How to Proofread Your Writing

Being a skilled writer is an admirable quality. Indeed, a knack for writing will open doors in your profession, or as a hobby, that you never thought possible. As you learned in school, your writing is a reflection of you as an individual. No matter how well structured the sentence, paragraph, section or chapter, if it suffers from misspellings, glaring grammatical errors or even poor formatting, you’ll disappoint a significant part of your reading audience. Here’s how you can learn to proofread your own documents to ensure they reflect positively on you, the author.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Dictionary
• Thesaurus
• Style manual

1. Don’t write to edit. As you begin writing, allow yourself to complete the thought before going back to edit it. A conscientious writer will always revise her work before submitting it, but the revision process can begin only after the writing is complete. When you sit down to write your essay, report or chapter, keep at it until you’re done.

2. Make sure you’ve written what you intended. When you’re finished writing, re-read the prompt or the assignment and compare it to the text you’ve just written. If you think your message answers the mail, then you’re ready to proof your work. If you’re unsure, highlight the critical elements of the assignment, compare the prompt to your work and revise your text as necessary.

3. Know the purpose. Depending on the kind of writing you’re doing, such as a business report, academic essay or legal brief, the form will dictate certain elements of your text. For example, an academic essay must have a clear thesis point and your supporting evidence, the body of your paper, must support that point. A business report on the other hand, must meet the qualities of being succinct, informative and readable. Review the elements of style that pertain to the form of writing with which you’re involved and make certain your text meets the standards.

4. Read your text aloud so that you, just like any of your readers, will be forced to interact with the words. PC-based proofreading will allow you to highlight and correct errors as you identify them. For printed or typed text, keep a pencil handy to circle errors. Your first pass through the document is for content. Make sure that your sentences are complete, that your parenthesis and quotation marks are closed appropriately and that any run-on sentences benefit from an additional period…or two. When you’ve made all the corrections from the first pass, scan the document again to ensure that the corrections really fixed the situation and the corrections themselves are correct.

5. Check for spelling errors. Your word processor contains a wealth of handy tools, spellchecker among them, but whether you’re proofing on a screen or on paper, double-check every questionable word. During the final pass through your document, check it for repetitive words and phrases, clichéd phrases or incorrect subject-verb agreement. It’s here that your dictionary, style manual and thesaurus will become invaluable.

6. Wrap it up. As a final effort before submitting your text, make sure it’s pleasing to the eye. In other words, ensure the margins, paragraph indentations, headers and footers are all uniform and correct. After all, if your reader picks up two identical submissions and one appears significantly neater than the other, she’ll probably select the one that’s more visually appealing.

Tips & Warnings

• Proofreading becomes easier over time.
• If you make writing errors repetitively, such as comma splices or subject-verb agreement, tab your style manual for ready reference.
• If you’re proofing your document on a PC with Internet access, take advantage of web-based dictionaries and thesauruses.
• If you find the process overwhelming, seek the assistance of an online or other freelance editor.
• Never submit a document until you’ve proofread it completely. Once it’s gone, you can’t get it back.