The Importance of Proofreading

Thank you to all who commented on yesterday's blog post about celebrating my mother's 100th birthday, even though she passed on some years earlier.  

I found a great photo poster to head today's post but I have had trouble getting it to upload. There are days when I think I am pretty good figuring things out on my laptop and other times when I know the gremlins are out to get me. This is one of them. If you see the photo above, know that I conquered the problem!

The topic for today is Proofreading. In the photo, a chimp  sits at the computer and he says that he does his best proofreading after he hits Send. Hasn't that happened to all of us at one time or another? 

When and how do you proofread? I sound like a broken record sometimes, but I can't emphasize enough how important it is to set aside that first draft for a few days before you do anything more to it. 

If you attempt to do a proofreading and editing job immediately, you'll miss all kinds of little things. They pop out at you when you read the draft days later. At times, I wonder how in the world I had written this or that when I see it in a fresh light. 

How you do it is up to you but I find that it is best for me to read the piece from start to finish first. Make no corrections. Little flags will pop up in this reading. Next, go back to the beginning and look for the obvious errors like typos, tense changes, misspelled words. Fix them. Set the draft aside for a few hours or a couple days and go through it again. 

This time you want to check for good opening and closing, reasonable transitions from one section to another, clarity, cliches, redundancy and the strength of making your work interesting to the reader. That's a lot, isn't it? Do your revisions. If you're in a writing group, send it at t his point to the group for a critique. Or ask another writer friend to look at it, offering to do the same for him/her. 

At some point in this process, it would be beneficial to read your draft aloud. Nothing shows up problem areas like hearing it instead of merely reading the words silently. 

Proofreading, editing and revising takes time but it's worth every moment to bring out your very best writing before you hit Send.