proofreading your own writing

Editing and Proofreading

What this handout is about.

This handout provides some tips and strategies for revising your writing. To give you a chance to practice proofreading, we have left seven errors (three spelling errors, two punctuation errors, and two grammatical errors) in the text of this handout. See if you can spot them!

Is editing the same thing as proofreading?

Not exactly. Although many people use the terms interchangeably, editing and proofreading are two different stages of the revision process. Both demand close and careful reading, but they focus on different aspects of the writing and employ different techniques.

Some tips that apply to both editing and proofreading

• Get some distance from the text! It’s hard to edit or proofread a paper that you’ve just finished writing—it’s still to familiar, and you tend to skip over a lot of errors. Put the paper aside for a few hours, days, or weeks. Go for a run. Take a trip to the beach. Clear your head of what you’ve written so you can take a fresh look at the paper and see what is really on the page. Better yet, give the paper to a friend—you can’t get much more distance than that. Someone who is reading the paper for the first time, comes to it with completely fresh eyes.
• Decide which medium lets you proofread most carefully. Some people like to work right at the computer, while others like to sit back with a printed copy that they can mark up as they read.
• Try changing the look of your document. Altering the size, spacing, color, or style of the text may trick your brain into thinking it’s seeing an unfamiliar document, and that can help you get a different perspective on what you’ve written.
• Find a quiet place to work. Don’t try to do your proofreading in front of the TV or while you’re chugging away on the treadmill. Find a place where you can concentrate and avoid distractions.
• If possible, do your editing and proofreading in several short blocks of time. Your concentration may start to wane if you try to proofread the entire text at one time.
• If you’re short on time, you may wish to prioritize. Make sure that you complete the most important editing and proofreading tasks.

Editing is what you begin doing as soon as you finish your first draft. You reread your draft to see, for example, whether the paper is well-organized, the transitions between paragraphs are smooth, and your evidence really backs up your argument. You can edit on several levels:

Have you done everything the assignment requires? Are the claims you make accurate? If it is required to do so, does your paper make an argument? Is the argument complete? Are all of your claims consistent? Have you supported each point with adequate evidence? Is all of the information in your paper relevant to the assignment and/or your overall writing goal? (For additional tips, see our handouts on understanding assignments and developing an argument .)

Overall structure

Does your paper have an appropriate introduction and conclusion? Is your thesis clearly stated in your introduction? Is it clear how each paragraph in the body of your paper is related to your thesis? Are the paragraphs arranged in a logical sequence? Have you made clear transitions between paragraphs? One way to check the structure of your paper is to make a reverse outline of the paper after you have written the first draft. (See our handouts on introductions , conclusions , thesis statements , and transitions .)

Structure within paragraphs

Does each paragraph have a clear topic sentence? Does each paragraph stick to one main idea? Are there any extraneous or missing sentences in any of your paragraphs? (See our handout on paragraph development .)

Have you defined any important terms that might be unclear to your reader? Is the meaning of each sentence clear? (One way to answer this question is to read your paper one sentence at a time, starting at the end and working backwards so that you will not unconsciously fill in content from previous sentences.) Is it clear what each pronoun (he, she, it, they, which, who, this, etc.) refers to? Have you chosen the proper words to express your ideas? Avoid using words you find in the thesaurus that aren’t part of your normal vocabulary; you may misuse them.

Have you used an appropriate tone (formal, informal, persuasive, etc.)? Is your use of gendered language (masculine and feminine pronouns like “he” or “she,” words like “fireman” that contain “man,” and words that some people incorrectly assume apply to only one gender—for example, some people assume “nurse” must refer to a woman) appropriate? Have you varied the length and structure of your sentences? Do you tends to use the passive voice too often? Does your writing contain a lot of unnecessary phrases like “there is,” “there are,” “due to the fact that,” etc.? Do you repeat a strong word (for example, a vivid main verb) unnecessarily? (For tips, see our handouts on style and gender-inclusive language .)

Have you appropriately cited quotes, paraphrases, and ideas you got from sources? Are your citations in the correct format? (See the UNC Libraries citation tutorial for more information.)

As you edit at all of these levels, you will usually make significant revisions to the content and wording of your paper. Keep an eye out for patterns of error; knowing what kinds of problems you tend to have will be helpful, especially if you are editing a large document like a thesis or dissertation. Once you have identified a pattern, you can develop techniques for spotting and correcting future instances of that pattern. For example, if you notice that you often discuss several distinct topics in each paragraph, you can go through your paper and underline the key words in each paragraph, then break the paragraphs up so that each one focuses on just one main idea.

Proofreading

Proofreading is the final stage of the editing process, focusing on surface errors such as misspellings and mistakes in grammar and punctuation. You should proofread only after you have finished all of your other editing revisions.

Why proofread? It’s the content that really matters, right?

Content is important. But like it or not, the way a paper looks affects the way others judge it. When you’ve worked hard to develop and present your ideas, you don’t want careless errors distracting your reader from what you have to say. It’s worth paying attention to the details that help you to make a good impression.

Most people devote only a few minutes to proofreading, hoping to catch any glaring errors that jump out from the page. But a quick and cursory reading, especially after you’ve been working long and hard on a paper, usually misses a lot. It’s better to work with a definite plan that helps you to search systematically for specific kinds of errors.

Sure, this takes a little extra time, but it pays off in the end. If you know that you have an effective way to catch errors when the paper is almost finished, you can worry less about editing while you are writing your first drafts. This makes the entire writing proccess more efficient.

Try to keep the editing and proofreading processes separate. When you are editing an early draft, you don’t want to be bothered with thinking about punctuation, grammar, and spelling. If your worrying about the spelling of a word or the placement of a comma, you’re not focusing on the more important task of developing and connecting ideas.

The proofreading process

You probably already use some of the strategies discussed below. Experiment with different tactics until you find a system that works well for you. The important thing is to make the process systematic and focused so that you catch as many errors as possible in the least amount of time.

• Don’t rely entirely on spelling checkers. These can be useful tools but they are far from foolproof. Spell checkers have a limited dictionary, so some words that show up as misspelled may really just not be in their memory. In addition, spell checkers will not catch misspellings that form another valid word. For example, if you type “your” instead of “you’re,” “to” instead of “too,” or “there” instead of “their,” the spell checker won’t catch the error.
• Grammar checkers can be even more problematic. These programs work with a limited number of rules, so they can’t identify every error and often make mistakes. They also fail to give thorough explanations to help you understand why a sentence should be revised. You may want to use a grammar checker to help you identify potential run-on sentences or too-frequent use of the passive voice, but you need to be able to evaluate the feedback it provides.
• Proofread for only one kind of error at a time. If you try to identify and revise too many things at once, you risk losing focus, and your proofreading will be less effective. It’s easier to catch grammar errors if you aren’t checking punctuation and spelling at the same time. In addition, some of the techniques that work well for spotting one kind of mistake won’t catch others.
• Read slow, and read every word. Try reading out loud , which forces you to say each word and also lets you hear how the words sound together. When you read silently or too quickly, you may skip over errors or make unconscious corrections.
• Separate the text into individual sentences. This is another technique to help you to read every sentence carefully. Simply press the return key after every period so that every line begins a new sentence. Then read each sentence separately, looking for grammar, punctuation, or spelling errors. If you’re working with a printed copy, try using an opaque object like a ruler or a piece of paper to isolate the line you’re working on.
• Circle every punctuation mark. This forces you to look at each one. As you circle, ask yourself if the punctuation is correct.
• Read the paper backwards. This technique is helpful for checking spelling. Start with the last word on the last page and work your way back to the beginning, reading each word separately. Because content, punctuation, and grammar won’t make any sense, your focus will be entirely on the spelling of each word. You can also read backwards sentence by sentence to check grammar; this will help you avoid becoming distracted by content issues.
• Proofreading is a learning process. You’re not just looking for errors that you recognize; you’re also learning to recognize and correct new errors. This is where handbooks and dictionaries come in. Keep the ones you find helpful close at hand as you proofread.
• Ignorance may be bliss, but it won’t make you a better proofreader. You’ll often find things that don’t seem quite right to you, but you may not be quite sure what’s wrong either. A word looks like it might be misspelled, but the spell checker didn’t catch it. You think you need a comma between two words, but you’re not sure why. Should you use “that” instead of “which”? If you’re not sure about something, look it up.
• The proofreading process becomes more efficient as you develop and practice a systematic strategy. You’ll learn to identify the specific areas of your own writing that need careful attention, and knowing that you have a sound method for finding errors will help you to focus more on developing your ideas while you are drafting the paper.

Think you’ve got it?

Then give it a try, if you haven’t already! This handout contains seven errors our proofreader should have caught: three spelling errors, two punctuation errors, and two grammatical errors. Try to find them, and then check a version of this page with the errors marked in red to see if you’re a proofreading star.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Especially for non-native speakers of English:

Ascher, Allen. 2006. Think About Editing: An ESL Guide for the Harbrace Handbooks . Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Lane, Janet, and Ellen Lange. 2012. Writing Clearly: Grammar for Editing , 3rd ed. Boston: Heinle.

For everyone:

Einsohn, Amy. 2011. The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications , 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lanham, Richard A. 2006. Revising Prose , 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Tarshis, Barry. 1998. How to Be Your Own Best Editor: The Toolkit for Everyone Who Writes . New York: Three Rivers Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Blog • Understanding Publishing

Posted on Jan 31, 2020

What is Proofreading? Beginner's Guide to an Essential Edit

Whether you’re a student, a mechanic, a doctor, or a professional writer, you’ve probably come across proofreading in some form or another — though you might not be aware of it. So much of the work people do these days revolves around the written word. Mistakes in their writing can have a massive impact on their success — which is where proofreading comes in!

In this post, we’ll have a look at the ins and outs of proofreading, from the perspective of experienced proofreaders in the publishing trade .

What is proofreading?

Proofreading is the act of reading written work and marking any errors. These mistakes most commonly involve spelling, grammar, punctuation, and consistency .

What is a proof?

The ‘proof’ in ‘ proofreader ’ comes from the publishing term describing an early printed copy. Traditionally, typesetters would arrange letters tiles onto large plates that are then used to print pages of a book. But before they started churning out thousands of copies, a ‘proof’ version was sent to the publisher for a final check.

With modern digital publishing (and computerized printing methods), proofreading is now usually done on a computer — though some proofreaders still prefer marking up physical copies .

What is the difference between proofreading and editing?

In publishing, proofreading comes into play at the very end of the editorial process , after a manuscript has been corrected by a copy or line editor . The proofreader’s job is to comb through the document and look for any mistakes that may have slipped through the cracks. Regardless of how meticulous the writer and editor have been, there will almost always be errors when you’re dealing with a book of 80,000 words or more.

If you'd like to confirm which type of editing your book needs at its current stage, we recommend taking this quick quiz to find out:

What kind of editing does your book need?

Takes one minute!

Why is proofreading important?

You might remember, in early 2019, the television hit series Game of Thrones was coming to an end. Devoted and casual fans alike sat in front of screens to devour every moment of the final season. So it’s no surprise that when a Starbucks cup made an accidental cameo during one of the episodes, viewers were pointing out the gaff on social media in a heartbeat.

The show’s producers were quick to act, and 48 hours later the disposable cup had been edited out of the show. Yet there’s no denying that hundreds, if not thousands, of viewers were yanked from the medieval realm of Westeros because of this tiny appearance of a modern artefact. Suddenly, the focus is on the error, and not the story.

Do you see where we’re going with this? A manuscript peppered with typos, grammatical errors, or contextual inconsistencies will jolt a reader out of the narrative the book is meant to tell. Instead of getting caught up in the story or thesis, they’re suddenly forced to mentally rectify the work’s mechanical mistakes. So proofreading is partly important because it allows your narrative to shine through uninterrupted.

What’s more, it adds a level of professionalism that is absolutely necessary if you’re looking to get publishers or readers on your side. When confronted with an obviously un-proofed book, both audiences will likely assume the author couldn’t be bothered to truly invest in their work. And if the author didn’t seem bothered to invest, why should they?

So whether you’re planning to seek out traditional representation for your book or to publish on your own, editing and proofreading is a vital part of the publishing process.

Working with a professional proofreader

A professional proofreader does more than just look out for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. They will also look for consistency issues that could hamper the reading experience. This would include:

• Ensuring that any web links go to the right webpage
• Checking that the index matches the content
• Confirming that the layout doesn’t fluctuate throughout the work
• Making sure that the images have correct captions
• Verifying that the copy adheres to the author’s chosen style guide

Proofreaders will not usually copy-edit, meaning that they won't make changes directly to the manuscript. Their primary job is highlighting potential mistakes, allowing the writer or editor to make the final decision.

Who should use professional proofreading?

In traditional publishing, every book will be proofed before it’s released to the public. If a reader were to find more than a handful of typos or grammatical mistakes in a novel, for example, it could negatively color their reading experience (and damage the publisher’s reputation).

