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Writers tend to be their own worst proofreaders. Why? It’s probably because when they proof their own work, they tend to sink deep into the more organic issues of their texts rather than restricting their attention to spelling, grammar and punctuation.

For example, instead of catching the fact that they shouldn’t have spelled “principal” with a “-ple,” they begin pondering whether they should have used the phrase “tyrannical taskmaster” instead. By the time they decide against that, they have moved on, leaving the offending “principle” to incorrectly describe the balding guy who ran their school.

Proofreading is a squirrelly thing. I wrote a book about angels once and had the devil of a time finding the errors. I proofed the book several times. I asked some other intelligent people to proof it. My publisher and his assistant both proofed it. The distributor also had it proofed.

In the first edition, there were 22 major errors and typos! And it wasn’t a long book.

To prove my point about proofreading being squirrelly, quickly read the following sentence and count the number of f’s you find in it.

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

How many f’s did you pick out? Most people find three or maybe four. Yet there are six! People typically don’t “see” the f’s in the three occurrences of the word “of” in the sentence. If you found them, you’re better than most – perhaps a born editor.

These proofreading strategies can safeguard your image and save you some embarrassment:

1. Before you start, minimize distractions. Concentrate!
2. Select your medium: computer screen or paper? Which is best for you?
3. On the first read-through, pay attention to meaning and construction.
4. On the second read-through, restrict your focus to each word, each punctuation mark. Look at each word. Read slowly. (Some proofreaders read texts backwards, word by word.)
5. Check for your most common errors (for example, “your” for “you’re”).
6. In a longer document, use your word processor’s search-and-replace function to find and fix errors that may recur.
7. Option: Read the text aloud slowly. This brings two senses into play.
8. Pay special attention to prominent text, such as headlines, subheadings and captions.
9. If time permits, have someone else proofread what you’ve written. It’s twice as hard to spot mistakes in your own writing as it is in someone else’s work.

PS. Jump to the next level. Steve Osborne’s real-world writing e-books are now available for immediate download. Only $7. Click here.

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