How to polish your proofreading in 5 simple steps

Finally finished writing your email and checked that it all makes sense? Don’t hit send before you’ve proofread it.

Here are 5 tips to help you:

1. Try to give yourself a break between writing your email and when you proofread it. You want to go over it with “fresh eyes”.

2. Don’t rely on the spellchecker. It's not always right.

3. What are your typical mistakes? Here are some common ones:

subject/verb agreement – everyone likes, children play
noun/pronoun agreement – Jane Smith? She’s a great designer.
articles – a university, an animal, advice, the United States
prepositions – to discuss, to have a discussion about
capital letters – French, Australian, Thailand
commas – My new client, who’s from Chile, is an artist.
apostrophes – people’s lives, countries’ trade policies

Proofread for one type of error at a time. So if prepositions are your most frequent problem, go through the email checking just the prepositions. Then proofread again for the next most frequent problem and so on.

4. Read your text out loud. This forces you to read each word one by one and increases the chance that you'll find typos. You’ll hear the difference between what you meant to write and what you actually wrote.

5. Reading forwards makes it easier to skip over errors. For an important email, print it and read it backwards – placing a ruler under each line as you read helps.

Follow these 5 simple steps for successful proofreading.

Thanks to Yumi from Japan for asking about proofreading.

Do you have a question about writing in English? Get in touch.

Back to The Trunk