English Composition › Section U · Handbook: grammar, style, and documentation › Topic U.9
Mechanics and proofreading
Mechanics are the small conventions of written English: capital letters, italics, titles and numbers. Readers rarely notice them when they are right, but every slip chips away at your credibility, so the last stage of writing is a slow, deliberate proofread.
In this topic
- Why the small things matter
- Capital letters
- Capitalising titles
- Italics or quotation marks?
- Numbers in MLA and APA
- Proofreading strategies
- A personal editing checklist
- Formatting and presentation
- Worked example: proofreading a paragraph
- Worked example: titles in a sentence
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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