In self-publishing, proofreading is becoming a non-negotiable part of the editorial process.  Independent authors often look for ways to reduce their costs, so they’re often tempted to proofread by themselves. But as the indie book market grows and its products improve in quality, getting a professional proofread is fast becoming common practice.

Outside of trade publishing, proofreaders will often find work in areas such as academia, journalism, and even advertising . In some corporate settings, they can even be hired to check through slide decks before presentations.

How much does a professional proofreader cost?

Based on statistics from Reedsy’s marketplace , proofreading services cost $10 per thousand words, on average.

Of course, this is only a ballpark figure and the final rate will depend on a number of other factors. For example, if the proofreader needs to cross-check the index, this would naturally escalate the cost.

In non-publishing industries, costs may also vary. A proofreader with a deep background in technical writing may choose to charge extra for their expertise and fact-checking, for example. But whatever the cost, you can be sure that getting a professional proofreader is worth it.

Tips for finding a professional proofreader

There are a lot of proofreaders advertising their services out there — where do you begin to find the right one for your project? We’ve got some pointers down below.

• Ask your editor. If you’re already working with an editor, it’s worth asking if they offer proofreading services. If not, they probably know other professionals that they trust will be good for your project.
• Specify your preferences. Do you like to work digitally or do you focus better reading a printed manuscript? The proofreading process is a two-way street, and when both you and the professional agree on a method, everything will be much smoother and more efficient.
• Search niche marketplaces. If you’re writing a book, it’s better to go straight to editing societies' directories or publishing marketplaces, where the proofreaders’ credentials are checked, than to browse Upwork or Fiverr. That way you don't have to spend hours sifting through portfolios of proofreaders who aren't equipped with the right knowledge to advise you, not just on your writing but also on formatting your manuscript.

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Proofreading your own work

When it comes to a longer piece of writing meant for wider consumption — like, say, a book — there’s still nothing that can beat a trained professional.

For other types of content, however, writers can and do proofread their own work. Simply reading back something you’ve written will usually reveal typos and ungainly passages. In situations where your writing isn’t intended for a massive audience (for example, in an email to your boss), you can usually rely on an online spelling and grammar checker such as Grammarly to catch any major mistakes.

Let’s cover a couple of DIY proofreading tips to help you ensure your work is as polished as can be.

Proofreading tips

• Start with self-awareness . There are certain bad grammatical habits we’re all prone to, or particular typos that tend to crop up frequently in our work. Before you get started, take a moment to determine your own "bad writing habits." Then do a sweep of your work, concentrating just on those. For example, perhaps there's a word you know you overuse? Search for just that word and really consider whether it needs to be there.
• Read out loud. The truth is, your eyes can deceive you — and this is especially true if you're reading on a screen, where your eyes are quick to tire. You'd be surprised at how many mistakes you can spot reading something out loud vs. reading it silently in your head. A bonus tip here is to read your manuscript out loud with someone else. Take turns reading a set number of pages each, and you'll ensure you catch any awkward-sounding phrases.
• Do one thing at a time. The worst way to proofread your own work is to read through it and try to get it perfect by the end. Effective proofreading requires multiple rounds, and each round should be focused on just one task. Don't look for spelling errors at the same time as you check for homonyms, as you'll likely end up letting stuff fall through the cracks.

[updated: 08/26/2020 UTC]

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Andrew Knight New Canaan says:

16/05/2019 – 06:34

Awesome Post. I really like it. This is a very informative post. Thanks for sharing with us. I would like to share with my friends.

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WRITER > GUIDES

Publish confidently by proofreading to perfection

“Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.” — Patricia Fuller

We’re pretty open-minded, but we generally recommend that writing be at least partially dressed before sharing it with the world.

Now that just about everyone is a writer, just about everyone is a proofreader too, when you think about it. Which is why we believe now is the time to get clear about what exactly proofreading entails in our modern world.

What is proofreading?

Proofreading refers to carefully checking for writing and formatting errors in a text before it’s published. It’s the final step in making sure a piece of writing is as close to “perfect” as possible by double-checking for punctuation and spelling errors, typos, and any inconsistencies. The most important purpose of writing is to communicate your thoughts effectively. This, however, is better suited for the editing phase, not the proofreading phase. While proofreaders will check for clarity in consistency, they’re more focused on minor errors that may have slipped through. When you proofread, you evaluate the content in what will be its final, published form, or a proof. (Get it now?) Proofreaders look at more than just the words — they’re scanning for any formatting errors as well. Proofreading marks are either made on paper, or in comments and digital notes in Google Docs and word processing software, to alert the writer of suggested corrections within a document. There are both US and UK English conventions for proofreading. The final step of any personal or business writing process, proofreading is the process of identifying and correcting spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.

The difference between proofreading and editing

It’s important to note that proofreading and editing are not the same. Editing involves a different skill set and is usually more time-consuming. Though there are various stages to the entire editing process, copy editing and proofreading are the two most common. Coincidentally, they’re also the two that get mixed up the most. Though developmental, structural, and line editing all deserve their time and place , they’re seen less frequently in the world of digital content creation. These parts of the editing process are better reserved for lengthier works, such as books, investigative journalism, essays, instructional works, and magazine articles. The terms copy editing and proofreading are often used interchangeably by those not familiar with the space. These two are not the same, though, and it’s crucial to be aware of their differences if you’re anyone working with written content.

Copy editing Copy editing takes place before proofreading and involves a more thorough shake down of the content at hand. Copy editors will look for things such as readability, grammar, spelling, style, syntax, and punctuation depending on what style guide they’re following. In this stage of the editing process, it’s okay to offer revisions that will require additional writing.

Examples of what a copy editor might comment: Point out wordy sentences, suggest change in word choice, fix punctuation marks in a sentence.

Proofreading Proofreading occurs after copy editing. Though proofreaders look for grammar and punctuation, they’re also focused on the overall formatting of the piece. They’re the last set of eyes before publication, so it’s their job to ensure the text is as close to perfect as it can get. No drastic changes will happen here — that’s the job of all the editors who came before.

Examples of what a proofreader might comment: Fix bad line breaks, change improper punctuation, point out incorrect page numbers.

How to proofread

Traditionally, proofreading is meant to be a relatively rapid and focused process of making sure writing is free of minor errors, such as typos that may have occurred during a more rigorous round of editing. For online publishing and blogging — which often includes transferring of content from a word processing document to a CMS (content management system) — proofreading includes making sure that formatting is correct. Adhering to a style guide — whether that be the Associated Press Stylebook , Chicago Manual of Style , or your own — is another vital part of the process. Consistency is key, and proofreaders need to be aware of what rules to follow for the given copy.

Common things to double-check when proofreading

• Links function properly and direct readers to the right pages
• Words — especially names and organizations — are spelled correctly
• Formatting appears as it was intended — bolds, italics, indentations, new paragraphs, and fonts are correct
• Proper punctuation is used throughout
• Capitalization is correct
• No “bad breaks,” such as widows or orphans
• Helpful information such as an FAQ section exists
• Consistent tenses throughout the piece
• No subject-verb agreement issues
• Headline or email subject is clear
• Citations match the brand style guide
• No misplaced or misused commas
• Voice and style are consistent throughout

When is the best time to proofread text?

The best time to proofread is during every project’s final stage, after revisions are done and copy editing has been completed. Proofreading is the last step. If you’re wondering what time is the best, we advise after morning coffee and before your deadline. Because the proofreading process is intended to be the final step before publishing or hitting “send,” the changes should be relatively minor — meaning, catching typos or errors that may have slipped by. In other words, proofreading is not the phase where you should be completely reworking a paragraph or changing the direction of your main points. Proofreading is not the time to decide that you’ve changed your stance on an important topic — that kind of change should happen during the initial planning, thesis-writing, or outline phase of your writing. In this stage, you also shouldn’t completely overhaul a piece of writing from, say, a 1,500-word blog post to a 3,000-word help article. That work should have been done during the developmental editing phase.

Top proofreading techniques and tricks

Ask someone else to proofread for you Get a pair of fresh eyes on your writing. After spending so much time on your work, you’ll be apt to accidentally glaze over errors and typographical errors. It’s like a crooked painting in your house — you don’t notice it until someone else points it out. If you have to proofread your own work, step away Close your document, shut down your computer, and take a break from staring at the screen for a few hours (the longer, the better). Go for a walk, sip some coffee, and you’ll have a fresher set of eyes when you return. Focus on one thing at a time When you’re on high-alert for every type of proofing error, it’s easier to miss some mistakes. Instead, try combing a paper only for punctuation, then again for spelling mistakes, and so on. Come back to it if you’re tired Don’t ever try to proofread at the end of the day when your attention span is nil, and all you want to do is sleep. Sleep on it and try again in the morning. Proofreading with a set of sleepy eyes is as good as not proofreading at all. Print it out Editing a hard copy — and not a digital one — will help you see your writing from a different perspective. It feels different, and putting pen to paper feels more substantive and also satisfying. Read it out loud Reading your own writing out loud is a great way to catch any misspelled words or wonky sentences you might’ve missed before. While it might feel funny at first, you’ll find yourself noticing things such as run-on sentences that you wouldn’t have otherwise when reading it silently. Allot two days to proofread Ideally, proofreading should happen at least two days before a deadline. This ensures that you’ll have enough time to implement changes with one more round of proofing to come. Take into consideration the length of your writing — the longer it is, the longer proofing will take. Use an AI proofreading tool You can use an AI writing assistant to help with proofreading digital content. Nowadays, the top ones on the market are programmed to catch spelling, grammatical errors, and some even help you adhere to your style guide . For example, Writer uses AI to catch and correct common writing mistakes — as well as ones personal to your company’s style guide — and ensure your text is ready to share. Proofreading example Editors and professional proofreaders usually check a printed “proof copy” of the text and make corrections using specialized marks. In the digital realm, proofreaders work with AI writing assistants. Most of these online proofreading and editing services also include plagiarism checkers to identify duplicate content on the web and provide an efficient solution for the publication.

Improve your proofreading skills with Writer

With edits occurring more frequently in the “tracked changes” on Microsoft Word or in suggestions on shared Google Docs, proofreaders find themselves doing their job digitally. And in a world flooded with copy and content, it’s crucial to ensure your words stand out, for all the right reasons. Writer is much more than just a spell check — think of it as your very own professional proofreader. And if you’re looking to implement language and content consistency company-wide, Writer has that too. Take your proofreading up a notch by publishing a living, breathing style guide that Writer implements almost anywhere you produce copy. With terminology management , custom writing style rules, snippets, and more, you don’t ever have to worry about your content being flooded with errors.

Illustration by Daniel Zender

Level-up your writing with Writer, your very own proofreader.

How to Proofread Your Own Writing (10 Amazing Tips)

by Leah McClellan

Why should you care about learning how to proofread your own writing? Well, let me share a small story with you.

The best blog post I read this morning—of many—is good. Very good, actually. It flows. It’s fresh. It has a rhythm that drew me in and made me want to read every word. The ideas are thought-provoking.

But how much more enjoyable would it have been if I didn’t have to reread certain sections to make sure I was getting the gist of things?

How much better would the post be if I didn’t hesitate at it’s instead of its and there instead of they’re ? How much intended meaning and power was lost over a lack of subject-verb agreement or commas that might have been better placed?

Tripping, stumbling, and hesitating over misspelled words or ill-placed punctuation is like watching a TV show with a shaky cable signal or trying to talk while a cell phone connection is breaking up—the reader is jostled right out of the story the writer is telling.

If the errors are too big or too many, I’m outta there.

This writer intentionally broke a lot of rules in his 1100-word article, and he broke them well. Sentence fragments clustered together as ideas to ponder, a long list of items without commas that symbolizes repetitive drivel, the same word repeated over and over in a few short sentences to pound in a point. Good stuff and well done, for the most part.

Some grammar and punctuation rules can—and should—be broken, when you know what the rules are and how to break them effectively. But the lack of solid proofreading in this piece is like cake without icing, pottery without glaze, or a fine piece of wood in need of a polish. The writer didn’t step back and get his Eagle Eye on.

“Come on,” you chortle. “It’s hard to proofread your own work. And who notices anyway?”

Believe it or not, lots of people notice unless they’re just scanning. And it’s quite possible that many of those scanners might linger on every word you write if typos and bloopers and unintentionally-broken punctuation or grammar rules weren’t making them stumble and wonder and lose their focus.

Typos and errors break up the “voice” that readers are trying to hear as they read your written words.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a freelancer, a blogger, a student, or anyone who writes for any reason. Most of us don’t have proofreaders or a skilled family member or friend to help us out on a regular basis. And if you’re submitting work to an agent or publisher or a big blog for consideration, why let typos and mistakes clutter and cloud the brilliant work you want them to read?

Any time you write something, you want readers to enjoy and appreciate your masterpiece. It’s your baby, an extension of yourself. Take good care of it.

