Nothing says “I’m careless” more than errors in your document. But no matter how hard you stare at the page, sometimes you just can’t spot you’re mistakes (see?). So how to find them?
These proven proofreading tips will save your skin:
- Fresh eyes: The Golden Rule is to put your writing aside and look at it with fresh eyes later – preferably after a sleep, during which your brain “resets” itself.
- Buddy up: The freshest eyes of all are someone else’s! Why not become someone’s “copy buddy,” and shoot important copy (writing) to each other to check?
- Several passes: Go through your document several times looking for one thing at a time. E.g. in one pass, just check content; then in another, check for typos; then in another, check your grammar, and so on.
- Read aloud: Reading your copy aloud helps stop your brain skipping over mistakes.
- Print it: Reading on screen is slower and harder. You’ll find more errors on a printout (use recycled paper).
- Change font: Surprisingly, temporarily changing your font can help you see errors.
- Report cover for UK’s “Public Guardian”: “The Pubic Guardian”
- Newspaper headline: “Iraqi Head Seeks Arms”
- Sign in foreign hotel: “The manager has personally passed all the water served here”
- In a resume: “I have good attention too detail …”
What are your tried and true proofreading methods? Found any clangers lately? Let us know!
3 thoughts on “Exterminating Errors”
Hi Paul,
We have a word in our business – “retros” – which refers to a retrospective valuation report that we obtain from valuers.
I have been pulled up a number of times recently by people saying it should be typed retro’s. My understanding is that you only use it this way when the retro’s owns something. Retro is a noun and will never own anything. Could you clarify the correct usage?
Nice to hear from you.
You’re right in that “retro” is a noun, but remember that a noun CAN own things, e.g. the car’s windscreen.
But in this case you’re doubly right – you’d only say retro’s in a sentence like, “The retro’s cover was torn.”
Remember you only use an apostrophe in these cases:
– When a letter is missing, e.g. don’t or it’s
– When something owns something else, e.g. the dog’s tail
– When you really need to separate a letter to stop your reader misreading something, e.g. Mind your P’s and Q’s
So if you’re saying something like “We received five retros last week,” you wouldn’t use an apostrophe – it’s simply plural, with an “s” added.
Pingback: How to write under pressure - Magneto Blog