A few tips for proofreading your own work

While it’s almost always better to have someone else (preferably a professional) proofread your work, in the real world, that’s not always possible. So, before you publish your next blog post/Substack/short (or long) story or send off your next query letter to a publisher, consider these tips.

1. Make sure to take time away from the manuscript. If you’ve only just written the text, you’re likely to miss things. The more time away, the better. But even just sleeping on it and checking it again the next day is better than nothing. If you really have to submit something the same day, go for a quick walk or do something that completely takes your mind off it, so that you can come back to it fresh again.

2. Use a checklist. This helps you keep all the items you need to look for/address in one place, meaning you can methodically go through your list and tick off these items. Depending on what you’re proofreading, your list might contain items such as:

• Confirm that chapter/section headers are consistently presented (you don’t want different fonts/different font sizes throughout).

• Ensure that any images are of good quality and that you have permission to use them, also that the credits are shown, and that you’re using alt-text wherever possible.

• Check that your grammar and spelling is correct (especially the names of any publishers or literary agents you might be writing to!).

• Make sure your style is consistent throughout. If you like to use en dashes for interruptions and parenthetical statements, then an em dash shouldn’t suddenly appear where readers will expect an en dash.

• Examine your formatting to make sure it’s consistent throughout. If paragraphs are meant to be indented, then they should all be indented. If you’re using a single line break between sections, then that should be the case throughout.

There are almost certainly other items you’ll want to add to your list, but hopefully this will help you get started.

3. Start by looking at the big picture of the document before zooming in to focus on the details. This was a tip my tutor gave me when I was on my Essential Proofreading course with the Publishing Training Centre. This basically means looking at the layout and any visuals (photos, illustrations, etc.) first, before examining the text. For example, if you're proofreading a press release for your latest novel, check that any images are in the right places (and that they're the right images!) and that the quality is good. Then, check your headers are consistent with each other – in the same format (sentence or title case?), font, and that you're consistently applying any styling such as bold or italics.

Next, look at your paragraphs. Are they aligned? Are any bulleted or numerical lists consistent in terms of indentation? Don't forget to check your sequencing! Also, look at the spacing – are there inconsistent gaps between your paragraphs? Or extra spaces between words, punctuation or any double spaces after full points/stops/periods? This was once default style, so many people miss this!

Once you're satisfied that the layout is as it should be, move on to the text.

Carefully and slowly read through the text on the page, looking at every letter and punctuation mark. Are there any extra letters inserted (for example, in words where two of the same letter appear next to each other)? Are you using the correct word? I’ve often found a “that” standing in for a “than” and vice versa, or a “their” for “there”. Have any extra articles inserted themselves into your sentences (such as two “the”s next to each other)?

4. Read your work aloud (or have MS Word do it for you by using the Read Aloud function under the Review menu). You’d be surprised by what you catch! I usually do this as part of my final pass on a piece of text, and I nearly always find something I’d missed because my eyes were seeing what they wanted to, not what was actually on the page.

5. Finally, look out for double spaces between words and missing spaces. While spellcheck will often (but not always) flag missing spaces, you’ll need to run a separate search for double spaces (you can do this in MS Word by typing “Control-F”, then hit the space bar two times and search). Because you may accidentally insert additional spaces while making changes to the document, it's best to do this at the very end of the proofread.

If this sounds like too much effort, and you’d prefer to have someone else do this for you, then don’t hesitate to contact me using the button below. I love helping authors polish their work.