When writing a press release or an article, the most often neglected stage of writing a text is proofreading. This is a huge mistake, as even a small typo at the outset can completely discredit us in the eyes of a journalist, putting our hard work in the bin. This is why proper proofreading is an extremely important part of the text production process. It will save us not only embarrassment, but also time spent on laborious checking of punctuation and spelling mistakes.
Here are some tried and tested tips for finding errors in texts.
- Print out the written information.
Reading on a computer screen is not comfortable and quickly tires our eyesight. It is much easier to look for mistakes on paper, so it is worth printing out what you have already worked on for a long time in front of a glass screen.
- Read with a rested mind and give yourself time.
Now that we have taken care of our eyesight, it is worth taking care of the whole mind too. When we are tired, even obvious mistakes and Iiterations easily escape us. That is why it is sometimes worth taking a break, including from the text itself. When reading it again, we will certainly not catch all the mistakes, so if you can, give yourself some time before checking it again.
3. one time is definitely not enough.
If you think that you will read a text once and find all the mistakes then I must worry you. Checking grammar, spelling and punctuation is more complex than you might think and will require at least several approaches.
- Place a blank piece of paper under each line you are reading / read the text aloud.
These two simple tricks will allow you to focus accurately on every word you read. Our brain processes a read word differently from an heard word. By placing a piece of paper, your eyes will focus exactly on the word you are reading, without the distraction of the whole text. Reading aloud works well for grammar and syntax, allowing you to eliminate mistakes quickly.
- Don't always start with the first sentence.
Even the most interesting text read for the 10th time loses its value. By starting to revise at different points in what we have written, we will gain a fresh perspective on the different parts of it. This method allows us to focus on the words themselves, rather than the overall content.
- Know your weaknesses.
In other words, mark the mistakes you make. You will then see for yourself which ones you make most often, and which ones you need to work on the most.
- By yourself, you will do much less.
Painstaking work on a text reduces our self-criticism. Some of the mistakes we unconsciously avoid will be obvious to others, so it is important that someone else reads our work before we send it out into the world.
All the tips mentioned would be meaningless if their application did not work in practice. For this reason, there are a few deliberately included errors in the text above, which you can easily spot with the methods described. Good luck!
Text author: Adam
