Editing & Proofreading Checklists

The best writers do not get everything right first time — they check. The trick is to check in passes: read once for one kind of thing, then again for another, instead of trying to catch everything at once. This page gives you three quick passes to run before you hand anything in. Tick as you go, and if a line draws a blank, follow the link to the article that explains it. Start deeper at The Walk-In Clinic if a whole pass feels shaky.

Pass 1: The mechanics check

This is the "is it correct?" pass — the nuts and bolts that a reader notices when they go wrong.

• [ ] Every sentence starts with a capital and ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark.
• [ ] No two sentences are glued together with just a comma.
• [ ] Every sentence is actually a full sentence (it has a subject and a verb), not a stray fragment.
• [ ] Verbs match their subjects — the dog runs, the dogs run.
• [ ] Apostrophes are only in contractions (it's, don't) and possessives (Sam's), not in ordinary plurals.
• [ ] Names, places, days and months have capital letters.

Read slowly — this pass is about spotting, not fixing at speed.

Pass 2: The clarity check

Now read as if you were the reader, not the writer. This pass asks "will they understand it?"

• [ ] Each sentence says one clear thing; the long ones are not tangled.
• [ ] The order makes sense — each idea leads to the next.
• [ ] You have not repeated the same word three times in a row.
• [ ] Anything a stranger would not know is explained.
• [ ] The tense stays steady — you have not hopped from past to present by accident.

If a sentence makes you pause, it will stop your reader too. Split it, or say it plainly.

Pass 3: The final tidy

The quick last sweep, best done slightly later — even five minutes away makes the slips jump out.

• [ ] Spellings you are unsure of are checked, not guessed.
• [ ] Your spelling variety is consistent — all -ise or all -ize, not a mix.
• [ ] The confusables are right: its/it's, their/there, your/you're.
• [ ] Names of people and places are spelled correctly throughout.
• [ ] It reads smoothly when you say it aloud — the surest test of all.

A worked example

Here is a rough first draft of one paragraph:

me and my friend went to the shop, we bought some sweet's. it was to expensive so we only got one bag we shared it on the way home

Pass 1 (mechanics) catches the missing capital at the start, the lower-case it, the comma splice in shop, we bought, the run-on bag we shared, and me and my friend where my friend and I is wanted. Pass 2 (clarity) is largely happy — the story is clear once the sentences are separated. Pass 3 (final tidy) spots sweet's (stray apostrophe) and to where too is meant. Cleaned up:

My friend and I went to the shop and bought some sweets. It was too expensive to get more than one bag, so we shared it on the way home.

Notice how each pass caught a different kind of thing — that is exactly why you run them separately rather than all at once.

Reading aloud: your strongest tool

If you only do one thing from this page, read your work aloud before handing it in. Your ear notices what your eye skates over: a missing word, a sentence that runs out of breath, a tense that slipped, a join that clunks. Read slowly, and read what is actually on the page — not what you meant to write. When you stumble over a sentence, that is not a reading mistake; it is the sentence telling you it needs fixing.

How to use the three passes

Do them in order and do not try to merge them — the whole point is that each pass looks for one kind of thing, so your eye is not overloaded. Reading aloud turns the final tidy into your strongest tool: your ear catches missing words, clumsy joins and wrong tenses that your eye slides over.

And keep it in proportion. You are checking, not hunting for reasons to worry — most of your writing is already fine. Two calm passes beat ten anxious ones. When a whole pass keeps turning up the same slip, that is your signal to go and learn that one thing properly, using the links below, so next time it is right from the start.

Where next

• Reference — the young-learner shelf — every quick-guide in one place
• The Walk-In Clinic — match a symptom to its fix
• Doesn't My Reader Already Know This? — writing for your reader
• Does Correct Grammar Sound Stiff? — keeping it natural