8 Surefire Tips For Proofreading Your Writing

When you are writing a thesis, white paper, an article, an essay, direct mail or an official email message to your business partners, cleaning your writing from grammar mistakes is very important. Yes, spell checkers often do nice job, but they are very far from being foolproof. Here is where proofreading jump into the game. In this article you’ll find tips and approaches to make your proofreading process easier, faster and more effective.

1) Focus and concentrate
If you want to spot mistakes any writing, you need to focus and be concentrated. That means you need to remove any distractions and possible interactions that could eat your valuable concentration. Turn of your phone, TV, radio and what every you do – resolve to stay away from your email inbox, Facebook profile, Twitter, Skype, MSN and other mega-distracters.

2) Many studies have proven over and over again that people read differently on paper than on computer screen. Make sure to print out a copy of your text or writing. When you read aloud, you ears might spot errors that your eyes may have missed.

3) Homonyms

Homonyms are special words that have the same spelling or pronunciation, but have different semantic meaning. For example, if you mistakenly switch word “accept” with “except” or “complement” with “compliment”, this could end up in terrible end results and total misunderstanding of your writing. Conclusion: Pay your close attention to these nasty homonyms.

4) Be careful for Apostrophes and Contractions
When writing, most people often mix words like “their” and “they’re”, “its” and “it’s”, “your” and “you’re” etc. Anything that can hurt the quality and credibility of your writing is a similar mistake. Don’t forget that the apostrophe is absolutely never used to form plurals.

5) Double-check your punctuation
Sure, focusing your writing on words and sentences is good, but don’t neglect the importance of proper punctuation. Make sure to pay your close attention to correct capitalization of words, extra and/or missing comma, incorrectly applied period and other punctuations.

6) Read your writing backwards
Yes, you read that right. Read your writing backwards. The truth is, when writing text we humans usually become totally blind to our own grammar errors and mistakes because the our mind automatically corrects wording inside sentences.

The best way to break and avoid this pattern is to read your writing backwards, words by words. You’ll be amazed how many mistakes will notice that you didn’t notice before.

7) Check your numbers
Saying that your website attracted 8,000 visitors last month instead of actual 80,000 is sure not the same thing. Just imagine - if you’re writing letter or presentation for potential advertisers, this stupid mistake can cost you thousands. Always make sure numbers in your writing are correct.

8) Get someone else to do the proofreading
After you’ve personally checked all previously mentioned points, one of the best things that can happened to your writing is to find someone to do some extra proofreading for you. Often they will find errors and mistakes you’ve missed.

Plus, others are also in great position to elaborate and evaluate if your writing, wording, grammar and sentences make sense or not.