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With technology doing a lot of the work for us, spelling, grammar, punctuation, we have become quite lazy in our own proofreading skills. It is still necessary to continue to read things ourselves to catch the errors that most computers and software doesn’t pick up.

Here are a few ways to continue to improve your proofreading skills:

• When you are proofreading your own work, walk away from it for at least a couple of hours and then return to it with a fresh mind. If you have time, try a full day. After sleeping on it, will help you identify errors or elements that you wouldn’t see otherwise.

• Read the article out loud to yourself.  Literally, read the words out loud so that if the flow of the sentence and the punctuation doesn’t produce a well worded phrase, it should probably be changed.  Yes, you will get coworkers looking at you a bit oddly, so if you want to avoid that, take your document home with you and read it in the bathroom while taking your bath or doing other things.  It’s amazing at what this little trick will do to help you find errors. If you can download and use them, here are two programs that can be used that will read your article back to you so you can concentrate on general elements and hear it being read back to you:

http://www.naturalreaders.com/ (Free Download and Pro version provides more options)
http://www.nextup.com/TextAloud/ (Free Trial)

• Read the article backwards.  Believe it or not, this will help you find misspellings as your eye focuses on the word and not the entire sentence.  You might even find another word that could be used instead of the common words you are using repeatedly, extending your vocabulary at the same time.

• Practice makes perfect and there is no substitute.  Pick up books, forms and so much more and continue to provide yourself with challenges throughout your day, which may or may not provide results, but will keep your eye and your mind in tune with knowledge of vocabulary, punctuation, sentence structure, grammar and spelling.

• Don’t rely on your computer or software to do all your proofreading.  There is no substitution for the human touch and even though technology has provided us with quicker ways to help us, we are truly, ultimately responsible for the results.  Computers aren’t the one’s whose reputation is on the line.

• Don’t edit your sentences right away.  Write a sentence or two or even a paragraph and return to it to edit everything at once.  Ask yourself several questions when doing so such as:

• Can my sentences be restructured (nouns, verbs and adjectives) to be clearer about its meaning?
• Am I using a word repeatedly? What other words could be used?
• Can I remove or add information without confusing the reader and still get the meaning across?
• Does my paragraph fit in the sequence of events or outline of the paper?

Another trick that may not necessarily be something that will help your skills, but will help your articles is let someone else read over it.  A second pair of eyes is always good and a third is even better.  Busy schedules may not always allow for it, so be careful when asking someone else to help you.  Your deadline may not fit in with their schedule, and you may find yourself in a bind if waiting on someone else to provide you with results.

These are a just a few ways of improving your proofreading skills.  Taking classes, practice and continued improvement of your skills takes time, so don’t get frustrated in your learning process.  Keep trying and as you improve you will find your eyes and mind become quite honed and in tune making your proofreading skills almost second nature.

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