Online proofreaders

Statement of Purpose: Editing and Proofreading

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Personal Statement Editing and Proofreading ServicesYour statement of purpose is an extremely important document that can heavily influence whether or not you are offered a place on the university course of your dreams. Every year university admission departments review thousands of student statements and, for this reason, you need to make sure that you know how to write a statement of purpose.

Before we proceed, it’s important that you understand that a statement of purpose is not the same thing as a personal statement or application essay. For more information, check out our guide to the difference between a personal statement and a statement of purpose. If you are looking for help writing a personal statement, you would be better off reading our guide on how to write a statement of purpose.

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5 Reasons why you Should use a Document Editor Today

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When you are writing or publishing an important document, you should never underestimate the importance of having your written English checked by a professional proofreading agency. Here are five reasons why you should use a document editor from Vappingo to perfect your written English documents:


English expert document editors1)  Our Professional document editors are English experts. Our editors know the English language inside out and will analyze your written English using over 160 English grammar rules. However, unlike automatic grammar checking software and websites, our document editors won’t simply point out the mistake and make suggestions for how you can fix it, they will actually fix it for you, saving you the major headache and confusion of deciphering complex English rules.

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A Great Proofreading Trick For Mac Owners

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Mac LogoWe’re always telling our customers that one great proofreading trick is to read your paper or essay aloud in order to audibly hear mistakes. Well, if you’re a Mac owner, you may be able to go one better and have your Mac do the reading for you!

Hearing the words without having to read them yourself will undoubtedly assist you to identify punctuation and grammar issues and, best of all, the function is really easy to use and set up.

Select the Apple menu > System Preferences > Speech > Text to Speech. Place a check next to the check box “Speak selected text when the key is pressed”. Click on the “Set Key” button and choose a combination of keys that you will use to activate the speech recognition activity. Choose your preferred voice from the options offered at the top of the window and select the speaking rate from the speeds available. Close the window and you’re done.

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Proofreader, Proof-reader or Proof reader?

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Proofreader, proof-reader or proof reader… hmm. Perform a simple search on the Internet and you’ll quickly become confused about which version is actually correct. In practice, all three versions of this job title are perfectly acceptable, including the lesser-spotted hyphenated version. We favor the term proofreader and that’s why you will see that this is … Read more

7 Common English Errors Every Proofreader Should Look For

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Grammar lady says "apostrophes are for possessives, not pluralsThere are a number of common English errors that our proofreaders come across time and time again and, given that Vappingo’s mission is to make written communications the norm, we feel that it is our duty to help our customers with their written English. Hopefully, this post will help a few of you to learn from your mistakes and develop your own proofreading skills. If nothing else, they most certainly highlight the importance of proofreading and editing before it is published.

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Proofreading Joke: An Important Distinction

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Thanks to James Garlick who sent in a really good joke about the importance of proofreading that he found on the Internet. We love it!

If only this guy had come across our editing and proofreading services.

In an ancient monastery, a new monk arrived to dedicate his life to subservient solitude and to join the others as they copied ancient records. The first thing he noticed was that the other monks were copying, by hand, books that had already been copied by hand.

The new monk had to speak up: “Forgive me, Brother Mark, but copying other copies by hand allows many chances for error. How do we know we aren’t copying someone else’s mistakes? Are they ever checked against the originals? Who is proofreading them?”

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Proofreading Symbols Every Proofreader Should Know

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A set of proofreading symbols

Proofreading symbols are like a foreign language to most people; they are often considered to be an indecipherable series of squiggles, letters, and symbols that mean absolutely nothing to the regular guy or girl on the street. Unless you know what these proofreading marks actually mean, using them to improve and develop your writing is … Read more

Spellchecker Poem: Proofreading Software FAIL

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Once again we have come across a great example of why proofreading software cannot be relied upon as a substitute for using professional proofreaders.  This time, it is in the form of the Spellchecker Poem.  Run this little verse through your spell checker and you will find that it doesn’t contain one single mistake, or does it?