Writing and editing is art. Proofreading is science.

So says Rushang Shah, President of Gramlee.com , an online editing service with editors behind the scenes constantly proofreading and copyediting. Rushang says that “all proofreading and copyediting involves the human element, and that’s why computers cannot replace a proofreader.”

Proofreading your own work can be challenging, it’s true. You already know the story, you already have a picture in your mind of what to expect and, as a result, you tend to skim over words and groups of words.

Plus, you know your own voice and, even if there are errors in your writing, you don’t “hear” them or see them because you’re in a hurry, and your mind fills in the blanks as you skim over things. You might be daydreaming—even if you’re reading out loud.

If you have a system, though, proofreading can be like doing a quality check on an assembly line. It’s just busy work, really, and not very creative at all. But it’s so important.

Here are some tips to help you get your Eagle Eye on and proofread your own work like a pro.

1. Don’t proofread until you’re completely finished with the actual writing and editing. If you make major changes while proofreading, even if it’s just within sentences, you’re still in an artistic, creative mode, not a science mode.

2. Make sure you have no distractions or potential interruptions. Shut down email and social media, hide the cell phone, shut off the TV, radio, or music, and close the door. Print your document if you need to get away from the computer altogether.

3. Forget the content or story. Analyze sentence by sentence; don’t read in your usual way. Focus on spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Work backwards, if that helps, or say the words and sentences out loud. Concentrate.

4. Make several passes for different types of errors. Try checking spelling and end punctuation on one pass, grammar and internal punctuation on another, and links or format on yet another pass. Develop a system.

5. Take notes. If you notice a format issue while checking spelling or if you need to look something up, make a quick note and come back to it so you don’t lose your focus.

6. If you do make a last-minute change to a few words, be sure to check the entire sentence or even paragraph over again. Many errors are the result of changes made without adjusting other, related words.

7. Check facts, dates, quotes, tables, references, text boxes, and anything repetitive or outside of the main text separately. Focus on one element or several related aspects of your writing at a time.

8. Monitor yourself. If you find yourself drifting off and thinking about something else, go back over that section again. Try slapping your hand or tapping a foot in a rhythm as you examine each word and sentence out loud.

9. Get familiar with your frequent mistakes. Even the most expreienced writer mixes up their , they’re , and there or too , two , and to . When I’m tried or writing fast, I right what I here in my mind and just get careless. Not a big deal. That’s what proofreading is for. You caught those errors, didn’t you?

10. Check format last. Every document has format, even an email, whether it’s paragraph spacing, text wrap, indentations, spaces above and below a bullet list or between subheadings and text, and so on. Leave this for the end because contents may shift during handling.

You already know better than to rely on spell-check, so I won’t belabor the point except to say that “wear form he untied stats” doesn’t bother spell-check but it might get an American in trouble at a customs checkpoint.

What if you don’t quite know what you’re looking for while proofreading?

Do you know basic comma rules, how to use a semi-colon, or when to use who or whom ? You might have an excellent sense of what things should look like or sound like, especially if you’re an avid reader, but if you don’t know basic grammar and punctuation rules, proofreading might be guesswork, at best, with doubtful results, at worst.

Why not make your life easier and your writing better? Take some time to learn basic rules from some online resources I consult when I need help:

Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips

Purdue Online Writing Lab: General Writing Resources

Oxford Dictionaries: Better Writing

GrammarBook.com

You can also download a free copy of The Handy-Dandy Everybody’s Guide to Proofreading over at my blog, Peaceful Planet .

Don’t let mistakes tarnish your work of art, whether it’s a research paper, a blog post, a query letter , or business communication. And remember, proofreading is not the same as writing and editing.

So with everything covered, why exactly does it matter that you learn how to proofread your own writing?

It’s not about creativity; it’s a science that needs a system. Follow these tips and create your own system, and you’ll have your Eagle Eye on in no time.

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How to Edit Your Own Writing

Writing is hard, but don’t overlook the difficulty — and the importance — of editing your own work before letting others see it. Here’s how.

By Harry Guinness

The secret to good writing is good editing. It’s what separates hastily written, randomly punctuated, incoherent rants from learned polemics and op-eds, and cringe-worthy fan fiction from a critically acclaimed novel. By the time this article is done, I’ll have edited and rewritten each line at least a few times. Here’s how to start editing your own work.

Understand that what you write first is a draft

It doesn’t matter how good you think you are as a writer — the first words you put on the page are a first draft. Writing is thinking: It’s rare that you’ll know exactly what you’re going to say before you say it. At the end, you need, at the very least, to go back through the draft, tidy everything up and make sure the introduction you wrote at the start matches what you eventually said.

My former writing teacher, the essayist and cartoonist Timothy Kreider, explained revision to me: “One of my favorite phrases is l’esprit d’escalier, ‘the spirit of the staircase’ — meaning that experience of realizing, too late, what the perfect thing to have said at the party, in a conversation or argument or flirtation would have been. Writing offers us one of the rare chances in life at a do-over: to get it right and say what we meant this time. To the extent writers are able to appear any smarter or wittier than readers, it’s only because they’ve cheated by taking so much time to think up what they meant to say and refining it over days or weeks or, yes, even years, until they’ve said it as clearly and elegantly as they can.”

The time you put into editing, reworking and refining turns your first draft into a second — and then into a third and, if you keep at it, eventually something great. The biggest mistake you can make as a writer is to assume that what you wrote the first time through was good enough.

Now, let’s look at how to do the actual editing.

Watch for common errors

Most writing mistakes are depressingly common; good writers just get better at catching them before they hit the page. If you’re serious about improving your writing, I recommend you read “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, a how-to guide on writing good, clear English and avoiding the most common mistakes. “ Politics and the English Language ” by George Orwell is also worth studying if you want to avoid “ugly and inaccurate” writing.

Some of the things you’ll learn to watch for (and that I have to fix all the time in my own writing) are:

Overuse of jargon and business speak . Horrible jargon like “utilize,” “endeavor” or “communicate” — instead of “use,” “try” or “chat” — creep in when people (myself included) are trying to sound smart. It’s the kind of writing that Orwell railed against in his essay. All this sort of writing does is obscure the point you want to make behind false intellectualism. As Orwell said, “Never use a long word when a short one will do.”

Clichés. Clichés are as common as mud but at least getting rid of them is low-hanging fruit. If you’re not sure whether something is a cliché, it’s better to just avoid it. Awful, right? Clichés are stale phrases that have lost their impact and novelty through overuse. At some point, “The grass is always greener on the other side” was a witty observation, but it’s a cliché now. Again, Orwell said it well: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” Oh, and memes very quickly become clichés — be warned.

The passive voice. In most cases, the subject of the sentence should be the person or thing taking action, not the thing being acted on. For example, “This article was written by Harry” is written in the passive voice because the subject (“this article”) is the thing being acted on. The equivalent active construction would be: “Harry wrote this article.” Prose written in the passive voice tends to have an aloofness and passivity to it, which is why it’s generally better to write an active sentence.

Rambling . When you’re not quite sure what you want to say, it’s easy to ramble around a point, phrasing it in three or four different ways and then, instead of cutting them down to a single concise sentence, slapping all four together into a clunky, unclear paragraph. A single direct sentence is almost always better than four that tease around a point.

Give your work some space

When you write something, you get very close to it. It’s almost impossible to have the distance to edit properly straight away. Instead, you need to step away and come back later with fresh eyes. The longer you can leave a draft before editing it, the better. I have some essays I go back to every few months for another pass — they’re still not done yet. For most things, though, somewhere from half an hour to two days is enough of a break that you can then edit well. Even 10 minutes will do in a pinch for things like emails.

And when you sit down to edit, read your work out loud.

By forcing yourself to speak the words, rather than just scanning them on a computer screen, you’ll catch more problems and get a better feel for how everything flows. If you stumble over something, your reader will probably stumble over it, too. Some writers even print out their drafts and make edits with a red pen while they read them aloud.

Cut, cut, cut

Overwriting is a bigger problem than underwriting. It’s much more likely you’ve written too much than too little. It’s a lot easier to throw words at a problem than to take the time to find the right ones. As Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century writer and scientist (no, not Mark Twain) wrote in a letter, “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.”

The rule for most writers is, “If in doubt, cut it.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer John McPhee has called the process “writing by omission.” Novelist Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (and not William Faulkner, although he may have popularized this version of it) exhorted a version of the oft-repeated phrase, “In writing you must kill all your darlings.” This is true at every level: If a word isn’t necessary in a sentence, cut it; if a sentence isn’t necessary in a paragraph, cut it; and if a paragraph isn’t necessary, cut it, too.

Go through what you’ve written and look for the bits you can cut without affecting the whole — and cut them. It will tighten the work and make everything you’re trying to say clearer.

Spend the most time on the beginning

The beginning of anything you write is the most important part. If you can’t catch someone’s attention at the start, you won’t have a chance to hold it later. Whether you’re writing a novel or an email, you should spend a disproportionate amount of time working on the first few sentences, paragraphs or pages. A lot of problems that can be glossed over in the middle are your undoing at the start.

Pay attention to structure

The structure is what your writing hangs on. It doesn’t matter how perfectly the individual sentences are phrased if the whole thing is a nonsensical mess. For emails and other short things, the old college favorite of a topic sentence followed by supporting paragraphs and a conclusion is hard to get wrong. Just make sure you consider your intended audience. A series of long, unrelenting paragraphs will discourage people from reading. Break things up into concise points and, where necessary, insert subheads — as there are in this article. If I’d written this without them, you would just be looking at a stark wall of text.

For longer pieces, structure is something you’ll need to put a lot of work into. Stream of consciousness writing rarely reads well and you generally don’t have the option to break up everything into short segments with subheads. Narratives need to flow and arguments need to build. You have to think about what you’re trying to say in each chapter, section or paragraph, and consider whether it’s working — or if that part would be better placed elsewhere. It’s normal (and even desirable) that the structure of your work will change drastically between drafts; it’s a sign that you’re developing the piece as a whole, rather than just fixing the small problems.

A lot of the time when something you’ve written “just doesn’t work” for people, the structure is to blame. They might not be able to put the problems into words, but they can feel something’s off.

Use all the resources you can

While you might not be lucky enough to have access to an editor (Hey, Alan!), there are services that can help.

Grammarly is a writing assistant that flags common writing, spelling and grammatical errors; it’s great for catching simple mistakes and cleaning up drafts of your work. A good thesaurus (or even Thesaurus.com ) is also essential for finding just the right word. And don’t neglect a second pair of eyes: Ask relatives and friends to read over your work. They might catch some things you missed and can tell you when something is amiss.

Editing your work is at least as important as writing it in the first place. The tweaking, revisiting and revising is what takes something that could be good — and makes it good. Don’t neglect it.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the phrase “kill your darlings,” originated with novelist Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch , who actually said “murder your darlings,” and not William Faulkner, to whom the phrase is often attributed.

• Writing Tips

How to Proofread Your Own Writing

• By  Emily Numa
• Aug 05, 2023

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As a freelance writer , you’re responsible for ensuring the pieces you deliver to your clients are polished and professional. In this post, we’ll take you through how to proofread your writing and check that it’s clear, refined, and error-free. We’ll cover:

• Why it’s important to proofread your writing
• When you should proofread your work
• What you should include in a proofreading checklist
• How Knowadays courses can help enhance your skills

Keep reading to learn about proofreading and how to incorporate it into your writing process.

Why Is It Important to Proofread Your Writing?

Imagine that you’ve put substantial time and effort into researching and writing a first-rate article only to realize, after you’ve submitted it, that you misused a semicolon or misspelled a word . That’s why it’s so important to carefully proofread your writing before sending it to a client.

Proofreading is an essential step in the writing process and shouldn’t be overlooked. Even one or two errors left in a piece could cause you to look unprofessional or damage your reputation as a freelancer. If you leave errors in your work, you’re less likely to receive positive feedback , repeat work, and word-of-mouth recommendations – all significant ways freelancers build their client base .

When Should You Proofread Your Work?

Proofreading is the last step in the writing process, completed after you edit your work and address all major structural issues. When proofreading, check for surface-level issues, such as grammar/punctuation errors, spelling mistakes, typos, dialect differences, and inconsistencies. It can be hard to spot errors in your own writing, so make proofreading easier on yourself by:

• Waiting at least a few hours after you complete your article to begin to proofread
• Proofread using a different screen or print out a hard copy to review
• Read the piece out loud
• Try reading backwards for a fresh perspective
• Divide the document into manageable chunks (such as reviewing a few paragraphs or pages at a time)
• Take a proofreading course to brush up on your English language skills

Finally, make sure you set up a comfortable, distraction-free workspace to complete your proofreading and don’t forget to take regular breaks, especially if you’re reviewing a long document.

