Proofreading As of this printing, Evergreen does not employ anyone to proofread your Final Academic Statement after you submit it. Any mistakes or inconsistencies that show up in your Final Academic Statement when you submit it will be included in your transcript. That makes each student responsible for submitting final drafts that are free from errors. Mistakes in capitalization, punctuation, spacing, grammar, and spelling are sometimes the first thing a reader notices, even before they understand the content of what someone is saying. This puts a lot of pressure on these elements of the writing. To add to the pressure, innocent mistakes can make a reader feel like a writer didn’t spend enough time reviewing their work. Sometimes a writer might want to draw attention to their craft by making an intentional choice to break standard conventional grammar. Typos, however, don’t have anything to do with the content or message. The spirit of proofreading is really to ensure that the writer gets their reader’s full attention for their ideas and craft. Despite its importance, proofreading doesn’t come easily; it is notoriously difficult to catch your own mistakes on the proofreading level. Every writer makes proofreading errors in their drafts. This is why professional writers (and faculty) have editors!
54 | The Evergreen State College | Writing Center
