Writing Your Personal Statement, Part 9: Proof

Although all components of a law school application are important, the most important one is the personal statement. To that end, this series explains some of the pivotal points you should keep in mind as you prepare to write your law school application personal statement. This is a 10-part series that will help get you from starting to finishing your personal statement.

Proof

Once you self-edit and have others read and give feedback on your essay, you’re pretty much on the home stretch. If your essay has made it this far, then you’re approximately 95% done and only one thing remains before you can close the book on writing it and get ready to submit it along with your applications: proofing. In a sense, proofing and editing are much the same! You’re looking for typos, bloopers, and erroneous use of language. However, proofing is not as intense as editing, because you’re no longer looking for plot holes, reading for cohesiveness, or checking your story for clarity. Now, you’re simply double-checking the technical aspects of your writing: spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Chances are pretty good that any errors in these categories have been caught by either you or your readers by now, but giving your essay a final once-over is never a bad thing.

In this near-final installment of our “Writing Your Personal Statement” series, we’ll briefly recap what you need to look for in the spelling, grammar, and punctuation categories. For a full account, revisit the editing part of this series.

Spelling

Carefully read each of your sentences looking for any spelling errors. Remember, don’t solely rely on a spellchecker! It wont catch errors like mistyping “four” instead of “for.” If you are unsure if a word’s spelling or usage is correct, don’t be afraid to double-check using an outside source like Dictionary.com.

Grammar

Make sure all your sentences have a subject and verb, and that the relationship between them is clear. Ensure your pronouns have clear antecedents. Double-check your use of apostrophes and pluralization of words.

Punctuation

Watch out for run-on sentences, comma splices, and sentence fragments. Those are the three primary offenders I run across in students’ admissions essays.

…and Done!

Once you’ve thoroughly proofed your essay one final time the, voilá! You’re done. You can rest easy and close the chapter on this particular part of your application. Now, all you have to do is get the rest of your materials ready, submit your applications, and wait for those fat envelopes or congratulatory emails to start showing up! Kudos on a job well done!