Proofreading Checklist for Writers

Many writers find it useful to make a checklist of things to look for when proofreading, such as common punctuation errors and frequently misspelled words. Below are some examples of common proofreading issues that you could use to form your checklist:

• Missing terminal punctuation
• Misuse of commas, semicolons, and colons
• Incorrect subject-verb agreement
• Inconsistent or incorrect dialect conventions
• Acronym and abbreviation usage
• Dangling/misplaced modifiers
• Unsuitable or incorrect word choices
• Inconsistent capitalization
• Date/time formatting
• Extra double spaces

Keep in mind that these are just some common issues to look for when proofreading and that your checklist will vary based on the document type, dialect, style guide , etc.

Becoming a Freelance Writer

If you’re interested in pursuing a rewarding, flexible career as a freelance writer, check out our Becoming A Freelance Writer course . We teach you everything you need to know about researching, structuring, and drafting writing projects for your clients. Claim your free trial and get started today!

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• Proofread on 100+ language issues
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• Corrections directly in your document

Instantly correct your entire document in minutes

Nobody's perfect all the time—and now, you don’t have to be!

There are times when you just want to write without worrying about every grammar or spelling convention. The online proofreader immediately finds all of your errors. This allows you to concentrate on the bigger picture. You’ll be 100% confident that your writing won’t affect your grade.

What does a proofreader do?

The proofreading process is your last chance to catch any errors in your writing before you submit it. A proofreader makes sure your spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors are reviewed and fixed. This can be done automatically by an AI-powered tool like the one at the top of this page or by a real human. Both options have their advantages, so pick the one that suits you most.

Fix mistakes that slip under your radar

✔ Fix problems with commonly confused words, like affect vs. effect, which vs. that and who vs. that.

✔ Catch words that sound similar but aren’t, like their vs. they’re, your vs. you’re.

✔ Check your punctuation to avoid errors with dashes and hyphens, commas, apostrophes, and more.

✔ Avoid sentence fragments, subject-verb agreement errors, and problems with parallelism.

How does the proofreader work?

The online proofreader.

It’s really straightforward. Just paste the text into the tool. All your errors will now be underlined in red. You can hover over these mistakes to see how they can be addressed. If you agree, just click on the button “Fix all errors,” and your mistakes will be fixed instantly! 

The professional proofreader

Upload your entire document first. Choose the pages you want proofread, the extra services you want to use, and the deadline. Then fill in some key details like your field of study so that we can find you the best proofreader. When you’re done, you pay for your order, and we make sure that your writing is checked by a proofreader. You’ll be contacted when the job is done!

Who should use this proofreader?

Avoid a bad grade and hand in your documents with absolute confidence.

Businesspeople

Look like a pro by writing error-free emails, reports, and more.

Ensure your work is clear and readable to increase the chance that it’ll get published.

Want your whole document checked and corrected in a matter of minutes?

Would you like to upload your entire document and check all your documents for 100+ language issues? Then Scribbr’s AI-powered proofreading is perfect for you.

With AI-powered proofreading, you can correct your text in no time.

• Upload document
• Wait briefly while all errors are corrected directly in your document
• Correct errors with one click

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“Excellent review of a paper that was deciding my grade. I appreciate both the edits and the feedback to increase my knowledge of correct APA formatting and accurate citations. I needed the paper returned quickly, and the team worked hard to make sure I had what I needed. I just got my grade back, A+. I would 100% use this service again, it was worth every penny!!!!!!”

A proofreader for everyone

Don’t let typos and grammar keep you down. make your writing count, ask our team.

Want to contact us directly? No problem.  We  are always here for you.

• Email [email protected]
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Frequently asked questions

Our support team is here to help you daily via chat, WhatsApp, email, or phone between 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. CET.

Yes! Our personal statement editors can help you reduce your word count by up to 25%. You can choose to receive this feedback through direct edits or suggestions in comments – just select your choice when you upload your personal statement.

Our APA experts default to APA 7 for editing and formatting. For the Citation Editing Service you are able to choose between APA 6 and 7.

It is not necessary to reserve a time slot for your edit. As soon as your document is ready to be proofread, you can upload it at any time via our website . Based on your chosen deadline, our editor(s) will then proofread your document within 24 hours, 3 days, or 7 days.

If you are unsure about the availability of our services or are planning to upload a very large document (>13,000 words) with a 24 hour deadline, we recommend that you contact us beforehand via chat or email .

Scribbr is following the guidelines announced by the WHO (World Health Organization). As an online platform, all our services remain available, and we will continue to help students as usual.

Can I still place an order? Will my order be completed within the deadline? Yes, you can still place orders and orders will be delivered within the agreed upon deadline. Scribbr is an online platform – our proofreading & editing services are provided by editors working remotely from all over the world. This means Scribbr can guarantee that we will process your order with the same diligence and professionalism as always. The same holds true for our Plagiarism Checker .

Can I still contact customer support? Yes. Our support team is available from 09.00 to 23.00 CET and happy to answer any questions you might have!

Yes, if your document is longer than 20,000 words, you will get a sample of approximately 2,000 words. This sample edit gives you a first impression of the editor’s editing style and a chance to ask questions and give feedback.

How does the sample edit work?

You will receive the sample edit within 12 hours after placing your order. You then have 24 hours to let us know if you’re happy with the sample or if there’s something you would like the editor to do differently.

Read more about how the sample edit works

When you upload a large document (20,000+ words), we will ask your editor to send a sample edit of approximately 2,000 words as soon as possible. This sample edit gives you a first impression of your editor’s editing style and what you can expect from the service. You will receive it within 12 hours after uploading your order.

Why do we provide you with a sample edit?

We always aim to make you 100% happy, and Proofreading & Editing is a complex service. We want to make sure that our editing style meets your expectations before the editor improves your entire document.

Our editors are trained to follow Scribbr’s academic style . However, your preferences might deviate from our conventions. The sample edit gives you the chance to provide feedback – you can let us know if you’re happy with the sample or if there’s something you would like the editor to do differently.

Once your editor has completed your sample edit, you will receive a notification via email. You have 24 hours to reply to this email and provide us with feedback. If we receive your feedback in time, your editor will go the extra mile and adjust the edit according to your input.

What sort of feedback can you give?

Give us feedback that will help your editor meet your requirements. For example:

• “I am completely happy. The editor can continue editing like this.”
• “I forgot to mention that my school has the following rules for gendered pronouns.”
• “The editor changed the spelling of a technical term, but my professor spells it differently. Please keep the original spelling of this term.”

The  Structure  and Clarity Check can only be purchased in conjunction with Proofreading & Editing . Providing feedback on structure and clarity requires extensive knowledge of the text, which the editor acquires while proofreading and editing your text.

However, our Paper Formatting Service,   Citation Editing Service and Plagiarism Checker can be purchased separately.

Yes, Scribbr will proofread the summary in another language as well.

Who will proofread my summary?

If your document contains a summary in a different language, we will send this part to another editor who is a native speaker of that language. The editor will check your summary, applying our standard Proofreading & Editing service.

If you ordered any additional services, such as the Structure Check or Clarity Check, the editor will not apply them to your summary. This is because the summary is a translation of your abstract – you already receive Structure and Clarity feedback on the text in the original language. Therefore, when proofreading your summary, the editor will focus on making sure your language and style is correct.

How does it work?

We will create a new assignment within your order and send you a confirmation email. This also means that you will receive a separate email/SMS notification from us when the editor has finished proofreading your summary. Once your summary is proofread, you can download it via your Scribbr account and read the editor’s feedback.

Yes, we can provide a certificate of proofreading.

As soon as the editor delivers the edit, you can email us at [email protected] to request a certificate.

Please indicate the following in your email:

• Your order number
• Your full name
• The title of your work

We will create a PDF certificate and email it to you as soon as possible.

Scribbr specializes in editing study-related documents . We proofread:

• PhD dissertations
• Research proposals
• Personal statements
• Admission essays
• Motivation letters
• Reflection papers
• Journal articles
• Capstone projects

Yes, when you accept all changes and delete all comments your document is ready to be handed in.

How to accept all changes:

• Word for Mac 2011

How to remove all comments:

When you’ve finished this, others will no longer be able to see the changes made by the editor.

• Read your last version one last time to make sure everything is the way you want it.
• Save your document as a .pdf file to come across more professional and to ensure the format of your document doesn’t change.

Yes, in the order process you can indicate your preference for American, British, or Australian English .

If you don’t choose one, your editor will follow the style of English you currently use. If your editor has any questions about this, we will contact you.

Yes, you can upload your thesis in sections.

We try our best to ensure that the same editor checks all the different sections of your thesis. When you upload a new file, our system recognizes you as a returning customer, and we immediately contact the editor who helped you before.

However, we cannot guarantee that the same editor will be available. Your chances are higher if

• You send us your text as soon as possible and
• You can be flexible about the deadline.

Please note that the shorter your deadline is, the bigger the risk that your previous editor is not available.

If your previous editor isn’t available, then we will inform you immediately and look for another qualified editor. Fear not! Every Scribbr editor follows the  Scribbr Improvement Model  and will deliver high-quality work.

However, every editor has a slightly different editing style, so you may notice small inconsistencies in editing choices. As with every proofreading order, be sure to carefully review your editor’s changes and suggestions as you finalize your text to ensure that everything is as you want it.

The fastest turnaround time is 12 hours.

You can upload your document at any time and choose between three deadlines:

At Scribbr, we promise to make every customer 100% happy with the service we offer. Our philosophy: Your complaint is always justified – no denial, no doubts.

Our customer support team is here to find the solution that helps you the most, whether that’s a free new edit or a refund for the service.

Every Scribbr order comes with our award-winning Proofreading & Editing service , which combines two important stages of the revision process.

For a more comprehensive edit, you can add a Structure Check or Clarity Check to your order. With these building blocks, you can customize the kind of feedback you receive.

You might be familiar with a different set of editing terms. To help you understand what you can expect at Scribbr, we created this table:

View an example

Scribbr not only specializes in proofreading and editing texts in English , but also in several other languages . This way, we help out students from all over the world.

As a global academic writing proofreading service, we work with professional editors  – all native speakers – who edit in the following languages :

This way, you can also have your academic writing proofread and edited in your second language!

Please note that we do not offer Finnish proofreading, but students can still upload English papers on scribbr.fi .

Yes, regardless of the deadline you choose, our editors can proofread your document during weekends and holidays.

Example: If you select the 12-hour service on Saturday, you will receive your edited document back within 12 hours on Sunday.

The footnotes are not automatically included in the word count.

If you want the language errors in your footnotes to be corrected by the editor, you can indicate this in step 3 of the upload process . The words in the footnotes are then automatically added to the total word count.

Need help with your references?

• If you use the APA reference style, you can use our free APA Citation Generator or the articles about APA in our Knowledge Base.
• If you’d like us to check your references for consistency, you can use our Citation Editing Service .

To keep our prices competitive, we do not offer a free trial edit. However, if your document is longer than 30,000 words, we are happy to provide you with a sample edit of 2,000 words to ensure you are satisfied with the editor’s editing style.

Rest assured, our customers are very satisfied with our proofreading services. We’re proud that they have rated us with an excellent 4.6 on Trustpilot. In the unlikely event that you have a less positive experience, we’ll solve that with our 100% happiness guarantee !

After your thesis has been edited , you will receive an email with a link to download the edited document.

The editor has made changes to your document using ‘ Track Changes ’ in Word.  This means that you only have to accept or ignore the changes that are made in the text one by one.

It is also possible to accept all changes at once. However, we strongly advise you not to do so for the following reasons:

• You can learn much by looking at what mistakes you have made.
• The editors do not only change the text, they also place comments when sentences or sometimes even entire paragraphs are unclear. We therefore advise you to read through these comments and take into account your editor’s tips and suggestions.
• Because of the many changes, sometimes there may be double spaces, double periods, or other minor mistakes in a sentence. Checking the changes one by one, you can easily detect these minor errors.

We have written a manual in which we explain step by step how ‘Track Changes’ works.

Check out an example

Our editors are very experienced and will do their utmost to correct all errors in your thesis .

However, with our current rates, an editor can only check your thesis once. This may cause an editor to overlook an error. We can therefore not guarantee that your thesis is 100% error free after you have had your thesis edited.

The editor uses ‘Track Changes’ in Word when editing your thesis.

Don’t know how this works? Then read the following guide  in which we explain step by step how ‘Track Changes’ works.

No, we do not provide you with a clean copy. You will always receive a file edited with tracked changes .

We do this for two main reasons:

• In most papers, there are sentences that the editor cannot edit without additional information from the author. In these cases, your editor will provide guidance but leave you to implement the feedback. If we were to simply accept the changes for you, then these issues would be left unaddressed.
• We believe students should be accountable for their work. Our editors can correct language errors and coach you to be a better writer. However, the end product belongs to you and should reflect your ideas and decisions.

All Scribbr editors are language experts with interests in different subject areas.

