The trouble with proofreading your own work is that you see what you expect to see, so you read what you think you wrote, and not necessarily what you did write. If you first and last letters of a word are in the correct order, you may not see typing errors in the middle of the word.

Firstly, use a good spell and grammar check. This will never pick up all of the errors, especially the words that sound the same but have different spellings for different meanings, such as there, their, and they’re. However, the spell check is a good place to start.

Secondly, read the work looking for the common errors you often make. If you are not sure about the meaning of particular words, use a dictionary and a thesaurus. If you commonly make mistakes in comma placement, print out the page and highlight every single comma. Re-read the comma rules one by one and check each highlighted comma on your printed document. If you can’t find a rule that explains why the comma is there, take it out. Although you can miss commas, overuse of commas is the more typical mistake to make.

Read your work aloud. This helps you to catch the awkward or repetitive phrases, as you tend to stumble over these passages as you read aloud.

Check your work for consistency. If you start spelling Summer with a capital, make sure you consistently spell it with a capital throughout the document. Don’t say 2 apples in one paragraph and three oranges in the next.

Finally, put your work aside for at least a couple of hours and reread it again before you send it off to the publisher. You must look at the work as if someone else has written it, not you to be a good proofreader. Assume you have made mistakes and look for them.

I hope this blog on proofreading articles helps. On a private note, I’m sorry I have been very quiet on this website lately – I’ve been sick and just been keeping up with the paying work. I’m getting better now, so hopefully, I’ll be more active on the forum again soon. Take care,

Hayley Hunkin

www.expandingcreationswriters.com

Writers all too often wish to show off their intelligence by using complex language and  assuming a certain amount of knowledge from their readers. They think that by ‘impressing’ their reader in such a way, they will appear as superior intellects. However, all this does is alienate their audience.

The trick with non-fiction writing is not to make YOU appear intelligent, but to make the reader feel that THEY are intelligent. By explaining complicated matters in a simple, easy to read manner, the reader will grasp the concept and come away from the experience feeling better about themselves and you as a writer. I experience this all the time when reading certain popular science books on Quantum Physics. Pick up any book by Brian Greene, or Michio Kaku, and they will make you feel like you are an expert in the impossible. Richard Dawkins is also another excellent proponent of this method. They don’t shy away from using simpler language and concepts to portray their message.

A lot of writers when presented with this advice do not wish to ‘dumb-down’ their writing; they still cling to their desire to use complex language and terminology, as they fear that not doing so will make them look like incompetent writers. They feel that they have to use long, rarely encountered words in order to demonstrate how educated and eloquent they are as writers; all they accomplish, however, is to annoy the reader, bored with constantly reaching for the dictionary.

So, whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction, keep it simple! Your reader will thank you.