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Self-Editing Checklist & Guideline for Your Essay

Updated: Dec 24, 2025

Self-editing can be seen as the final touch before submitting the final version of your essay, and it is equally useful for any type of essay, including an academic essay, literary essay, or even a research paper. It can uncover both minor and major flaws that can seriously improve the final version of your document.


Image of a university student at a desk with a laptop.

Self-editing your own work is in contrast to seeking professional proofreading service from a copy editing company or a professional academic editor. It means choosing among the following options:


  1. Self-editing with the naked eye

  2. Using paid or fee versions of proofreading software

  3. Seeking help from a friend to read your work


Now, you don't necessarily have to choose among these three options, as they are not exclusive. It would be best to make use of all three options to end up with the best possible version of your final work. In this article, we discuss how you can go about making the most of the self-editing process.

Contact us for assistance in editing and proofreading your essay


Self-editing: Definition & checklist

Self-editing is the process of correcting your own written work. It is typically the final stage of the writing process. Even students or writers who eventually use a professional editor should do self-editing. It is, after all, your own work, and there are things that a busy editor may simply be unable to catch.


Self-editing means stepping back to ensure that your written work meets the requirements or rubric of the assignment. This involves doing the following:


1. Give your essay distance. You should allow some time to pass between your completion of the essay and your review of it. Working hard on a manuscript may make you immune to its glaring flaws or errors. Allowing one to three days to pass will allow you to see what you missed before.


2. Check your essay against a style sheet or rubric. To edit your work properly, you first need to understand what you are looking for. This can be achieved by carefully comparing your written work to the given style sheet or rubric of the assignment.


This means double-checking things such as:


  • The style guide being used. For example, APA, CMOS, or MLA.

  • Spelling and abbreviation lists

  • Word count

  • Required number of references

  • Required formatting for headings and tables

  • Punctuation rules. For example, using the Oxford comma


3. Review your thesis statement. The thesis statement is the most important part of your essay. It is usually stated at the beginning of the essay. However, it should always be revised. Essays usually take on a life of their own, and you should always go back to make sure that the thesis statement matches the final form or shape that the essay takes. To learn more, check out this prior article on how to write a thesis statement.


4. Use a second pair of eyes. Having someone else look at your essay means that you can discover mistakes that you won't be able to catch with your own eyes. As mentioned earlier, being too close to your own work or investing too much emotion and effort can lead to the development of biases and blind spots. A neutral friend would be free of such biases and blind spots and would give you the advantage of a fresh perspective.


Check out the table below for a self-editing checklist that covers more of what you should look for when editing your own work:

Criteria 

Checklist Items

Place a check here after completing each step

Thesis Statement

  • Make sure my thesis statement is clear

  • Make sure each paragraph contributes to and expands on the thesis statement

✅

Punctuation 

  • I read my written piece aloud

  • Quotation marks are correctly placed

✅

Capitalization

  • I checked correct capitalization in the beginning of sentences and proper nouns

✅

Grammar

  • My sentences are complete

  • I have no run-on sentences

✅

Spelling 

  • I checked spelling using a reliable spell-checker

  • My spelling is consistent according to a style guide

✅


Using proofreading software for self-editing

Proofreading software is highly specialized software that can be used to edit your paper or essay. Many of them have only been developed in the past few years. Before the rise of LLMs, the most popular proofreading agent by far was Grammarly.


Now, we need to make a distinction between LLM proofreading software and traditional proofreading software. Traditional proofreading or editing software apps work by finding likely errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and so on, and suggesting what changes to be made. If you have ever used Grammarly, then you know what that looks like.


LLM software, such as ChatGPT, is different. They rely on a user interface that is more or less a chatbot. Your essay is copied and pasted into the chatbot, or the document is uploaded with a prompt or instructions written by you on the changes that you want.


The LLM chatbot then gives you a corrected document without any opportunity to accept or reject changes. As a result, we don't recommend LLM chatbots for editing. There is no such thing as a proofreading software program that can result in 100% accuracy. So an editing application that doesn't allow you to review your own work is not recommended.


Instead, we suggest the following proofreading applications:



PerfectIt is the oldest and most traditional software in the list. All the others have AI-enhanced features, which means that they suffer from hallucinations, a persistent problem with LLM-based software. Grammarly is the most popular; however, it is often not suitable for complex or lengthy academic documents. It is best for emails, short essays, social media writing, and blog articles.


PerfectIt, on the other hand, is ideal for long documents such as theses and dissertations. They ensure stylistic consistency, such as using abbreviations, proper spelling, and heading/subheading formatting style throughout the article. If you want to learn more about how to use proofreading software, check out this article on our sister site, MA Editorial: Best Tools for Editing Manuscripts.


However, proofreading software should not be seen as a replacement for your own due diligence. Think of it as the final touch to polishing your own work. Relying on LLM software to write and edit your essay will lead to either shoddy work or, worse than that, the failure to make any improvement in your writing skills.

Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2025, December 20). Self-Editing Checklist & Guideline for Your Essay. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/self-editing


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