell checking, there are great automated tools for checking grammar, many of which are built into word processors. That said, it’s important to remember that these tools have their limitations. Similarly, like spell checking, even the best grammar checker will miss errors and give you false positives.
In short, there is no substitute for human grammar checking.
However, your work grammar can be difficult. It can be challenging when you know what’s next to read your work slowly and rigorously enough to spot grammatical errors.
The best way to combat this is simple: get someone else to read it. Obviously, make sure they don’t make the changes directly, but having another eye to check your work can do wonders in catching grammar mistakes.
If that’s not practical, you can use a variety of tricks to slow down your reading. The first is to read the paper backwards (as mentioned above), starting with the last sentence and working your way up, reading each sentence individually. Another way is to read the newspaper out loud. This can help you not only spot grammatical errors but also poorly written parts of your paper.
Regardless, a thorough grammar check is always one of the final steps before submitting a paper.
4: Check for clarity
As a writer, you are supposed to not write to be understood, but to be misunderstood.
Clarity is difficult because what is clear to you is often very blurry to others. This is especially true when other people from different backgrounds, ages and perspectives read your writing.
A word or phrase that is completely neutral to you could be seen as biased by others. Similarly, you can also organize thoughts and information in a way that makes perfect sense for you but completely loses the reader.
As with most items on this list, the easiest way to check for clarity is to have someone else read it. Ideally, this person is as different from you (or your target audience) as possible. The more their views differ from yours, the more they can help you.
That said, if this isn’t practical, the best thing to do is try to find a way to express your ideas and information as simply as possible. The simpler something is, the less likely your intentions will be misinterpreted. Often, the key to making your writing clearer is to tighten it up and remove any unnecessary language.
5: Similarity check
In general, if you write using cleanroom writing techniques, cite your sources carefully, and follow best research methods, similarity checks won’t surprise you. After all, if you wrote everything in the log and did it carefully, you would know what was copied and what wasn’t.
That said, given how serious schools are about plagiarism, being 100% sure is never an issue, especially if your school gives you the opportunity to check your work. yours before submitting.
Taking a moment to run your business through a plagiarism checker can help you find any matching text you may have missed or anything that might be causing it. question While almost no articles are 0%, this is a great opportunity to see if you have any questionable passages or any quotes and citations that you may have left out. pass or not.
It also gives you insight into what your instructors might see as they grade assignments and run their own analysis. Even if this check is nothing to worry about, it can do wonders to reassure you and boost your confidence when you hit submit.
Conclusions
Although completing the final draft of a paper is a wonderful accomplishment, rarely is a paper truly “complete”. As most any writer will tell you, no article is truly complete, as there is always room for improvement and growth.
Performing these checks before submitting a paper can be of great help in polishing and perfecting your work. Even better, they should spend only a few minutes and a fraction of the time spent on writing an article.
With the amount of work involved in an item, not doing these checks means you are taking a huge risk to save very little time. For the sake of your work and your score, take a breather before you hit submit and make sure your writing is as perfect as possible.
