How to Proofread Your Writing: Five Tips for People Who Hate to Reread

I hate proofreading. I’m not naturally good at it. I’m impatient by nature and secretly convinced that readers will forgive my typos because they know my heart is in the right place. (They won’t.)

You know what I hate more than proofreading? Embarrassing errors in my writing. I’ve accepted that I must do an excellent job proofreading my work or face the Mistake Police, who are never kind. Please accept these five practical proofreading tips. They’ve worked for me, and I bet they’ll work for you, too.

• 1. Anticipate errors. Before you begin proofreading, list the mistakes you’re likely to find. Maybe one of the experts quoted in your piece has a difficult-to-spell name or you’ve used units of measure like Bcf/d (that’s Billion cubic feet per day, of course). It’s easy to predict you’ll find errors there. Also anticipate mistakes that were added during the editing process. Cutting, pasting, and moving text can cause writers to omit a word or mess up the spacing.

• 2. Budget time to gain distance from your writing. Yes, you can stare at your writing and be unable to see it. You grow blind to a project when you’ve been working on it for a while. That’s why you should build in time to gain distance from your writing:
  • If you can afford only a little time, step away from your computer and do something else; take a walk, sort through papers, get a snack.
  • Work your writing schedule so you end your workday with a completed draft and start the next day by proofreading it. That overnight break will make you more effective.
  • Plan for and protect proofreading time in your schedule. If anyone asks, tell them you have a meeting with William Strunk, Jr. and Elwyn Brooks White.

• 3. Read your work aloud. Speaking is our most reliable language “muscle,” and reading aloud will help you notice your errors. The way you breathe when you read aloud lets you review punctuation. “Hard to read aloud” often equals “hard to understand when reading,” so trust your voice to help you find your mistakes. Or listen to Word read your work to you. On the Review tab, click “Read Aloud” and listen to the voice of your choosing.

• 4. Use an unfamiliar font. This tip is so simplistic it’s bordering on a hack, but one way to see your work afresh, so you can proofread effectively, is to make your work look different. Use an unfamiliar font such as Comic Sans or Bradley Hand. You’ll relieve that version blindness that allows errors to slip by.

• 5. Proofread in hardcopy. Don’t “OK boomer” me here. You’ll be a better proofreader if you work in hard copy:
  • It’s easier to compare two sections of a document in hardcopy.
  • Marking hard copy with a pen is a memory aid, which will serve you as you proofread other sections of the document.
  • Looking at a screen makes your eyes tired, and tired eyes miss mistakes.

I’m vowing to become a better proofreader of my own work. In my dark past, I’ve made ignorant errors that careful proofreading would’ve caught. I once offered to lead a workshop on August 32. So, in front of everyone, I’m promising to be a careful proofreader from this day forward.

Leslie O’Flahavan is a get-to-the point writer and an experienced, versatile writing instructor. E-WRITE owner since 1996, Leslie leads customized writing courses for Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations.

Leslie helps the most stubborn, inexperienced, or word-phobic employees at your organization improve their writing skills, so they can do their jobs better. As a result of her work, Leslie’s clients improve their customer satisfaction ratings, reduce training cycles, improve productivity, and limit legal risk. Leslie is a LinkedIn Learning author of six writing courses including Writing in Plain Language, Technical Writing, and Writing for Social Media. She’s the cohost of the monthly LinkedIn Live broadcast “Fix This Writing!”

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash