Writing Strategy

1
Writing Strategy
COPS
A guide for students to use while proofreading
papers
2
COPS

• Capitalization
• Overall Appearance
• Punctuation
• Spelling

3
C Capitalize

• Have I capitalized the first word of each
  sentence and all proper nouns?
• Did I capitalize the first letter of each word in
  the title?

4
O Overall Appearance

• How is the overall appearance of my paper?
• Did I make any handwriting, margin or messy
  errors? (can be fixed in the publishing step)
• Is each sentence a complete sentence?
• Did I correctly indent any paragraphs?

5
P Punctuation

• Did I put punctuation at the end of each
  sentence?
• Did I use apostrophes for possessive nouns only?
• Did I put commas between words in a series?
• Did I put a comma in any compound sentence?

6
S Spelling

• Do the words look like they are spelled right?
• Can I sound them out or use a dictionary?

7
Advantages of COPS

• Students can work on their own to begin
  proofreading their paper.
• Students begin to learn what to look for when
  proofreading a paper.

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Disadvantages of COPS

• Students need to understand all of the concepts
  involved in the process.
• Do they know the rules for capitalization,
  punctuation, complete sentences, and paragraph
  formatting?