Essential apps for proofreading and essay writing in 2022

With the growth of web and smartphone applications along with other enhanced digital services globally, a whole host of essential apps have been developed for proofreading and other tasks such as essay-writing.

In professional proofreading services, particularly the general practice of professional proofreading today, experts use these apps – such as Grammarly and Focus Writer – to make their jobs much, much easier. This also improves the quality of the service the client receives, whether that’s a student, business, or researcher, which creates a win-win situation overall.

Students and academic researchers also regularly use today’s smartphone apps, along with other technology, to increase the quality of their work to the level of professional proofreading. In fact, in the case of students, many students find that these apps are essential for their daily life at university, especially in the area of essay-writing.

This article describes several essential apps for proofreading and essay writing. Some of the mentioned apps are popular spelling checkers and style checkers, such as Grammarly, whereas others are less-known but equally valuable resources.

Grammarly

To improve the quality of your essays, as well as your general writing, Grammarly is among the best-available apps. The main use case for Grammarly is that it can prevent your document from being undermined by preventable errors such asstyle and clarity mistakes.

One of the most valuable features of Grammarly is that, as a technology company, Grammarly actually provides multiple apps, all of which work in combination. For example, Grammarly can be used as a:

·         Desktop app (Windows and Mac)

·         Smartphone app (iOS and Android devices)

·         Chrome plugin

Grammarly is an essential choice for people who want a reasonable proof for their files but who are working within a limited budget. Students often fit this category, but when combined with professional proofreading or editing services, tools like Grammarly work much better.

Evernote

Almost all great essays start with the smallest ideas. This is why you need a clean, responsive note-taking app to jot down all your thoughts.

Evernote serves this purpose, but it also allows users to copy articles from the Internet. In this way, it helps an incredible amount when essay-planning and drafting are taking place.

However, at the same time, Evernote is substantially more than a note-taking app. Using the app, you can draw, create checklists, and easily embed other documents.

Focus Writer

When experts need to complete professional proofreading services, Focus Writer is one of the more popular apps they often turn to.

Students regularly use Microsoft Word to write, edit, and proof their essays, but Focus Writer – given its popularity among proofreaders and editors – is another valuable app to use.

The simplicity of Focus Writer is its main charm. If all you need is a blank page with a good spellchecker, which is what proofreaders usually require! Focus Writer is the way to go. 

Essential Resources for Students in 2022

Once you’ve received a place in higher education, whether at college or university, it can feel like a non-stop ride until your degree is achieved.

Students should use all available resources to increase their chances of success. Paid and non-paid resources exist that can ease your life as a student, ranging from high-quality professional proofreading services (to polish your writing for presentation) to reference management software (to help make the creation of bibliographies significantly easier).

For the upcoming year of 2022, an important trend is digitalisation and the growing inclusion of technology in higher education. Therefore, many of the essential resources for students in 2022 are digital tools, but not all of them; in fact, some key resources – such as professional proofreading – are human-driven tasks that, currently, computers perform quite badly at!

Read on to find out more about the three most essential resources for students in 2022.

 

1. Google Scholar

Released initially in November 2004, Google Scholar has emerged as one of the most valuable resources for academic research, literature reviews, and student assignments.

The purpose of Google Scholar is to offer an easilyaccessible – and freely available – web search engine that contains a vast database of full-text scholarly literature (or associated metadata), valuably covering a range of disciplines and publishing formats (e.g., journal articles and grey literature).

If you combine the use of Google Scholar (in your web browser, such as Chrome or Safari) with the use of a browser plug-in reference manager (discussed in Point 2 below), students can rapidly increase their ability to retrieve and cite the information they need.

 

2. Reference Managers

The purpose of a reference manager is to keep a record of all your journal articles, papers, and studies that you want to cite in your writing.

Using a reference manager, you can easily auto-generate reference lists conforming to a specific style guide (e.g., APA). Importantly, as a student or academic, this can save a lot of time and effort when creating bibliographies.

Reference managers are not a new development in 2021 and 2022; indeed, they’ve been around for a long time. Notably, with every year that has passed, they have been improving in leaps and bounds.

For example, Zotero, which is a long-running, free reference manager, is currently on version 5.0, and it offers many high-powered features compared to earlier versions.

