The Do’s and Don’ts of Proofreading

Do you ever look at something you have written several days after you have sent it to a client and notice a glaring typographical error? Even if you proofread everything you write very carefully before sending it out, this is still likely to happen to you at some point.

It is very frustrating to notice an error in a report or other document that you know you checked carefully for mistakes. However, if you didn’t have someone else proof your work before sending it out, you actually committed the second biggest proofreading “don’t” of all.

The biggest “don’t” when it comes to proofreading is, of course, not proofreading at all. Everything that you write should be proofread by at least two people. You can be the first reader, but it is a mistake to stop with yourself. You always need to have someone else check your work for mistakes.

An individual who did not author the document is much more likely to notice misused words and grammatical errors than is the person who wrote it. It is very common for people to overlook their own writing errors. When you are reading something that you wrote, you know what it is supposed to say. Therefore, you might mistakenly perceive that it says one thing, when in fact something else is printed on the paper or displayed on the computer screen.

The thing about written messages is that once they are gone, you can’t get them back. Once someone else reads your writing and notices an error, you can’t erase the fact that the message recipient received a document from you that had a mistake in it. Why not take the time to have a second set of eyes read over your work to avoid the embarrassment, and potentially lost business, of sending out documents with typos?