This blogpost will be short and perhaps completely boring to most people who read this blog.
You've been warned.
As I go through the task of pulling together the bits and pieces of minutiae in my dissertation, I think I can safely say this is my least favorite part. Checking citations, moving margins, and searching for typos is the most painful part of the whole process, even though it is "easy."
I'm proofreading, basically, and have discovered the following to be most helpful: reading aloud. I find, even though it is a document to be read, and not heard, not only do I catch typos and punctuation errors, but it is much easier to revise sentences that are either dull or overly lengthy. I imagine that it is the narration for a documentary, accompanied by pictures, interviews and soundclips. It makes total sense that the paper needs to sound right...I am, after all, a musician.
Of course, this is best practiced in solitude. I thankfully had a few hours of that today. Hey, at the very least, it is good practice should I need to seek employment doing voice-overs.
2 comments:
Have you ever thought of tape recording your "proof readings?" Sometimes when I read things I write out loud, and I am at it for an extended period of time, I still miss stuff. Listening back and reading your text along with your tape, like listening back and reading along with a tape-recorded performance of a piece, can be really revealing. It can help with with those "sight typos" like double words--things you might not notice when you are reading aloud.
That is an excellent idea Elaine! If I do it for practicing, I suppose it would work for my writing too.
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