 

3. Professional Proofreading Services

The final essential resource for students in 2022 that is worthy of mention in this article is professional proofreading.

As discussed in the introduction to this article, proofreading is not a task that computers can complete effectively and reliably today, which is unlike Google Scholar and reference managers; in both of these cases, computers outperform humans by a long stretch.

Dissimilarly, for professional proofreading, it is important to hire an experienced proofreader who can improve your work. Although this takes some effort, you can still use digital resources – such as the Internet, search engines, and review aggregation websites – to find a worthwhile service that suits your needs! 

Can You “Hack” The Proofreading Process?

In a professional proofreading service, the expert you work with will typically be able to adequately check up to 2,500 of your words per hour.

This means that for a 10,000-word dissertation, it would take a professional proofreader around 4 hours to complete a high-quality proofreading service. Likewise, for a smaller document of, for example, 2,500 words, this would only take a proofreader 1 hour.

Interestingly, while this may sound very fast to some writers, it is unusual for the experts who provide proofreading services to work any faster than this.

This is despite the fact that you – if you are a non-trained proofreader (e.g., a student or academic) – may believe you can proofread at quicker pace. If you think you can, remember that most professionals work much more methodically than you are likely to.

Why is this the case? Why can’t proofreaders work any faster?

Another interesting question that arises is: Can we “hack” the proofreading process,making it shorter without compromising on quality?

 

How to “hack” the proofreading process

The simple and short answer is that there is no known way to “hack” the proofreading process.

In other words, no matter how great you may become as a professional proofreader, the limit of being able to adequately proofread 2,500 words per hour will not increase much. For example, some of the best and most efficient proofreaders may achieve up to 3,000 words an hour, but after that, their quality is likely to decline.

You might think that computers could be used to speed up the proofreading process. This is true, but even with the use of helpful proofreading software (e.g., spellcheckers), evidence strongly suggests that 2,500 words per hour is a hard upper limit.

While it may be upsetting to hear this, it shouldn’t be surprising. After all, considering the complexity of the task that a proofreader needs to complete, being able to make a full pass at 2,500 words per hour is very impressive.

If you try to time yourself, for example, the evidence suggests that – especially if you are an inexperienced or non-expert proofreader – you will only be able to proofread around 800 words adequately per hour.

 

How to accelerate the proofreading process

Having established that there is no way to “hack” the proofreading process, given the complexity of the task, it is essential to point out that the process can definitely be accelerated.

There are various ways to make the proofreading process much quicker. To save time during proofreading and complete the process quicker (and more effectively), you can put into practice the following pro tips:

·         Properly edit your document first, and only then begin proofreading

·         Take breaks to energise yourself and keep your eyes fresh

·         Use digital shortcuts (e.g., “Find and Replace”)

·         Use digital tools (e.g., spellcheckers such as Grammarly)

·         Maintain a checklist of commonly overlooked errors

How to Improve Your Proofreading Quickly

Proofreading is an important and in-demand task today. The growing importance of high-quality text, articles, and business or technical documentation for mission-critical activities is reflected in the rise of proofreading services as an affordable option for consumers, as well as a rich source of employment for proofreaders.

It is well-known that using a proofreading service can transform the workflow that a student, academic, or researcher adopts. At the same time, professional proofreaders know about the value of a career in this field, along with the opportunities to specialize further and enter world-leading companies.

While many companies today are outsourcing the proofreading function, some firms still operate in-house writing, editing, and proofreading teams. This is still common in companies that deal with technical, design, or administrative tasks that require extensive documentation.

With all these considerations in mind, it is worth knowing about some of the tips you can use to get better at proofreading quickly. If you know how to perfect and improve your proofreading skills absolutely, as well as in a short space of time, you will be able to apply for the best jobs and begin improving the work of your clients as soon as possible.

This article offers a brief introduction to the ways you can get better at proofreading quickly.

 

1. Read the text aloud

Before publishing any document, a great author knows about the importance of ensuring the manuscript sounds reasonable – and ideally even good – when it is read aloud.

If you need to stop and take a breath in the middle of a sentence, consider revising the length. Also, if there are places where you find it difficult to articulate certain words, those areas may confuse readers, too; it’s often a good idea to try writing these passages differently.

