8 more tips for better proofreading
A few weeks ago, I wrote about ways to improve your proofreading skills.
Tips included checking your work on the screen and on paper, reading your text aloud, and chewing gum or tapping your foot to stay focused.
PR Daily readers also offered their proofreading advice, and had some excellent tips to share. Here are eight of the best:
1. Read your copy backwards.
2. Use an app with a speech option and have it the copy to you. “Sometimes this will uncover things that you might miss even when reading it out loud to yourself.”
3. Have a “read aloud” session. Get two people together and have one of them read the content to the other.
4. Change the font and text size to rearrange the content and make it look fresh. “[That’s] especially helpful for a document you’ve been working on for a while and have reader/proofer fatigue.”
5. Change the margins or spacing. “That fresh perspective often raises things I missed before.”
6. Change your location. Take your laptop to the break room or a paper copy with you to lunch. Sit outside as you review your document.
7. Recent research shows that moving around more frequently can help improve your concentration. Try standing up as you proofread.
8. Enlist help from someone who likes to point out your mistakes. This could be one of your kids, that annoying guy from IT, or your boyfriend/girlfriend. (My son, the middle schooler, loves to do this.)
Any more tips to add?
This post was first published on Ragan Communication’s PR Daily.
