Proofreading Tips

Proofreading is considered a large part of writing. It can save individuals from making mistakes that can cost them that coveted job position, the long awaited business deal, entry into the desired university of choice, or even the elusive love relationship between a couple. In recent years, chivalry is seen to be dead because of the emergence of the dot com era. Nobody writes letters by hand anymore because they can use laptops and computers to type them out. There are also other forms of communication such as social media, emails and phones that people can use to relay information. Individuals have developed ways of shortening words when they are texting due to the limited number of characters. This has led to the syndrome being transmitted into other forms of writing such as academic papers, official communication and others. Individuals who communicate in such a manner fail to be taken seriously, even if the information they could be relaying is important. This therefore proves how much proofreading is an important matter in writing.

The aspect of proofreading has led to the development of grammar checkers over the years beginning with word processor checkers. Currently there are various online websites that offer proofreading services to clients for a fee. Editors for magazines and newspapers make their income simply from proofreading articles written by their journalists and main article writers. All in all, the best proof reader should always be the person who has written the document in the first place. This helps them to notice the information which they do not want in their documentation. When they are through, they should ask their friends or families to read through documents they have written. This is in order to correct the mistakes that they may have overlooked or missed. It is important for a writer to also take a break from proofreading and focus on other things that they have prioritized. This helps them to rest their minds from the written texts for a few hours. When they handle the texts again, their minds are clearer and they can notice errors easily.

It is also great for the author to read their documents out aloud, in order to notice through hearing if it’s missing important words that you could have failed to see before. It’s also advisable for the writer to print out a hard copy. This may help you look at the document in a different perspective. It might assist you to catch spelling mistakes such as “form” when you meant to write “from”. The computer’s word processor grammar checker might fail to notice that because the spelling is correct, though the words have different meanings.