 

2. Know what errors you don’t need to correct

For style-related reasons, or reasons relating to context or convention, there are some errors that – as the professional who is providing the proofreading service – you don’t need to correct.

Examples of errors that usually shouldn’t be “corrected” in a client’s document include the use of:

·         Sentence fragments

·         Initial conjunctions

·         Run-on sentences

·         Split infinitives

·         Personal pronouns

·         Compound sentences ignoring commas

·         Polysyndeton

Just as you should be aware of the grammar rules that you need to follow when proofreading English text, you should also have a good working knowledge of the above “errors” that typically don’t need to be corrected.

 

3. Use a style guide

Style guides are lists of the standards that authors should follow when designing and writing their documents. To improve rapidly as a proofreader and enhance your ability to provide proofreading services, following a style guide closely is one of the most effective approaches.

If you follow a style guide from the start of your proofreading session, you can ensure that the suggestions, revisions, and comments you raise about your client’s document are tailored toward the high-impact issues such as:

·         Formatting consistency

·         Use of language, grammar, and spelling

·         Standard nomenclature in technical subject areas

·         Ensuring standardisation for section numbering and captions (e.g., for figures and tables)

·         Avoiding racism, sexism, and homophobia

Processes to Improve Your Proofreading

People are always alarmed to find out how difficult it is to spot common proofreading mistakes. Ultimately, the human brain isn’t wired up to spot tiny, abstract details like missing words, incorrectly written words, and other similar errors; this is the reason why professional proofreading services are in such high demand today.

If you can’t afford a proofreading service for your latest publication, or if you would simply like to try your hand at this difficult task, then this article will be of benefit. Over the next few paragraphs, this article draws attention to three of the practical processes you can apply during your next proofreading session to greatly improve your accuracy, effectiveness, and speed.

 

1. Go slowly to save time

This is somewhat paradoxical – how does proofreading slowly save you time?

Well, the answer is simple. You save time by slowly proofreading your work because this saves you from having to go back at a later time and correct all the errors you missed by rushing.

When you receive a professional proofreading service, one of the tried-and-tested methods that your experienced proofreader will apply is to check through each sentence slowly and methodically. This allows them to see every word, every syllable, and every phrase, ensuring it’s digested properly.

Also, going slowly – despite being difficult and requiring discipline – provides an opportunity to check, double-check, and triple-check the document.

 

Image: In proofreading, slow but steady wins the race

2. Move through the text problem by problem

When you proofread your work, proceeding through it (slowly and methodically) sentence by sentence, it’s important not to try to find every single problem in only one pass through. If you try to fix everything in one go, you’ll end up doing a half-baked job.

Instead, if you check through your document several times, and each time focus only on a single type of issue (e.g., punctuation on one pass, spelling on another pass, and so on), you can stay focused and significantly reduce your rate of errors.

 

Image: While proofreading, focus on each problem category separately

3. Check footnotes separately

Many people think that because footnotes are usually “boring” to read (i.e., they typically contain only reference information intended for hardcore scholars), it’s acceptable not to check them as rigorously as you would the other parts of your document (e.g., your scientific abstract or your conclusion).

This is a serious mistake, however. As a matter of fact, if you don’t use proofreading services to check that your footnotes are written in good English (which is actually a tremendous time-saver!), you should devote specific time to checking them and only them.

When you perform your separate footnote check, be sure to increase the font size because footnotes are usually very small (remember to switch the font size back, though). This will ensure that when the proofreading process is finished, every part of your document is publication-ready.

 

Image: Footnotes need love and attention, too!

Are Young People Better at Proofreading?

To proofread a document well, the quickest and most effective solution – but also the most expensive – is simply to use professional proofreading services.  

Short of recruiting trained and experienced experts in professional proofreading, though, what can you do to improve the quality of your writing or, for that matter, get better at proofreading?

Until quite recently, any answer to this question would have been highly subjective. That’s to say, every writer, proofreader, or editor would have had their own personal thoughts and judgments about what constituted the main skills a proofreader requires, to do a good job.

However, in 2015, an article published by M. A Shafto and P. B. Tchounwou in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health systematically examined questions relating to both professional proofreading and amateur proofreading, as well as differences in proofreading between young and older adults.

