Six proofreading tips to catch 99.9 percent of errors

Successful proofreading depends on one thing: dumbing down your brain.

The problem: your brain is way too good at pattern recognition. It’s what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. When a word is mispelled or missing, your thoroughbred champion pattern-recognizing brain fills in the blanks and sees it as it should be, just fine.

Hey, did you catch the typo in that last paragraph? If not, don’t fret. I’ll reveal it to you in a second.

So how do you dumb down your brain? There’s always beer. But not exactly practical for this purpose. Funny you should ask. I have some tips for you. Six tips to be exact. These techniques, properly applied, will help you catch 99.9 percent of errors, even in work you’ve written yourself.

Notice I didn’t dare write 100 percent. I’ve been writing and proofreading professionally for decades and I have yet to find a way to get them all. Actually, there is one sure-fire way: publish! The minute the thing appears live or in print, proofreading is crowdsourced. Then all your errors come home to roost.

That typo’s driving you nuts, isn’t it?

Tip 6: Turn off everything.

By everything, I mean everything. If you’re texting, watching the news, listening to a podcast and answering emails while you’re proofreading, you’re doomed to fail. Turn that crap off. Get out of a noisy or chaotic environment. Shut the door. Leave your phone out of reach. You get the picture, if you really want to get over the 99 percent hump. You can proofread with distractions, but not successfully.

Oh, yeah. The typo. OK, I won’t tease you any longer. It was the word mispelled. The height of linguistic irony, misspell is one of the most commonly misspelled words in English. LOL.

Tip 5: Ignore it

This really applies only to stuff you’ve written yourself. Set it aside for as long as you possibly can. Even an hour is better than nothing. 24 hours, even better. Remember, we’re trying to dumb down your brain here. If you proofread something the minute you finished writing it, your brain will remember what you intended to write and see that clearly, even when the words are nowhere near the page.

Tip 4: Print a hard copy

Granted, I’m an old goat who has been proofreading since the end of the Civil War. But I maintain this tip has less to do with old habits and more to do with the way the brain interprets words. And the brain does that differently from an electronic screen than from actual, physical paper. Proven in the lab, BTW. Take a look at the work of Jakob Nielsen to see what I mean.

In the same vein, you can employ similar tricks electronically. For example, save the doc as a PDF and open it in Reader; copy and paste the doc into an email to yourself; change the font to something wacky your brain isn’t used to seeing. These tips can work for some and they achieve a similar effect, but an old-school hard copy is still the best, IMHO.

Tip 3: Read it out loud

This is probably the single most effective thing you can do to improve your error catch rate. Dumbing down the brain really means slowing it down. There’s almost no way you can read out loud as quickly as you can read silently, unless of course you moonlight as a livestock auctioneer. Try it. Watch those errors magically appear.

And don’t forget to read the stinkin’ headlines! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen, committed or missed typos in headlines. It makes no sense but it’s the scourge of every writer and proofreader.

A variation on this one you might hear is to read it aloud, backwards. I’ve done this. (I’ve tried just about every proofreading tip out there.) In my experience, it has limited value. It will definitely help you catch spelling errors but it’s not so great for grammar and syntax problems.

Another trick that works in a pinch is to prep the text so your computer can read it aloud for you. Not as good as you reading it, but at least you can use headphones if actual reading aloud isn’t practical.

Tip 2: Hire a proofreader

Kind of a duh, but it’s always smart to consider what your time is worth. If you can save $X by hiring a proofreader for $Y and Y < X, then that’s what you should do. (Sorry, I seem to have lapsed into algebra, there.) Professional proofreaders are available and many of them are very good.

Tip 1: Get a partner

This is money. If you haven’t heard this technique before, you’re welcome. It will put you in the 99.9 percent bracket. Maybe even 100 if you’re lucky. It’s simple to accomplish, but it’s not cheap and it’s not quick. It’s essentially the be-all and end-all for mopping up almost every last error. It’s what the pros do and you can, too.

If possible, print two hardcopies. One person is the reader, one the listener. Of course, you can both mark typos (you’ll both find some.) Read slowly and deliberately, out loud. I know printing two copies can be a bear if it’s a big manuscript. I said it wasn’t cheap, remember? But you can use the technique even for electronic work – the trick there is you need two people and two devices.

Slow down. Have fun. Go get those typos.

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