Proofreading

Proofreading is what an editor (and the writer) does when they look over a story to find and correct errors. These can be spelling errors or grammatical errors.

You can proofread yourself but you can guarantee that you’ll miss most of your errors. A friend can read your story and even if they aren’t good at writing themselves they will always pick up on mistakes in your story. It is essential that you get someone else to proofread your work. The more unfamiliar they are with the piece in question the more mistakes they will pick up for you to correct. A perfect example of this was contained in the sentence preceding this one on this very page. It had originally said “You more familiar they are...” until a couple of readers emailed me to point out the mistake. I had read that sentence many times and had failed to see it - simply because I had written it and knew what I wanted it to say. So, when I read it back to myself, I only saw what should have been there.

If you don’t have someone to proofread for you (or are too shy to let others read your work) you may find it useful to have your computer read out your work to you. This could help you to spot mistakes that you would otherwise miss. Have a look on http://www.download.com for software such as Natural Voice Text to Speech Reader that will read your stories out to you.