Proofreading

 

Proofread Your Writing Portfolio (Basic Rubric)

Note: This assignment is worth 100 points!

It's time to proofread your writing portfolio once again.

Use the following checklist. I call this checklist my "basic rubric". You should use it for all your writing assignments.


Basic Rubric

1

Did you punctuate your title properly?

  • Do not capitalize articles or prepositions
  • Do not capitalize every letter of your title.
  • Do not put a period at the end of your title.

2
  • Did you break your writing up into easily digestible paragraphs?
  • Did you start a new paragraph each time
    • you switched to a new topic?
    • you changed the setting of my story?
    • someone new starts to speak?

3
  • Is each of your paragraphs at least three sentences long?

4
  • Did you format your paragraphs in internet style?
  • Did you skip a line between your title and your first paragraph?

5
  • Did you start each sentence with a capital letter?
  • Did you end each sentence with a period?
  • Did you put a space after each period or comma (not before)?

6

Did you capitalize all proper nouns? (Proper nouns include the names of specific countries, cities, places, people, and classes.)

  • Japan
  • San Francisco
  • Disneyland
  • Presidio Middle School
  • Lisa
  • English Language Arts

7

Did you remember to use an apostrophe when forming possessives?

  • my father's car
  • my uncle's house
  • Bill's dog

8

Did you remember to use an apostrophe when forming contractions?

  • can't
  • doesn't
  • I'm
  • I'll
  • won't

9

Did you use the following words correctly?

your

belongs to you

you're

you are

there

in that place

their

belongs to them

they're

they are

its

belongs to it

it's

it is

to

indicates direction (I went to the store).

too

also (I'm hungry too).

than

used to make a comparison:

  • It's hotter than hell in here!

then

used to mean "after that":

  • I ate cookies, and then I ate cake.

 

10

Did you run a spellcheck? Did you fix all those squiggly red and blue lines?

11

Did you re-read you stuff several times, looking for common errors in spelling and punctuation?

  • i hate school cause its boring. (three mistakes).

12

Did you follow the Number Rule?

  • Numbers between one and nine should be spelled out. Numbers 10 or above should be written in Arabic numerals.
    • I have two cats.
    • My sister is 22 years old.

 

Lesson Steps

  1. Use the checklist to proofread your writing portfolio once again.

Self Check

  • Did you use the checklist to clean up your writing portfolio?