You can indicate your field of study when you upload your document . We’ll make sure that the editor who proofreads your work is familiar with your discipline and its specialist vocabulary.

These are the fields of study you can choose from, and examples of the main subjects in each field:

• Business and Management: Business Administration, Hotel Management, Accountancy, Marketing
• Economics: Business Economics, Econometrics, Finance
• IT and Engineering: ICT, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics, Civil Engineering, Industrial Design, Electrical Engineering
• Natural and Life Sciences: Biomedical Sciences, Biology, Chemistry
• Geography, Agriculture and Environment: Ecology, Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Urban Planning
• Health and Medical Sciences: Medicine, Obstetrics, Pharmacy, Nutrition, Dentistry
• Arts and Humanities: Philosophy, History, Literature, Cultural Studies, Theology
• Law and Policy: Law, Political Science, Public Policy, Human Rights
• Social and Behavioral Sciences: Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Communication Sciences

Editors don’t have to be experts in the content of your paper, but they do know how to present it in the best way possible! Our goal is to improve your writing and give you feedback on the readability, structure, logic, and clarity of your text. We know from experience that the most effective editors are specialists in language and academic writing.

We’ve carefully selected and trained all of our editors to proofread theses and other academic documents. Once they’re qualified, we continue to carefully monitor their work to make sure we always deliver the highest quality .

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• Writing Tips

Why Proofreading Is Important

4-minute read

• 11th February 2023

Any type of writing can benefit from proofreading. In this article, we’ll explain what proofreading can help you achieve with your work and why it’s so important.

What Is Proofreading?

Proofreading is a type of editing . It’s the process of reviewing a piece of writing for errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and formatting. It takes place after the writing process is complete, and it’s the last type of editing you’ll do before publication.

While earlier stages of editing might make more significant changes to the structure and content of a document, proofreading focuses on catching surface-level errors that the writer has made or that previous edits have introduced.

What Is the History of Proofreading?

Proofreading gets its name from traditional printing presses, where “galley proofs” were mockups of a printed manuscript to test how the published document would look. These “proofs” were then checked for mistakes before being used in the expensive process of printing.

Historically, proofreading was done on paper using symbols called proofing marks . While proofing marks are still in use, these days, most modern proofreading is carried out on a computer using word processing software, such as Microsoft Word .

Why Is Proofreading Important?

Proofreading is crucial to ensuring that a piece of writing is clear, accurate, and easy to understand. These qualities are essential for any document that’s going to be published or shared in some way, from novels to dissertations.

Proofreading helps written work appear professional, reliable, and credible, which is especially important in the case of academic and business writing . It can also help maintain the “ suspension of disbelief ” in works of fiction.

In addition, proofreading saves time and money by catching mistakes before they’re published, submitted, or widely distributed.

What Impact Can Errors Have?

Even the smallest mistake can have a major impact on a piece of writing. In some cases, an error in grammar, punctuation, spelling, or formatting can cause confusion and lead to misinterpretation of what the author intended to say. A missing comma, for example, can completely change the meaning of a sentence:

And the same is true of typos that confuse similar words:

Errors in a text can also:

●  Distract readers from the point being made

●  Detract from the credibility of the work

●  Make the work difficult to read and understand

●  Negatively impact an author’s reputation

This can lead to significant consequences, such as poor grades, rejection from publishers, or missed career opportunities.

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To summarize:

●  Proofreading is an essential step in the writing process that helps to ensure written work is clear, accurate, and easy to understand.

●  It’s particularly important for academic and professional writing, as errors can detract from the credibility of the work.

●  Errors can have serious consequences for an author and damage their professional reputation.

●  Proofreading can prevent confusion and save time by catching errors before they’re published.

Whether you choose to proofread your own work or use a professional, proofreading is essential to producing a good quality piece of writing.

1. What are the most common errors found during proofreading?

Some errors appear more often than others.

10 of the most common proofreading errors are:

• Incorrect apostrophe usage
• Missing commas
• Comma splices
• Sentence fragments
• Dangling and misplaced modifiers
• Confusing homophones, such as their/there/they’re, its/it’s, and to/too/two
• Faulty subject–verb agreement
• Misused sayings and idioms
• Inconsistent formatting
• General spelling errors

When proofreading your work, it’s a good idea to keep an eye out for these types of mistakes.

2. How can I proofread a large document efficiently?

It’s difficult to stay focused when looking through a long document, especially if you’ve already read it multiple times.

To help stay on track when proofreading large documents, try:

• Following a proofreading checklist
• Choosing one type of error to focus on at a time (e.g. first checking the entire document for spelling errors, then grammatical errors, and so on)
• Splitting the document into smaller, more manageable chunks
• Taking frequent breaks to rest your eyes (and your brain!)

3. How do I find a professional proofreader?

If you want a second pair of eyes on your writing, a professional proofreader can help.

Here at Proofed, we have a team of over 750 expert proofreaders ready to clean up your writing. 

Whether you’re writing an academic paper , job application , or novel manuscript , our proofreaders can help make sure your work is at its best. Try us out today with a free trial .

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Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

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Seven Effective Ways to Proofread Writing

Proofreading what you have written can be very dull. There are many different ways to proofread writing. What works for one person may constitute a painful process for another. Regardless of the method you choose, proofreading is a critical part of the writing process and should never be overlooked. Here are some effective methods for proofreading your documents.

Do not rely on spelling and grammar checkers

Spell checkers are great as a first step and will be useful in assisting you to identify high-level errors. However, automated spelling and grammar checkers are severely limited. They cannot identify many common grammatical errors. Furthermore, they often make serious mistakes that can mislead even the most diligent writer. It is important to remember that spell checkers identify misspelled words only. They do not alert you to correctly spelled words that are grammatically incorrect.

Example: There are at least too reasons why students should not rely on spell check. [Note that the word “too” is incorrect. “Too” means, also. The correct word is “two” for the number 2.]

Proofread for one error at a time

Proofreading really is a meticulous and time-consuming process, but the more you put into it, the more you get out. If you attempt to identify and correct all errors within one sitting, you risk losing focus and you many find that you miss major mistakes. Sometimes it is useful to check for spelling mistakes and punctuation errors separately. This will make it easier to spot issues. You can then use a variety of proofreading techniques for the different types of mistakes you find.

Read each word slowly

One technique that the majority of professional proofreaders use is to read the writing they are proofreading out loud. This forces you to voice every single word and involves your auditory senses in the process, meaning that you can hear how the text actually sounds when it is read. Trying to read something quickly forces your brain to skip some words and to make unconscious corrections.

Divide the text into manageable chunks

Dividing the text into separate sections provides you with more manageable tasks. Read each section carefully. Then, take a break before you progress to the next. This will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed by the task ahead and will allow you to concentrate more effectively on the section of writing that you are proofreading. This technique is especially useful if you are proofreading a very large document such as a thesis, research paper or practicum project.

Circle punctuation marks

This method may seem somewhat excessive, but it is one of the most effective methods used for identifying punctuation mistakes. By circling every single punctuation mark, you force yourself to look at each one in turn and to question if it has been used correctly.

Read the writing backwards

This proofreading method is useful for identifying spelling mistakes because it forces you to concentrate on each word in isolation. Start with the last word in your text and follow each one separately until you reach the beginning of the document. While you are doing this, you are not really interested in punctuation and grammar; you are focusing entirely on how the words have been spelled. Many proofreaders also recommend reading papers backwards, sentence by sentence. This encourages you to consider each sentence in isolation out of the context of the rest of the writing and is great for helping you to identify grammatical errors.

Note the errors you make on a frequent basis

Proofreading your writing on a regular basis can help you identify your own strengths and weaknesses and understand where you make mistakes. If you are aware of the common errors you make, you can learn to look for them during the writing process itself. Over a period of time, will learn to avoid them altogether. Keep style guides and grammar rules at hand as you proofread. Look up any areas of which you are uncertain. Over time, you will develop your knowledge and your writing skills will improve.

*Adapted from https://www.vappingo.com/word-blog/proofread-writing/

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Finding Common Errors

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

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Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Proofreading is primarily about searching your writing for errors, both grammatical and typographical, before submitting your paper for an audience (a teacher, a publisher, etc.). Use this resource to help you find and fix common errors.

Here are some common proofreading issues that come up for many writers. For grammatical or spelling errors, try underlining or highlighting words that often trip you up. On a sentence level, take note of which errors you make frequently. Also make note of common sentence errors you have such as run-on sentences, comma splices, or sentence fragments—this will help you proofread more efficiently in the future.

• Do not solely rely on your computer's spell-check—it will not get everything!
• Trace a pencil carefully under each line of text to see words individually.
• Be especially careful of words that have tricky letter combinations, like "ei/ie.”
• Take special care of homonyms like your/you're, to/too/two, and there/their/they're, as spell check will not recognize these as errors.

Left-out and doubled words

Read the paper slowly aloud to make sure you haven't missed or repeated any words. Also, try reading your paper one sentence at a time in reverse—this will enable you to focus on the individual sentences.

Sentence Fragments

Sentence fragments are sections of a sentence that are not grammatically whole sentences. For example, “Ate a sandwich” is a sentence fragment because it lacks a subject.

Make sure each sentence has a subject:

• “Looked at the OWL website.” is a sentence fragment without a subject.
• “The students looked at the OWL website.” Adding the subject “students” makes it a complete sentence.

Make sure each sentence has a complete verb.

• “They trying to improve their writing skills.” is an incomplete sentence because “trying” is an incomplete verb.
• “They were trying to improve their writing skills.” In this sentence, “were” is necessary to make “trying” a complete verb.

See that each sentence has an independent clause. Remember that a dependent clause cannot stand on its own. In the following examples, green highlighting indicates dependent clauses while yellow indicates independent clauses.

• “ Which is why the students read all of the handouts carefully .” This is a dependent clause that needs an independent clause. As of right now, it is a sentence fragment.
• “ Students knew they were going to be tested on the handouts, which is why they read all of the handouts carefully .” The first part of the sentence, “Students knew they were going to be tested,” is an independent clause. Pairing it with a dependent clause makes this example a complete sentence.

Run-on Sentences

• Review each sentence to see whether it contains more than one independent clause.
• If there is more than one independent clause, check to make sure the clauses are separated by the appropriate punctuation.
• Sometimes, it is just as effective (or even more so) to simply break the sentence into two separate sentences instead of including punctuation to separate the clauses.
• Run on: “ I have to write a research paper for my class about extreme sports all I know about the subject is that I'm interested in it. ” These are two independent clauses without any punctuation or conjunctions separating the two.
• Edited version: " I have to write a research paper for my class about extreme sports, and all I know about the subject is that I'm interested in it ." The two highlighted portions are independent clauses. They are connected by the appropriate conjunction “and,” and a comma.
• Another edited version: “ I have to write a research paper for my class about extreme sports. All I know about the subject is that I'm interested in it .” In this case, these two independent clauses are separated into individual sentences separated by a period and capitalization.

Comma Splices

• Look closely at sentences that have commas.
• See if the sentence contains two independent clauses. Independent clauses are complete sentences.
• If there are two independent clauses, they should be connected with a comma and a conjunction (and, but, for, or, so, yet, nor). Commas are not needed for some subordinating conjunctions (because, for, since, while, etc.) because these conjunctions are used to combine dependent and independent clauses.
• Another option is to take out the comma and insert a semicolon instead.
• Comma Splice: “ I would like to write my paper about basketball , it's a topic I can talk about at length .” The highlighted portions are independent clauses. A comma alone is not enough to connect them.
• Edited version: “ I would like to write my paper about basketball because it's a topic I can talk about at length .” Here, the yellow highlighted portion is an independent clause while the green highlighted portion is a dependent clause. The subordinating conjunction “because” connects these two clauses.
• Edited version, using a semicolon: “ I would like to write my paper about basketball ; it’s a topic I can talk about at length .” Here, a semicolon connects two similar independent clauses.

Subject/Verb Agreement

• Find the subject of each sentence.
• Find the verb that goes with the subject.
• The subject and verb should match in number, meaning that if the subject is plural, the verb should be as well.
• An easy way to do this is to underline all subjects. Then, circle or highlight the verbs one at a time and see if they match.
• Incorrect subject verb agreement: “ Students at the university level usually is very busy.” Here, the subject “students” is plural, and the verb “is” is singular, so they don’t match.
• Edited version: “ Students at the university level usually are very busy.” “Are” is a plural verb that matches the plural noun, “students.”

Mixed Construction

Read through your sentences carefully to make sure that they do not start with one sentence structure and shift to another. A sentence that does this is called a mixed construction.

• “ Since I have a lot of work to do is why I can't go out tonight .” Both green highlighted sections of the sentence are dependent clauses. Two dependent clauses do not make a complete sentence.
• Edited version: “ Since I have a lot of work to do , I can't go out tonight .” The green highlighted portion is a dependent clause while the yellow is an independent clause. Thus, this example is a complete sentence.