On the question of what skills a person should have in order to perform well as a proofreader, Shafto and Tchounwou’s article drew attention to the importance of stored knowledge, language processing, and attentional resources. At the same time, the authors stated:

In addition to being a practical skill, proofreading is also a complex cognitive function that relies on both core language processes and higher-level cognitive abilities related to attention and problem-solving... During proofreading, detecting and correcting errors relies on language comprehension and production.

On reading this, as well as the other scientific insights offered by Shafto and Tchounwou, one quickly begins to see how much value professional proofreading services offer to students, academics, and businesspeople.

Given the complexity of the skills required to proofread a document effectively, it becomes self-evident that making use of experts in professional proofreading comes with a high return on investment.

However, an important issue exposed by Shafto and Tchounwou – which is also implied by the complex skills required for good proofreading – is the possibility that young people are “better” at proofreading compared to old people. In fact, the authors addressed this directly in their study, reporting that – based on their experimental evidence – young people do indeed appear to be better proofreaders:

Older adults ... were impaired relative to young adults when proofreading grammar or meaning errors, especially for difficult passages. Additionally, older adults were [less effective] at detecting errors compared to correcting ... errors, in keeping with previous research.

With all this said, it’s worth emphasising that the participants in Shafto and Tchounwou’s study were not all professional proofreaders. Therefore, it is only possible to conclude on the basis of their findings that – among untrained and inexperienced proofreaders – young people tend to be better due to their greater attentional resources and their ability to concentrate for longer periods of time.

Critically, among experienced and trained proofreaders who provide professional proofreading services, there is no evidence that age has a significant impact on performance.

For this reason, when you order your next proofreading service, we do not recommend that you consider age as a factor when selecting your proofreader. Instead, there are far more consequential factors to take into account, including the proofreader’s level of expertise, experience, and dedication.

Get your editing checked by professional proofreading service providers in London

In the whole of western Europe, London is the largest city, and in the whole of the world, London is the largest financial centre. With all the mix of commerce, politics, fashion, entertainment, media, art, business, and finance that occurs in Greater London and the City of London each day, it is unsurprising to note that London is also home to many of the strongest proofreaders and editors, who offer professional proofreading and high-quality editing services. 

Image: London is a centre of many things, including professional proofreading

London’s proofreaders, paraphrasers, editors, and writers play a vital supportive role for London’s business and economy, including its tourism, technology, media, professional services, manufacturing and construction, and financial services. Every sector just mentioned relies heavily on written communications for internal organisational matters, advertising and marketing, public relations, and stakeholder outreach. Therefore, to ensure that these written communications are streamlined, effective, and on-point, a rich and sophisticated community of writing professionals has emerged.

Two of the major services that can be procured from members of the community of writing professionals just mentioned are editing services and professional proofreading services. The high-level difference between these two services is essentially a matter of scope: while proofreaders tend to focus narrowly on grammar, punctuation, and spelling, editors focus more broadly not only on these issues but also on writing-related considerations such as flow, style, structure, concision, and readability.

Image: Editors tend to do more in-depth work than proofreaders, but this comes at a price!

Whether you choose to hire a proofreader or an editor who is based in London, or whether you choose to work with a professional who is based elsewhere, their strength in writing, proofreading, and editing your work, as well as their ability to deliver a high-quality document on time, is the pivotal concern that cannot be overlooked. If you can find someone to hire who is a resident of London, it is important to recognise that, given the higher cost of living in London, their prices may need to reflect this. For example, a professional who provides editing services in the city of Leeds, which is located in northern England, is likely to have a lower price rate than their counterparts in London.

 Image: London’s living costs may be reflected in London-based editors’ and proofreaders’ rates

If the services of a professional editor are a little too expensive for you!  Which is entirely reasonable given the higher prices these services tend to command mainly for the amount of in-depth work, relative to proofreading, then you might consider editing the work yourself. Once you have done this, you will then have the option of sending your edited work to a proofreader who, for a substantially lower rate than an editor, can check over the work you have done, identifying and ironing out its major flaws (that is, if there are any). Choosing between these two services is sometimes tricky, but the service price, along with the level of comprehensiveness you are looking for in your service, should be the major variables that you pay attention to.

What questions should you ask before hiring a professional proofreader?

