The Process of Writing: Proofreading, Editing & Paraphrasing

Writing

The process of writing is not one to be considered facile, even though some might argue that there’s not a more effortless way to make money than to write. Little do they know about the gruesome process that takes place before presenting a finished write-up!

Beginning from the innate level of mental creativity that a writer has to exhaust by putting the thoughts, ideas and images in his/her head into actual words and sentences, to the gruelling process of the editing work to be done.

Then comes the point when you’re at the finishing line of an article or a write-up, and you feel an increasing need to perfect your hard work in every possible manner. This is when having the write-up rechecked and reviewed with a second eye and a fresh perspective comes in handy.

Here are a few of the methods that we can implement, in order to do that.

Proofreading

Proof-reading, to be quite simply put, is the concept of slowly and carefully skimming through a text, in order to ensure that there are no misspellings, punctuation and/or grammatical mistakes.

In the case of errors, the proofreader will have to rectify the text until it is fault-free.

Editing

Editing can be defined as the art of making an umpteen number of changes for the betterment of an article or a text.

Altering words and phrases, adjusting and readjusting the punctuations, and restyling entire sentences in order to refine the core essence of the text fall under the wide margin of editing.

Paraphrasing

Para-phrasing refers to the act of rewriting a sentence, an article, or a text in a manner that induces more clarity upon the meaning of the text.

In other words, it could be summed up as the enhancement of a text by having it rewritten. Its purpose is to achieve clarity to better understand the essence of the text.