Parallelism

Look through your paper for series of items, usually separated by commas. Also, make sure these items are in parallel form, meaning they all use a similar form.

• Example: “Being a good friend involves listening , to be considerate, and that you know how to have fun.” In this example, “listening” is in present tense, “to be” is in the infinitive form, and “that you know how to have fun” is a sentence fragment. These items in the series do not match up.
• Edited version: “Being a good friend involves listening , being considerate, and having fun.” In this example, “listening,” “being,” and “having” are all in the present continuous (-ing endings) tense. They are in parallel form.

Pronoun Reference/Agreement

• Skim your paper, searching for pronouns.
• Search for the noun that the pronoun replaces.
• If you can't find any nouns, insert one beforehand or change the pronoun to a noun.
• If you can find a noun, be sure it agrees in number and person with your pronoun.
• “ Sam had three waffles for breakfast. He wasn’t hungry again until lunch.” Here, it is clear that Sam is the “he” referred to in the second sentence. Thus, the singular third person pronoun, “he,” matches with Sam.
• “ Teresa and Ariel walked the dog. The dog bit her .” In this case, it is unclear who the dog bit because the pronoun, “her,” could refer to either Teresa or Ariel.
• “ Teresa and Ariel walked the dog. Later, it bit them .” Here, the third person plural pronoun, “them,” matches the nouns that precede it. It’s clear that the dog bit both people.
• “Teresa and Ariel walked the dog. Teresa unhooked the leash, and the dog bit her .” In these sentences, it is assumed that Teresa is the “her” in the second sentence because her name directly precedes the singular pronoun, “her.”

Apostrophes

• Skim your paper, stopping only at those words which end in "s." If the "s" is used to indicate possession, there should be an apostrophe, as in “Mary's book.”
• Look over the contractions, like “you're” for “you are,” “it's” for “it is,” etc. Each of these should include an apostrophe.
• Remember that apostrophes are not used to make words plural. When making a word plural, only an "s" is added, not an apostrophe and an "s."
• “ It’s a good day for a walk.” This sentence is correct because “it’s” can be replaced with “it is.”
• “A bird nests on that tree. See its eggs?” In this case, “its” is a pronoun describing the noun, “bird.” Because it is a pronoun, no apostrophe is needed.
• “Classes are cancelled today” is a correct sentence whereas “Class’s are cancelled today” is incorrect because the plural form of class simply adds an “-es” to the end of the word.
• “ Sandra’s markers don’t work.” Here, Sandra needs an apostrophe because the noun is a possessive one. The apostrophe tells the reader that Sandra owns the markers.

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Tips For Effective Proofreading

Proofread backwards. Begin at the end and work back through the paper paragraph by paragraph or even line by line. This will force you to look at the surface elements rather than the meaning of the paper.

Place a ruler under each line as you read it. This will give your eyes a manageable amount of text to read.

Know your own typical mistakes. Before you proofread, look over papers you have written in the past. Make a list of the errors you make repeatedly.

Proofread for one type of error at a time. If commas are your most frequent problem, go through the paper checking just that one problem. Then proofread again for the next most frequent problem.

Try to make a break between writing and proofreading. Set the paper aside for the night — or even for twenty minutes.

Proofread at the time of day when you are most alert to spotting errors.

Proofread once aloud. This will slow you down and you will hear the difference between what you meant to write and what you actually wrote.

Try to give yourself a break between the time you complete your final version of the paper and the time you sit down to edit. Approaching your writing with a clear head and having at least an hour to work on editing will ensure that you can do a thorough, thoughtful job. The results will definitely be worthwhile.

Ask someone else to read over your paper and help you find sentences that aren’t clear, places where you’re being wordy, and any errors.

Try reading backwards, a sentence at a time. This will help you focus on the sentences, rather than getting caught up in the content of your paper.

Know your own patterns. Your instructor can probably help you identify the errors you’ve made most often in your previous papers, and then you can focus your attention on finding and fixing them.

Read through your paper several times , once looking just at spelling, another time looking just at punctuation, and so on. Again, this can help you focus so you’ll do a better job.

Use the spell-checker on your computer, but use it carefully, and also do your own spell-checking. Computer spell-checkers often make errors – they might suggest a word that isn’t what you want at all, and they don’t know the difference between there, their, and they’re, for example.

Get help. If you’re not sure if you need that comma or whether to use “affect” or “effect,” look it up in a writing handbook, or ask your instructor for help.

Remember that editing isn’t just about errors. You want to polish your sentences at this point, making them smooth, interesting, and clear. Watch for very long sentences, since they may be less clear than shorter, more direct sentences. Pay attention to the rhythm of your writing; try to use sentences of varying lengths and patterns. Look for unnecessary phrases, repetition, and awkward spots.

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How to Proofread Your Own Writing

Mychelle is a writer and web designer who is passionate about a wide variety of topics and enjoys sharing her knowledge with readers.

Learn about our Editorial Policy .

Writing on your own without the help of an editor can open you up to missing typos and grammatical errors. There are many tactics you can use to proofread your writing effectively by yourself.

Print Your Writing Out

If you've been working at a computer screen for an amount of time, it's easy for your eyes to get tired and lose some focus on the words on the screen. Printing your writing out on a sheet of paper can help with proofreading in a few ways.

• 17 Work-at-Home Jobs for Seniors Where You Can Make Your Own Hours

Read It Out Loud

Take your printed piece and read it out loud to yourself. You may find that the spoken words indicate errors and unclear wording compared to when you are silently reading it in your head. Make your revisions and read it aloud again and repeat the process until you feel satisfied with the spoken version.

Be Your Own Audience

When reading out loud, try to pretend that you are the person you are trying to reach with your writing's message. When you place yourself "in their shoes" your writing may sound different and you'll pick up immediately on changes you should make to improve your work's clarity.

Cover It Up

When you've been working on a piece for a while, it's common to miss the details of a specific sentence because you are mentally moving ahead to the next section's message. Forcing yourself to look at one line at a time makes you more aware of what is right in front of you. Take a piece of paper or anything with a straight, opaque edge and cover up all your writing below the line you are reviewing.

Read It Backwards

This sounds like a strange step, but it works because it makes you focus on each specific word separately rather than the overall content. Typos can tend to blend in to your sentences if you are reading with the content in mind. You can read each word out loud or silently as long as you do it in reverse and are focusing on each word separately.

Take a Breather

Writing can take a lot out of you mentally, and errors are hard to catch when you're tired. Give yourself a break and get up and away from your desk. Engage in some exercise such as stretching, walking the dog, or take a nap. You should find your mind refreshed and ready to go when you get back to reviewing your work.

Environment Is Important

Make sure you are working in a space that is not full of distractions such as noise or movement. If you are in a crowded, busy space, concentrating on proofreading can be tough. Either clear the distractions from the room or find a quieter place. Likewise, remove distractions from your workspace such as your phone or social media on your computer. If you need some help with the temptations of checking Facebook, try a program like Forest or RescueTime to help you.

Follow Checklists

It helps to create a series of checklists to go through with your writing so you are looking at finding one type of error at a time. In other words, make a list of each type of error you want to find and then go through your entire piece looking just for that error. Then repeat the process. Types of errors on your checklist could be:

• Misspelled words and names
• Grammatical errors
• Incorrect style rules (i.e. AP versus Chicago )
• Passive voice
• Capitalization errors
• Misused words
• Bad HTML links

Use Online and Software Tools

There are many excellent software options you can use to help you with proofreading. If you are using a word processing program such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs, you can use the built-in spelling and grammar checker function.

• Grammarly is a free app that reviews your writing for spelling and grammar problems. You can review your writing on their website, add it as a browser extension, or download it to use locally. If you want more help, Grammarly has a premium version starting at just under $30 per month with a more robust review process.
• Slick Write is a free service you can use on their website or with a browser extension. A nice feature in Slick Write is the Flow view that presents a graphical representation of how well each sentence of your piece reads. The Statistics view will show you graphs indicating your level on indexes such as Passive Voice, Vocabulary use and percentage of adverbs.

Proofreading On Your Own

Obviously having a second set of eyes on your written work can be one of the strongest ways of finding errors. However using some tried-and-true techniques with a little help from modern technology can produce an effective proofreading process when you're working on your own.

How to Proofread Your Writing

Many students, writers, and business professionals turn in a piece of work as soon as they have the last sentence written. A few go through a revision process where they edit and look for large-scale errors. Very few actually take the final step in the revision process and actually proofread their documents. Proofreading may seem like a tedious extra step, but it is one of the main reasons why an article may be denied publication, why students get a lower grade than they deserve, or why proposals are rejected. 

In this article, you will learn exactly what proofreading is, why is it important to proofread your writing, and several tips on ‘how to’ proofreading a document. 

What does Proofread Mean?

The Latin “probare” means “to confirm by testing”. The combination with the word “read” answers the question of how to spell proofread and hints at its meaning. Similar to the scientific concept of proving something by testing it, proofreading is essentially testing a document to make sure that it is correct. Proofreading is the last stage of the review process and the four things to look for when proofreading are checking for spelling errors, typographical errors, grammatical errors, formatting issues, and other small problems.

There are different kinds of proofreading for different types of documents. Technical or legal documents need to be proofread in a specific, more thorough way than articles or homework assignments. Depending on the type of document proofreading can take anywhere from half an hour to several hours and in some cases, days.  

What is the Difference Between Editing and Proofreading?

Even though editing and proofreading are used interchangeably there is a significant difference between the two. While both are part of the review process, proofreading is the final step whereas editing refers to the first few steps. Generally speaking, these are the steps during revision:

• Content editing
• Line editing
• Copy editing
• Proofreading

Any changes you make after the completion of your first draft can be considered editing.

Content editing is usually the first thing you do at the end of a first draft. This involves moving around large sections of texts, deleting or replacing entire paragraphs, and generally changing the contents of the writing. 

Line editing refers to changes made to specific paragraphs. This includes changing specific words to make the tone of the piece more consistent, changing sentences and restructuring paragraphs to improve the flow of the writing, and generally changing the language to improve the piece.

Copy editing refers to changes made to specific sentences. This includes changing words to correct grammar, match the style of the overall article, and improve the clarity of each sentence. The goal is not to change the content of a sentence but to make sentences more clear.

Proofreading is the final stage of the revision process. It includes going over the paper slowly and carefully to check for any minor but important mistakes in spelling, formatting, grammar, etc.

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How to Proofread Professionally

Whether you want to know how to proofread a document for work, how to proofread an essay for school, or just how to proofread your own writing, these tips will help you polish any kind of writing.

Be careful with spell checkers

Spell checkers can do a cursory job of making sure that your spelling is okay, but most spell checkers have a limited in-built dictionary and might not be able to check some words. Spell checkers often make mistakes between words that are similar but have different meanings like flower and flour. 

Be careful with grammar checkers

Grammar checking requires a higher level of analysis than spell checking so the same issues that happen with spell checkers are magnified with grammar checkers. It is still worthwhile to run a piece of writing through an automated grammar checker but you have to go over the results carefully yourself.

Read out loud

Reading a paper out loud slowly word by word ensures that you pay attention to each word as well as punctuation. If a sentence sounds wrong, there may be mistakes in the word choice disrupting flow that you can easily correct. Reading out loud is particularly useful for identifying run-on sentences as well as many other kinds of errors.

Check for one kind of mistake at a time

Trying to check for every kind of error at once can get overwhelming especially if the document has a lot of mistakes or is very technical. Check for one type of mistake at a time and work down a list.

Print it out

A hard copy allows you to see the piece in a different format which is helpful when proofreading.  The freedom to write on the paper any way you want and highlight mistakes is also beneficial. 

Circle every punctuation mark

Punctuation is one of the most complicated mistakes to catch. Every time you come across a punctuation mark, circle it and ask yourself if it is correct. This will make sure that you don't miss any incorrect punctuation marks as well as force you to analyze each one.

Proofread backwards

Start at the end of the paper and proofread each sentence or paragraph working backwards.  This forces you to focus only on small sections at a time rather than be distracted by the overall meaning of the paper. 

Use a straight edge

Use a piece of paper or anything with a straight edge to underline each sentence as you go over it. This helps drive attention to just the sentence you are focusing on and removes extra text from your field of vision. 

Take a break

If you are proofreading your own writing then it is important to take a break before proofreading.  This helps view the paper differently when going over it. If you know the paper too well, you may scan over sentences more quickly than you should because you think it is correct but it actually has errors. 

Work in short bursts

Because proofreading requires a lot of attention, it can be helpful to proofread for 15 minutes at a time with 5-minute breaks in between rounds of proofreading. 

Make sure you have gone through a few rounds of editing before you sit down to proofread.  Proofreading before editing just makes you waste time.

Look things up

If you're not sure about the spelling of a word or about punctuation even if you run it through a spell-checker or grammar checker, run a quick Google search on the proper spelling or punctuation usage. This will help you get better at proofreading in the future as you understand and remember more grammatical rules.

