Proofreading - Protecting Your Work and Writing Reputation
If you are an article writer or perhaps a web content writer, you will already know just how important the process of proofreading is. Remember those early days when you just rushed through your work and threw it up online, hoping that the new content on your website or blog would be quickly picked up by the search engines such as Google? If you do remember, you probably also recall that posting work as soon as you have written it simply isn't a good idea!
Of course, it's worse still when you are writing for someone else's website. If you have handed a piece of work in without proofreading first, how many times have you viewed the finished "live" content and then noticed all those little, but oh so embarrassing typing and spelling errors? You could say that the client should have read the work before posting (and of course, they really should) but you were paid to do the work, so any typing errors are yours and yours alone!
So, there are several keys to this conundrum and the first one is to slow down! No matter how busy you are, no matter how tight the deadlines are, slow down and check your work before you submit it. If you have to stay up later to finish, if you have to work an extra few hours to make sure the work you hand in is of a good standard, surely it's worth it?
Proofreading your own work can really make a difference to your reputation as a writer and there are several simple ways you can start. You can proofread paragraph by paragraph. It's a little long winded but at least you will know that there are no major problems as you move through your piece of content.
On completion, you should definitely proof read from your computer screen first. This will highlight some of the errors immediately but then you should print off your work and proof read it again and this will undoubtedly reveal errors that you missed from your screen reading. Then read it again but this time read it aloud so you are not just checking for spelling errors but also to see how well it reads and if there is good "flow" to the piece.
These are really just the very basics in proofreading. On a professional level it gets far more detailed and much more serious and if you are interesting in learning some of those skills, then you should probably consider taking a proofreading course because it could prove invaluable to your current career or to a future one.
Of course, it's worse still when you are writing for someone else's website. If you have handed a piece of work in without proofreading first, how many times have you viewed the finished "live" content and then noticed all those little, but oh so embarrassing typing and spelling errors? You could say that the client should have read the work before posting (and of course, they really should) but you were paid to do the work, so any typing errors are yours and yours alone!
So, there are several keys to this conundrum and the first one is to slow down! No matter how busy you are, no matter how tight the deadlines are, slow down and check your work before you submit it. If you have to stay up later to finish, if you have to work an extra few hours to make sure the work you hand in is of a good standard, surely it's worth it?
Proofreading your own work can really make a difference to your reputation as a writer and there are several simple ways you can start. You can proofread paragraph by paragraph. It's a little long winded but at least you will know that there are no major problems as you move through your piece of content.
On completion, you should definitely proof read from your computer screen first. This will highlight some of the errors immediately but then you should print off your work and proof read it again and this will undoubtedly reveal errors that you missed from your screen reading. Then read it again but this time read it aloud so you are not just checking for spelling errors but also to see how well it reads and if there is good "flow" to the piece.
These are really just the very basics in proofreading. On a professional level it gets far more detailed and much more serious and if you are interesting in learning some of those skills, then you should probably consider taking a proofreading course because it could prove invaluable to your current career or to a future one.