Proofreading: Not Just for Novels!
Proofreading your own material—or material you’ve read dozens of times—can seem like a task of Herculean proportions. Maybe you don’t trust your own proofreading skills, or you don’t have time to wait for a teammate to read it over. You don’t have to have a background in literature or a ton of free time (or even a red pen) to proofread copy, and it will always be worth it!
Here are some quick tips to get you through that important email with the entire leadership team CC’d, or the training one-sheeter that’s due by EOD!
Print your material/copy out when at all possible. You’ll catch more errors from printed words than words on a screen.
Don’t skim over dates/numbers! Verify that your commas are in the right place ($1,000 VS $10,000), and verify that days of the week match the dates (is Thursday actually the 10th?).
Read it out loud. You’ll catch simple errors that your brain autocorrects for you and discover issues with tone.
Flip it and reverse it. Read it backward, from the end to the beginning; it tricks your brain into not autocorrecting.
Don’t be over-reliant on spellcheckers. Sometimes, your typos will form an actual word that’s spelled correctly, and a spellchecker won’t pick it up.
That being said, try Grammarly! It even has an add-on you can use in your browser or MS Office.