Proofread when you are the most alert

Proofreading requires a lot of attention to detail and should be done when you are at your best. Don't proofread if you are tired, hungry, or distracted. If you are a morning person, proofread in the morning, if you are an evening person, proofread at night.

Stay away from distractions

As mentioned above proofreading requires a lot of attention to detail so don't proofread with the TV on or around people that may be a distraction.

Ask someone to read it out loud

By having someone else read the writing out loud, you can focus just on how things sound and catch more errors. This also has the added benefit of having somebody else go over the writing.

Know yourself

If there are certain kinds of mistakes that you tend to make often, make sure you check for them specifically. Learning to write is a process and checking for specific types of mistakes will make you better at it overall in the future.

Ask someone else to proofread

It is difficult to be objective, especially if it is your own writing. After you have proofread the document, ask someone else to go over it as well. They will give you different kinds of feedback and might catch mistakes that you missed.

Change the look

Changing the formatting of the document by altering font sizes or using different colors can make you think of the text in a new way, helping get distance and making you more unbiased. 

Use the search and replace function

Use the search and replace function on Word to quickly scan a document for common errors that you might make. This is particularly useful when the writing contains many proper nouns or words with rare spellings.

Check language style

It is easy to get confused by the different spellings between British and American English especially if you are a non-native speaker, so make sure you pay attention and stay consistent in your writing.

Check citations

Make sure you are following the correct citation style and the format of your in-text citations is correct. Also, check that every piece of information that needs to be cited is correctly cited. 

Did you like our Proofread Article?

For more help, tap into our pool of professional writers and get expert essay editing services!

After reading this article, you should now know how to proofread better! The key things to remember are to get some distance from the writing, find ways of looking at the material in a new light, being in the right state of mind, and devoting enough time.

Sometimes, you may need help with proofreading, especially if it's a long piece of writing or a very technical document. There are a lot of options online for proofreading, and they vary in cost depending on the type of writing. Studyfy, an art essay writing service , also offers scholarship essay writing help , term paper writing service , business essay writer , and affordable " write my essay for me cheap " services. They have expert editors and proofreaders who have experience with all kinds of writing!

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How To Proofread: 19 Foolproof Strategies To Power Up Your Writing

by William Wadsworth | Feb 3, 2023

by William Wadsworth

The Cambridge-educated memory psychologist & study coach on a mission to help YOU ace your exams . Helping half a million students in 175+ countries every year to study smarter, not harder. Supercharge your studies today with our time-saving, grade-boosting “genius” study tips sheet .

Proofreading: it’s the final hurdle on your race to the submission deadline, and a crucial step in creating a polished document. But how exactly do you proofread effectively and efficiently?

Whether you’re working on an essay, thesis, dissertation, research paper or article, take a deep breath. This is your one-stop “how to proofread” guide:

We’ve got 19 clever proofreading steps and strategies to take your skills to the next level and fine-tune your document for maximum marks. Because after all that hard work, don’t let careless mistakes drag your essay (and your grade!) down!

Proofreading and editing: what’s it all about?

Before we get down to those 19 strategies, what do we mean by “proofreading”?

The difference between editing and proofreading is actually pretty simple:

• Editing is a process that you begin after your first draft – it’s all about refining the quality, tone, word count, clarity and readability of your writing
• Proofreading is done to your final draft (once your content is ready, structured, signposted and feeling awesome!)

It’s all about checking that the elements of your essay or paper are consistent, presented correctly and free from errors . Think: spelling and grammar, punctuation, formatting, references and citations, figures and tables .

Essentially, you don’t want your examiner to be distracted from your winning argument by a sloppily presented document – and proofreading is the answer.

Here’s an example of the difference careful proofreading can make to your essay:

That all might sound daunting, but I promise it’s not! Especially if you work strategically and follow these 19 steps:

How to proofread: 19 killer strategies

Proofreading is a process, sure. But I don’t want you to get overwhelmed!

 So I’ve grouped these top 19 proofreading strategies into 3 sets: preparation and mindset , checking every element , and making the most of your proofreading tools .

Part 1: Get into the groove with the right preparation and mindset

1. Leave yourself plenty of time

Hopefully you’re not reading this article the night before your deadline ( and if you are – good luck !).

Because our first proofreading strategy is all about time.

Proofreading can be a tedious process of spotting and correcting small errors – definitely time-consuming ! And the longer your essay, thesis or dissertation, the more time this process will need .

Plus, if you’re hoping for external help (whether friend or professional), you’ll need to leave them time to work too.

In my opinion, it’s best to give yourself a solid week for proofreading and corrections – if you can! That way, you’ll have time to …

2. Take a break before you start

Your brain and eyes need to be fresh if you’re going to proofread accurately.

You don’t want to be anticipating what you’ve written, rather than actually concentrating on the words on the page!

So, don’t jump straight from writing to proofreading – take a break !

If you can, take a few days away from your essay or thesis. If not, have a coffee and stroll around the block first. Get your mind clear and ready to focus.

Psst: Don’t forget to take plenty of short breaks whilst proofreading longer assignments too!

Ready? Perfect: you’ll be primed to dive into …

3. The proofreading mindset

It’s time to put your proofreading hat on!

Try and separate yourself from the “you” that wrote the essay . Try to pretend you’re marking an essay written by a friend you want to help get top marks!

Going to a different location can really help create this kind of psychological distance between “you” the author and “you” the proofreader.

If you can, move to a desk or armchair in another room, or take your essay to a library or quiet corner in your favourite coffee shop . Just make sure your environment is distraction-free – you’re going to need to concentrate!

If you really want to go to town on this, you could literally wear a different hat! It sounds silly, but when we look or behave differently, it can send powerful signals to our mind that it should be thinking differently too.

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4. Print it out

This is a proofreading strategy I always do:

Many people (me included!) find it much easier to read closely when text is on a printed page rather than when it’s on a screen. So grab that stack of paper, a nice bright pen and settle into your chosen spot …

Psst : I know we all need to do our bit to keep printing to a minimum to help the planet, but when your grade is on the line, I think you can cut yourself some slack. Just make sure you recycle your printing when you’re done…

If that’s not your style, why not try reading your essay aloud to help you spot mistakes?

5. Slow down and tame your eyes

When we read, our eyes move in jumps called “ saccades ”.

Essentially, our eyes don’t focus on every single word in turn. Instead, they focus on a point only every few words, which means some words only ever appear in peripheral vision. If you read quickly, the majority of the words in your essay are only appearing in your peripheral vision.

And that means it’s easy to miss things ! Your peripheral vision fills in details and assumes correctness (especially when you’re familiar with the argument).

So, to proofread effectively, you need to force your eyes to slow down and focus on each word in turn .

Try these methods for reading slowly and systematically:

• Use your finger or a pen to trace under each word as you read it
• Or have a ruler or piece of paper to hand to move down the page, revealing only one new row at a time

You might be surprised how many more errors you pick up!

6. Read backwards

Still struggling with slowing down? Here’s one more strategy for making sure you proofread carefully:

Read your essay backwards!

That might sound tricky, but it’s actually pretty clever and simple.

Often, our brains will trick us into reading a correct spelling based on the context of the rest of the sentence, and whatever word we’re “expecting” should appear next.

Solve the issue by reading each paragraph backwards, sentence by sentence. Start from the final word of the paragraph and move in order to the first. Those misspelt words will have nowhere to hide!

Psst : This is a great proofreading tip for hand-written essays where no spell-check is available (such as in an exam), particularly if you know you’re weak on spelling!

7. Know yourself

Our final proofreading strategy to get you prepared and in the groove is this:

Make sure you’re aware of the most common errors you make all the time when writing. Why not make a list to check off!

Maybe you always misspell “theorem”, get in a muddle about when to add commas or know you aren’t consistent about using en-dashes between dates (1914 – 1919).

If you’re not sure about the correct way to do something, check the guidelines set out by your institution, ask your teacher or lecturer, or look at the style guide for your discipline (such as the Chicago Manual of Style).

Part 2: How to proofread every element in your essay, dissertation or thesis

Feeling daunted by how many things you need to check for accuracy? Don’t be. You can do this!

Think of it a little like breaking down a big study goal into milestones : all you need is this checklist, a plan of action and a little time .

Top tip: It’s often a good idea to take several passes through your document – especially if it’s a longer essay or you know you struggle with accuracy. That way you can deal with each element individually! Pass one: headings, pass two: references and citations … and so on!

8. The big stuff: overall structure

You’ve probably done lots of editing as you’ve improved your essay or thesis, so make sure to take the time and check everything is still in the right order and place! Introduction, Part 1, Analysis … etc!

It’s so easy for cut-and-pasted paragraphs or sentences to have actually just been copied – and now exist twice! Or for edited paragraphs to end abruptly mid-sentence …

Trust me, we’ve all done it!

Adding signposting to your essay is another crucial editing step that can easily get things out of order. Plus signposting often produces in-text references that are vital and need to be correct for things to make sense to your editor! (That’s when you say “ see Section Two ” or “ as mentioned in the preceding three sections ”).

Once you’ve made sure that everything still makes sense and flows in a logical progression it’s time to move onto the little details:

9. Spelling, grammar and punctuation

The most obvious check you need to make when proofreading your essay is for mistakes in your spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Don’t forget to check that you:

• Are using the correct capitalisation of words
• For example, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) can later be referred to as the BBC

I’m not going to list every possible type of mistake you should be checking for. But here a handful of common examples to get you started with your proofreading:

• Misspellings that are real (but very different) words, e.g. field and filed . Your spellchecker won’t spot these!
• It’s and its
• You’re and your
• There , they’re and their
• Affect and effect
• Principle and principal
• Tense consistency within sentences (not switching between present and future)
• Verbs agreeing with their subjects
• Using commas and semicolons accurately
• Missing punctuation: does every sentence end with a full stop?

10. Formatting: from headers to italics

This next proofreading strategy is all about appearances.

A big part of how to proofread your essay, thesis or dissertation is getting the formatting right and consistent .

Psst: Chances are, if you’re writing a bigger assignment such as a thesis or dissertation, your institution will have provided you with a style guide that includes acceptable formatting for submission. Make it your ally!

The formatting includes lots of elements that contribute to the layout of your document:

• Are you capitalising them?
• What font and style should they have?
• Are they numbered (consistently)?
• Are you giving them indentation and/or justification?
• Are your paragraph breaks the same?
• Create your own style guide page with body, figure, heading and subheading fonts laid out!
• Are they consistent and suitable for printing and binding your thesis?
• Do your page numbers continue correctly after any blank pages?
• Are there any pages with only 1-2 lines of text? Avoid these!
• Are there rules in your discipline for how you use italics?
• Has it spread beyond the phra se you meant to italicise?
• Double  spaces
• Spaces before punctuation .
• Mixing up m-dashes, en-dashes and hyphens

Make a list of the things you need to check for – especially if you spot a frequently recurring mistake!

11. References and citations

In my experience, referencing is one of those things that just makes people groan. It’s nit-picky, careful work. But worth doing right – you don’t want to plagiarism police at your door!

Proper referencing is a big part of academic writing, so make sure you’re following the correct method for your discipline. ( Ask your teacher or supervisor for advice if you’re unsure !)

When checking your references, ensure that your citations match the references in your bibliography! Any quotations should also conform to formatting and referencing rules for your field .

And don’t forget to check the little details when proofreading, for example:

• Are your author initials spaced or unspaced? (e.g. C.S. Lewis vs C. S. Lewis )
• Which date format are you using? (e.g. 27th August 1854 vs August 27th 1854 vs 27/08/1854 )
• If you have footnotes or endnotes, are your numbers all in order?
• Do you have any outdated in-text references to footnotes or endnotes?

Depending on your referencing format, it might be easier to do a separate proofreading pass through your essay to check for citation errors!

12. Figures and tables

Whether you’ve got charts, tables, figures, illustrations or graphs: don’t forget to check your captions and placement.

This is another key place where outdated in-text references might be hiding , particularly if you’ve been editing your document structure. Find where you say things like “ see Figure 6 ”: are these numbers still correct?

Don’t let errors slip through and cost you marks!

13. Check for consistency

Our next proofreading strategy is an important one!

Sometimes, you need to make stylistic decisions in your writing, and which option you choose matters less than staying consistent throughout your essay.

Remember: if in doubt, refer to any guidelines your teacher or institution have given you, or the official style guide for your discipline (e.g. Chicago Manual of Style).

Check you’re not chopping and changing between different options on issues. Here are some examples you might catch when proofreading:

• When to use ‘single’ or “double” quotation marks
• Full stops after bullets. Or not
• Are you using the US English or British English spellings of words?
• Whether you prefer – ise or – ize endings
• Is there any Technical Vocabulary that might be capitalised inconsistently?
• e.g. you might spell out “one” to “nine”, and use numerals for 10 and above
• Or your figures might use roman numbers e.g. Figure IV
• If your headings and subheadings are numbered (e.g. 1.1, 1.2), check they’re consistent, and that order is correct against the table of contents!

