How to Proofread Your Online Documents

How professional you appear online to others is determined by the copy that you publish in your name.  If you publish copy that is informative, compelling and free of errors then your image will appear to be more professional then someone who publishes copy that has an error.  Notice that I said has “an error.”  Sometimes just having one error spoils the copy in the eyes of a reader.  Some readers will stop where the typo is and not finish reading the rest of the copy.  Therefore it is very important to proofread and publish copy that is free from mistakes.

Proofreading means to read text carefully and correct any typos, errors in grammar, or any other mistakes found in the text. 

Proofreading should be done in two stages.  There are things that you should do before you proofread and things that you should do while you proofread.

Things to Do Before You Proofread

Make sure that the bigger issues of your copy have been addressed before correcting words and sentences.  For example, make sure that the overall arrangement of your copy is the way that you want it to be before working on typos and grammatical structures.

Once you are satisfied with the overall text development and arrangement step away from the text for about 15 to 30 minutes.  Sometimes if you proofread a document immediately after writing it your eyes will see what you meant to write.  Stepping away from the document for a short period of time before proofreading the document will help you to see mistakes that you have made more easily.

Read your copy thoroughly and eliminate words that are not necessary.  A good guide to use to help you make your writing more concise is “The Writer’s Handbook, Clear and Concise, Sentences found at https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/ClearConciseSentences.html.

Make a list of all of the types of errors that you normally make when writing.  This way you will have a check list of what to look for.

Things to Do While You Proofread

If you can, one of the things that you should do when you are proofreading your copy is you should read it in printed form. Keep yourself from skipping ahead of mistakes by covering the lines underneath the line that you are reading with a clean white sheet of paper.  Read your copy out loud.  This will help you find errors that you may not detect when reading silently.

Consult the list of errors that you commonly make and search for each one of these error.  Afterwards, read the document backwards to search for fragments.  Read the document through forward to make sure that the subjects and verbs agree. 

Return to your computer and make the corrections.  Afterwards, use the computer to search for common errors like using the word its instead of it’s.  Another common error that can be found using a computer search is the omission of closing quotes or parenthesis.

Finalize your search with using the spell check function on the computer.

Conclusion

Giving your online document a good proofreading prior to publishing it is an essential step in preserving your professional image.  I hope this posting has been helpful.  Good luck in your proofreading efforts.

Facts for this posting has been retrieved via https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/Proofreading.html

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