Improving and correcting

[olydiagron.livejournal.com]

Dear friends!
Would anyone like to give me example of the usage of исправить and попрaвить?
As far as I understand, исправить is when you make a wrong right, when you straiten something out, and попрaвить is when you make something better by adjusting it a bit?
I am thinking of "исправительная колония" (поправительная колония sounds funny.. :), and "поправить шарф".

But when it comes to ошибки, can they be both исправленные and поправленные? And when I have corrected all misstakes in a text - has it been popravlen or ispravlen?
I usually say that I "исправляю" if it is simple grammatical mistakes or spelling, but "поправляю" if somebody recommended to improve the syntax, did I get it wrong?
/Amanda

Comments

[zoa-mel-gustar.livejournal.com]

You can only исправить grammatical errors, but you can both поправит and исправить the text in general. Also, one can say, for example, "поправь вот тут" or "у тебя буква пропущена в заголовке, надо поправить"; I'm not sure if that's actually grammatically correct, but in my experience such expressions are common in, at least, informal conversation.

[olydiagron.livejournal.com]

Thank you!