14. Check twice after every tweak

And finally, our last tip in this section on how to proofread absolutely everything in your essay is …

I think the single biggest thing I’ve learned about how to proofread an essay is to be super, ultra, incredibly careful about errors creeping in after editing .

You know how it goes: you’re on your final proofread before submission, and you spot a clunky sentence that could be tidied up with a little rewrite. You make the change, but don’t check it properly, and leave a fresh mistake in your work.

By all means, make a small tweak here and there in the proofreading phase, but make sure you check the amended paragraph at least twice afterwards!

If you find you’re making a lot of major edits, pause the proofread phase entirely to give your essay a round of editing. Only return to proofreading for accuracy once you’ve done all your edits .

Part 3: Make use of available tools

The third and final set of “how to proofread” strategies is all about making use of the tools available to you. And trust me, when it comes to proofreading, there are plenty of services, websites and plugins and even Word functions you can use to make your life easier!

15.  Get the most out of Word’s editing functions

If you’ve typed your essay or thesis in Word then you’ve got plenty of proofreading firepower at your fingertips!

And it’s not all about those handy grammar and spellcheckers either – although they are a great place to start:

• Remember: they’ll catch some (though not all) mistakes. Homophones and misspelt words that are still real words – definitely weak spots and up to you to catch!
• Not every detected “error” actually is a mistake: you’ll sometimes need to use your judgement

So how else can Word help you to proofread thoroughly?

• Setting your language correctly can be a big help to the spellchecker’s effectiveness – US and UK English have plenty of subtle differences!
• The Navigation bar is also a handy place to count through numbered headings and make sure you don’t have Section 1.1 twice!
• Making your own style guide page can be a big help in seeing how it all looks and works together
• If you have a friend helping you to proofread – or if you’ve just got your proofreader hat on – the “Track Changes” and “Comments” features can be a great assistance when it comes to actually making all the tiny corrections!

16. Get proofreading with Grammarly

Another great online tool to assist you with proofreading your essays and dissertations – in fact, any piece of writing! – is Grammarly .

I’ve recently added Grammarly * to my writer’s arsenal and wish I’d done it years ago. It’s a proofreading strategy I definitely recommend.

It acts like a turbo-charged version of the standard Word grammar and spellchecker, helping me catch a much broader range of mistakes.

The ability to set your audience, level or formality and language ( academic, email, casual etc ) is a great feature that helps with any awkwardness of writing in a more formal academic style.

Honestly, it’s not perfect and will often flag perfectly correct words and phrases as errors. But I’d much rather that way round than it missed out on flagging potential errors to me.

Plus – it’s free to create an account! I’m using the pro version now as writing is such an important part of my life, but even Grammarly’s free version * is a big improvement when it comes to proofreading your essays and theses.

17. Avoid plagiarism like the plague

You don’t want to be caught copying others’ work.

Universities and Colleges often run essay submissions through tools like Turnitin which will put a big red flag against essays with too high a percentage of text which matches source material online.

Even if you didn’t intend to “cheat”, sometimes a careless late-night library moment can allow a passage you copied into your research notes to somehow end up in your finished essay.

Avoid this problem by having a rule that you’ll never copy text directly from articles or books , unless it’s a clearly marked direct quote.

For extra peace of mind, consider running important submissions through a plagiarism checker .

18. Find a proofreading buddy

Of course, your friends and family aren’t exactly proofreading “tools” – but this is an important strategy for when you’re stuck!

But when you’re stuck in writing and editing mode and can’t get enough space between you and your essay to put your neutral proofreading hat on …

Then finding a proofreading buddy can be a great help – especially if you can swap assignments and offer them a little assistance too!

Having an external eye brings some much-needed objectivity to the proofreading table – your buddy is far more likely to spot mistakes you miss because your brain is seeing what it expects to in your familiar argument (see #5!).

19. Seeking professional help

Of course, there’s also the option of finding a professional proofreader. Whether you’re aiming for top marks or getting accepted for publication, there’s often lots on the line when it comes to polished submissions!

First up, it’s important to check what your institution allows , and whether you need permission. Don’t forget – you don’t want to be accused to collusion or cheating!

Sometimes hiring a professional isn’t permitted – or perhaps it’s simply not in your budget. If it is however – that can be great news. Remember: you’ll need to budget in plenty of time for them to work – its slow work!

Getting professional help can also be a smart move if you struggle with reading or writing in English.  

Learning differences such as dyslexia or dysgraphia can make life difficult when it comes to proofreading your essays and assignments. If English is not your first language , or you struggle with writing in academic English, you might be facing similar challenges.

Thankfully, there are plenty of options:

• Your university or college language centre can be a great help – offering courses, advice and even lists of peers to approach as proofreaders.
• There are also many professional proofreading services that cater to academic writing – from local services in your university town, to internationally renowned companies.

Good luck with your submission!

That’s it – 19 comprehensive and foolproof proofreading strategies for flawless writing!

You’ve worked hard, and now you know how to proofread your essay, thesis, dissertation or research paper like a pro! So once it’s ready, don’t put it off, get it handed in, get it off your mind, and relax.

Now your work is ready for the next step, be sure to check out my guide to printing and binding your thesis for submission!

And if you’re not sure if your essay is ready for proofreading quite yet, why not polish your content and grab some extra marks with more of our helpful writing skills guides :

• how to create effective paragraphs
• about the ideal length(s) for your paragraphs
• how to transition between the stages of your argument
• the 70+ top connective words and phrases to improve your writing
• how to signpost your essay for top marks

Until the next one… 😉

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How to Proofread Your Own Writing? An Ultimate Checklist

Proofreading means reviewing your content once you have finished writing it. It is a very important measure for ensuring that your work has no errors

According to an online source, 54% of employers will think twice about hiring you if your content has a spelling or grammar mistake.

It is crucial that you proofread your writing once or twice because of this. You may come across mistakes like misspellings and grammar, unclear sentence construction, and much more during this process.

So how to proofread your work? In this article, we have created a list of effective methods to help you proofread your work most efficiently.

1. Take a Break

After finishing your work, it’s crucial that you take a break and don’t start proofreading straight away. This is essential because, when you return from your break with a clear head, you will be able to spot all of the writing errors .

During this break, make sure that you are not thinking about your writing. Try to divert your focus by engaging in activities that interest you.

Similarly, you need to be careful not to take extra-long or overly short breaks. The duration of your break can be determined by the length of your writing. For example, a thousand-word article might require a break of several hours before you proofread it.

2. Read Aloud

This approach may appear a little odd at first, but it has many benefits. You can get a sense of how your writing sounds to a reader by reading it aloud. This step is most effective in finding readability errors.

For example, using complex or compound sentences might be good in some cases, but sometimes, they might confuse the users. Such confusing sentences can be identified by reading your work aloud. Similarly, you might come up with a few synonyms that can replace some words.

3. Make a Checklist

One thing that might help you while proofreading is to make a checklist of errors that you want to find in your writing. Your proofreading checklist might look something like this:

• Spelling errors
• Grammar mistakes
• Readability issues
• Word choice

You can proofread your writing multiple times, concentrating on one kind of mistake at a time. Although it may take some time, the outcomes will be well worth it.

However, you can skip this step and search for all errors at once if you don’t have much time to spare for the proofreading process.  

4. Read Backwards

This is a very effective technique for finding out errors while proofreading. What this means is that instead of reading your content in chronological order , you can start from the end and read the previous sentences.

By not following the order of your writing, you can read sentences without context. This allows you to proofread sentences as individual phrases instead of parts of a paragraph. In this way, you can catch errors in your sentences much more efficiently.

One variant of this method is to read a sentence and then read the same sentence backward. For example, the sentence, the mobile is red can be read backward as red is the mobile . This technique is also useful but takes up quite some time.

5. Use Proofreading Tools

There are several different proofreading tools available on the internet. These can identify mistakes in your work, and some might even suggest suitable replacements to fix those errors.

These tools can include grammar or spell checkers, readability checkers, plagiarism checkers, etc. We have listed a few such tools to familiarize you with how they identify mistakes in your work.

• Editpad Plagiarism Checker
• Grammarcheck.ai
• Prepostseo Readability Checker
• Hemingway App

Now let’s briefly discuss all of them one by one.

A.   Editpad Plagiarism Checker

An online plagiarism detector provided by Editpad examines your writing to see if any of the content matches that found in any other online source. This tool guarantees the originality and distinctiveness of your work in this way. 

Here is an example of how its reports look like:

With the help of this tool, we were able to identify that our passage was not plagiarized.

B. Grammarcheck.ai

This program is a grammar checker that can identify errors in your writing and recommend appropriate substitutions for them. With the help of this tool, errors can be found and corrected. 

Here is an example of its working:

In the above example, the tool was able to detect grammar errors. Both the subject-verb agreement error and the incorrect capitalization were pointed out, and a list of replacements was also provided.

C. Prepostseo Readability Checker

The readability checker by Prepostseo gives you a readability score. This score can help you determine whether your sentences are easy to read and understand or not.

Here are what its results look like:

These are the statistics that were shown to us when we entered a sentence into the tool.

D.     HemingwayApp

Our last example is the online text editing software known as Hemingway App. This tool also gives you the readability check of your sentences along with some other statistics. An image of these statistics has been given below.

The red arrow points to the metrics that this tool measures and lets us know about.

So, by using these tools, you can save some time and find out all the errors that are present in your writing.

6. Ask For Feedback

Reviewing your work by yourself is very important, but taking someone else’s opinion on your writing before publishing it can be very valuable as well. You can ask someone from friends or family to give you unbiased feedback.

They might find out some mistakes that you have overlooked or didn’t consider mistakes at all.  For example, a sentence might sound right to you because your reading skills are high, but the same sentence might be confusing for some readers. So, be open to constructive criticism and make relevant changes according to the third-person reviews.

7. Final Review

Once you are done making all the changes, review your edited work one final time. This will further eliminate the possibility of your work having any sort of errors.

Similarly, there might be some changes that you had identified before but forgot to add. That’s why a final review can be very helpful in some cases.

In this article, we have discussed a few strategies you can apply for proofreading your work. Similarly, we have explained the importance of proofreading and why it is important. Your writing reaches its finalized form only when it has been carefully proofread. That’s why you should always analyze your work thoroughly before submitting or publishing it.

Cypress Media Group

How to proofread your own writing.

You may have thought about taking a course on proofreader training, only to discover that it was geared towards professional proofreaders. You don't have to be a professional proofreader to do a better job proofreading your own writing.

It's difficult to catch your own mistakes because you read what you expect to see when you check over something you have written. A common example of this is writing you when you mean to write your —or vice versa. You read the word you intended to write, and the error doesn't register as a mistake.

To proofread thoroughly, it's important to know the types of errors that are most common. The following can serve as a checklist:

Types of Errors

• Incorrectly spelled names
• Reversed numbers in addresses
• Incorrect dates
• Incorrect or inconsistent capitalization
• Doubly typed words or phrases
• Omissions of words or parts of words
• Incorrect or deleted punctuation
• Non-agreement of subject and verb
• Misspelled words

Often it isn't possible to ask a colleague to proofread your work. When you are struggling to meet a deadline or writing "on the road," you have to be your own editor/proofreader. The following general tips should produce professional results.

• Proofread from a printed copy, not the computer screen.
• When you find one error, be aware that you may find a cluster of errors nearby.
• Watch for words that are commonly misused, misspelled, or sound similar but have different meanings (e.g., except/accept, moral/morale, intense/intensive).
• Allow some time between writing and proofreading so you can look at the document with fresh eyes.
• Always proofread one last time before you print or send a document.

Most of us use a spell checker program, a software tool that allows writers to check their spelling, when we write on the computer. It is a terrific aid to proofreading, but it does not replace a dictionary and the need to proofread carefully for several reasons. Let's review what a spell checker program can and cannot do.

Spell Check can do the following:

• Identify misspelled words
• Find double occurrences of words
• Identify double capital letters at the beginning of a word
• Identify when a small letter precedes a capital letter
• Accommodate additions to the dictionary of unusual words you commonly use

Spell Check cannot do the following:

• Find typographical errors that appear to be correct ( form instead of from , be long instead of belong )
• Point out grammatical errors ( their instead of they're , its instead of it's )
• Identify poor sentence sense and syntax

Most of us are not proofreaders by trade—nor do we want to be. However, you can learn to more accurately proofread your writing to catch mistakes before others do. Proofreading is relatively easy and fast. If you commit to proofreading all of your documents—including e-mail, your business writing will appear more polished and professional.

Catherine Hibbard

Catherine S. Hibbard is a nationally recognized expert in business and technical writing. Her company, Cypress Media Group , is an advertising, public relations, and training firm that provides training and consulting primarily related to business and technical writing, presentation skills, and media relations.

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