Candidate for a Pullet Surprise by Mark Eckman and Jerrold H. Zar

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

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Idiom: The Black Sheep of the Family

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black sheep of the family

Fig. A worthless or disreputable family member.

The “black sheep” is a member of a social group or family who is regarded as a disgrace and an embarrassment to the rest of the group. The phrase became popular during the 18th century and is associated with the proverb, “There’s a black sheep in every flock.”

It is believed that the phrase derived from the fact that the fleeces of black sheep were not as valuable as those of the white sheep.  While the wool of a white sheep could be dyed many different colors, the black fleece was a lot more limited and, for this reason, people preferred to have only white sheep in their flocks.

Examples:

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The Most Painfully Idiotic Contradictions You Have Ever Seen

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Top sign reads 'Do not enter". Sign directly below reads "enter only"

One of the biggest thing our proofreaders keep a beady eye out for when proofreading important documents is contradictions. It’s important that your text does not contain any events characters, plot lines and settings that contradict each other and leave your readers scratching their heads. Here are some great examples of contradictions in action.

Sign reads: "Do not enter. Entrance only."

No pets allowed. All pets must be on a leash.

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A Humorous Look at The Importance of Punctuation

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Punctuation is importantPunctuation is not really that important, right?  WRONG!  It’s very important, and a tiny, misplaced comma or question mark can cost millions of dollars or break someone’s heart. That’s why using native English proofreading services before publishing your work is so important.

Not convinced?

Take a look at some of these great examples of punctuation mistakes.  If you didn’t previously recognize the importance of punctuation, you will after seeing these!

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The Definitive Guide to Cockney Rhyming Slang

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Dog and bone. Cockney rhyming slang.Cockney Rhyming Slang is a part of the English language that many English learners may not be familiar with.  In English, a slang word is a word that isn’t really considered to be standard English but is something that many people continue to use nonetheless.

Cockney rhyming slang first started to appear on the streets of the East End of London during the 19th century and was primarily used as a secret language through which criminals could communicate with one another without being understood by the police.  However, despite its origins, it has remained popular with all people in that area of the country and is still very much in use today.  People who use these slang expressions generally substitute one word with two or more words that rhyme with the original word to speak in some type of code.  Only people who are familiar with Cockney Rhyming Slang would be able to truly understand what the person is actually talking about.

Confused?  Let’s have a bit of fun.

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Proofreading Marks for All Needs

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If life hands you melons, hire a proofreader

Proofreading marks are used by proofreaders and editors to indicate an error in the copy.  The nature of the mark is directly related to the type of error that has been produced, and proofreaders and editors will place the proofreading mark in the line of text where the error takes place.

Depending on the nature of the editing services, the proofreader will then either write a correction in the margin or will write a correction directly above the sentence.

You can read more about what proofreaders do in our guide to the differences between editing and proofreading.

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Idioms in Music: Lady Gaga Lyrics Explained

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Picture of Lady Gaga wearing meatIf you’re teaching or learning English, one way to keep things interesting is to look at the use of idioms in music.  One musician who certainly knows how to rock idioms is Lady Gaga.

Lady Gaga shocked the world in 2011 when she appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards wearing a dress made of meat… yuk!  Love her or loathe her, her songs can be actually very useful if you are learning English as a second language. In this article, we take a look at the idioms contained within some of Lady Gaga’s most popular songs and tell you exactly what they mean.

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10 Very Funny Restaurant Signs

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Sign reads: "eat here and get gas"We love receiving links to funny bloopers. These funny restaurant signs were sent in from a professor of English who uses them in her class.

The following funny restaurant and hotel signs are real. We think the people who wrote these are in desperate need of our professional proofreading services!

P.S. If you like these, you’ll love our President Bush Bloopers.

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Introductory Phrases. What Are They and Why Should You Care?

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Image of introductory phrasesLast week we promised to share some of our proofreader’s tricks of the trade and because we’re great at keeping promises, here they are. Again we’re looking at the common English errors that proofreaders will look for when they are studying a document. This week we’re going to stick with the comma theme and explore another one of the errors that seem to appear regularly: failing to use a comma after introductory phrases or words.

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