What is proofreading?

How do you proofread a document?

Writing can be a long and tiring process. You've spent hours researching, writing, and editing the perfect document or email. It's understandable that you want to get finished as fast as possible. But before you click send, follow these simple proofreading tips:

• Take a break: It may sound counterintuitive, but the best thing you can do to start is nothing at all. When you've been working on a document for a while, your brain naturally skims over the details. That makes it easy to miss typos and errors that seem painfully obvious later on. So, take a few minutes, make a cup of tea if you like, and give yourself a mental reset.
• Read out loud: One of the most popular proofreading tips for your writing is to read it out loud. As you do, go slowly and focus on every word. This process allows you to understand the text in a new way. It will become clear when your words aren't flowing or when you've used the wrong one by mistake.
• Try working backwards: Another old-school trick is to go word by word, starting at the end of your document. This has been a favorite technique of professional proofreaders for decades. It allows you to focus just on the spelling of your text without getting hung up on the content. Many editors swear by the technique for catching spelling errors in longer documents.
• Don't rely on traditional spelling and grammar checkers: For decades, the writing industry has relied on primitive tools. Often found in products like Grammarly or Microsoft Word, these basic tools use simple rules to locate errors. The obvious issue is that it is difficult to write a single rule for every type of writing mistake. Instead, they often give writers a false sense of confidence while missing embarrassing errors.
• Instead, rely on a newer, advanced proofreader: Tools like Hemingway Editor Plus go far beyond older methods for spotting writing issues. Using advanced AI tools, Hemingway analyzes your document in depth. It understands your text on a deeper level, allowing it to spot issues that older tools miss. This allows you to edit faster and feel confident that your writing is clear and correct. It's the perfect essay proofreader, blog proofreader, and general proofreader for most people.

What is the difference between proofreading and editing?

Proofreading and editing are terms that many writers mistakenly use interchangeably. However, these terms actually refer to two different aspects of correcting your text.

What does editing mean?

Editing is an earlier part of the revising process. Think of it as the work you do between a first draft and a second draft (or third, fourth, etc.). It's a chance to zoom out and look at the big picture of your document.

When editing, you should focus on the content and flow of your work. Ask yourself:

• Does my writing cover every topic it should?
• Am I presenting the information in the clearest way possible? If not, this is the perfect time to go back and make a change.
• Is my tone and style consistent?
• Is my writing clear and easy for my target audience to understand?

There's a good reason they say "writing is rewriting." Nobody, not even the pros, knocks it out of the park the first time through. Instead, think of each draft as another step toward a clear, compelling document. Use your editing time to make major changes, like removing whole paragraphs or swapping their order.

What does proofreading mean?

After knocking out your larger structural changes while editing, it's time to zoom in and proofread your text. At this stage, you should feel good about your document in a general sense. It's covering the topics it should and doing so in an order that feels intuitive. In fact, you should be raring to share it with the rest of the world (or just to get it off your screen).

Before you do, it's time to give it a proofread. Using the tips above, give your document a final pass to make sure it's all fit to print. Use this time to spot all those pesky little spelling and grammar mistakes that have slipped through the cracks so far. It's easy to get over-eager at this stage and just give your text a quick skim. After all, you think, "I spent so long editing; surely I caught all the errors already." Believe me, you didn't.

Take it slow and get it right. If a particular spelling or comma usage is nagging at you, don't assume you've got it right. Take the time to Google the issue and make sure you're confident about every word on the page. Once you are, you can share your document with pride. Any writer who knows the shame of an ugly typo in their published work will attest that it's worth the extra effort.

What are proofreading services?

At this stage, you're likely thinking, "Proofreading sure sounds like a lot of work." It's a sentiment shared by many writers. In fact, it's spawned an entire cottage industry of services to proofread your document for you. These largely fall into three camps:

Human proofreaders

Historically, writers have often relied on other people to proofread their work for them. As they say, it always helps to have "a second pair of eyes" to read over your writing. As you can imagine, these proofreading services charge a pretty penny for the task. You can expect to pay anywhere from $0.01 to $0.10 per word for the service, which quickly adds up.

The other issue with human proofreading services is a long time delay. After all, it takes a while for anyone to get to your document, much less read through it. As you can imagine, this makes the service impractical if you want to proofread every email, Slack message, blog post, and document you create.

Older rules-based proofreaders and spell-checkers

To make proofreading more accessible, software spelling and grammar checkers have existed for decades. Most of the popular free tools use a rule-based approach to spotting errors. They try to hard-code as many spelling and grammar mistakes as possible in the hopes that they catch each error that comes along.

As you can imagine, these tools often fall short. It turns out, proofreading is a very complex task for a computer. First, it has to do some form of part-of-speech tagging to understand each word in the sentence. After all, how can you solve an issue with subject-verb agreement if you don't know what the subject and the verb are? This is a major failure point for these services and one of the main reasons you often hear not to rely on them. While they catch some of the obvious issues, they often miss the trickier ones.

Newer, advanced proofreaders powered by AI

With the advent of new artificial intelligence tools, Hemingway Editor Plus features a robust spelling and grammar proofreader. AI can understand each segment of your sentence, allowing it to spot grammatical issues that other tools miss. This powerful app allows you to feel confident that your text is error-free and ready to share.

Best of all, Hemingway Editor Plus checks your writing in real time. This makes it the perfect choice for double-checking everything you write. Try it out for yourself here and then upgrade to speed up your editing with other essential tools.

FAQ

What is proofreading in writing?

Proofreading is a final step performed by writers to spot spelling and grammar issues.

What is a proofreading mark?

Proofreading marks are a shorthand used by editors to indicate different writing errors. Each symbol corresponds to a different correction that the writer should make, such as deleting or inserting a word.

What is the best advice for proofreading a complex document?

The best way to proofread a complex document is to take it slow. Try taking a brief break after writing, and then read your document word by word to spot errors.

What is the difference between revising and proofreading?

When revising a document, you make major structural changes, leading to a new draft of your document. Proofreading is a final step to catch smaller spelling and grammar issues.