Proofreaders work on all kinds of sensitive, mission-critical documents, whether for researchers submitting journal articles, students submitting dissertations, or businesses releasing annual reports. For this reason, if you have a document that requires hiring proofreading services, it is important to ensure that you receive professional proofreading, as opposed to unreliable and low-quality proofreading.

As a business, academic, student, author, or any other person needing to communicate in a clear and error-free manner,proofreading is highly valuable, and it offers a significant return on investment in terms of time and – in many cases – money. However, ensuring that your documents are checked over by a qualified and experienced person is not totally straightforward.

Before your order a service, it is essential to have a short conversation and, ideally, a lengthier email exchange with a potential proofreader (either a freelancer or a proofreader’s representative within a company). During this email exchange, or during your short telephone or Skype conversation with the proofreader, you should also be sure to ask the right questions to gauge their suitability.

A useful way to increase your chances of finding a proofreader who fits your project is to ask a candidate about their background, as well as their previous experience as a proofreader.At this point, don’t get too focused on finding an expert in your field; instead, you should prioritise finding an experienced proofreader who has worked on similar documents in the past. If you are interested in receiving an editing service, it is imperative to work with an editor who is experienced in your field. For example, if you are writing a paper that focuses on the field of computer science, it is worthwhile to find an editor with some knowledge of the subject, whereas this is not so with proofreading.

In professional proofreading, it is increasingly popular among companies, as well as freelancers, to offer free samples of the service offerings. As a case in point, if you do a Google search, or use any other well-known search engine,for professional proofreading or proofreading services, you will be able to find companies that offer a certain number of words free of charge. If you find a proofreader who you believe will be a good fit for your writing project, it is also important to ask them about the possibility of receiving a free sample, even if they do not advertise this.

A critically important and often-overlooked question, which many first-time customers forget to ask, relates to the issue of document deadlines. At certain professional proofreading providers, the services on offer can only be returned with long deadlines, whereas in other cases, deadlines of up to 5 hours can be found. If you have an urgent document but the company you have found does not list a quick enough turnaround, be sure to get in touch with them. In most cases, proofreading services providers will be happy to accommodate your deadline.

Quality proofreading services in London, UK

Professional proofreading services are available in most of the UK's major cities and the competitive competition within London is strong, but it is also true that services can be used from these companies using digital channels. As a matter of fact, it is common for businesses, authors, and speakers of languages other than English to order proofreading services over the Internet, and a growing number of these services are reliable, efficient, and affordable. Since the online proofreading space is so competitive, prices are falling and quality is increasing rapidly, both in terms of the convenience and price of the available services.

Newcomers to the proofreading space are likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of available service offerings. For example, if you enter a search term such as “proofreading services” into your search engine of choice (e.g., Google, Yahoo, or Bing), you will notice that hundreds, if not thousands, of hits are returned. The varied nature of the available proofreading services can also be problematic for newcomers. As a case in point, if you read the service descriptions of several professional proofreading services, it is typically the case that services vary in terms of price and levels of detail.

For people who are living in London or just visiting the historic city, it is worth remembering that countless famous and influential writers, editors, and proofreaders live in the city, along with prominent companies that specialise in providing professional proofreading services. This has been true for years, which is especially clear when considering the impressive list of writers, authors, and other creative people who have lived and worked in London (e.g., William Shakespeare).

Additionally, in a city where so many official business communications, research initiatives, and professional activities take place, a considerable number of proofreading companies, as well as freelancers, have emerged to cater to growing demand for high-quality content.In the past, it was common for companies to recruit permanent proofreaders, editors, and copy writers, who would be assigned duties ranging from re-organising business plans and grant applications to proofreading, editing, or paraphrasing press releases, official reports, or presentations.Today, however, companies in London can use the Internet to recruit specialised proofreaders from nearby companies.

Proofreaders are valuable for several reasons, whether you need help improving the readability and clarity of your college or university work, your creative projects, or your business-related documents.If you are interested in recruiting the services of a professional proofreader, especially if you want to narrow your search to a high-quality London-based company or freelancer,it is important to consider the importance of their reliability and effectiveness. Although most proofreaders will offer a guarantee that they will correct any deficits you find in their work free of charge,receiving a correct-first-time document is often a key demand for mission-critical writing.