How to (Really) Proofread

(*Reprinted from 2020 on my other website!)

You always need a good proofreader (or need to be a good proofreader) if you want to be taken seriously.

Maybe that’s a little blunt, but that’s the truth. How many times have you read an ad or a sign or an article (or that attempt at pluralizing last names on holiday cards), and suddenly you’re pulled out of it because there’s a comma where there should be a period, or the quotations never got closed, or one line is capitalized and one is not? It not only disrupts your reading, but dings your confidence in that company or that writer, too. When done right, the mechanics of writing should be invisible, so you have a seamless reading experience.

But Does It Matter?

People may say they don’t care, but most of us are not blissfully unaware about the mechanics of writing. Grammar, punctuation, hyphenation, capitalization…there is a code to how it’s all done that appears in the writing you read. Case in point: I don’t remember learning any of this. But I grew up a good reader, and because mechanics were standardized across every book and article I read, I just picked it up. You do too — you just may not know it.

And because it’s so consistently and expansively codified, you actually can’t make up your own rules (unless you’re The New Yorker). I remember explaining to someone once why her use of a comma was incorrect, and she was insistent: “Well, it looks better that way, so I’m going to use it that way.” 4+4=7 looks better, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s correct.

But beyond correctness, writing rules all point towards one thing: consistent clarity.

A Glimpse into the Process

Since I’ve been doing some professional proofreading lately, I wanted to take you through some of my process. Hopefully it’ll either help you drill down better into your own work, or you’ll recognize the need to hire someone who can!

Track Changes

One of the best things ever! Do your edits in track changes so everyone can see what’s being changed, and use comments to explain why. I’ve recently discovered the joy of editing in “Track Changes Hidden,” which keeps the editing record, but you’re editing what looks like a final version without mark-ups. It’s cleaner, and gives you a better sense of how it’ll look in the long run.

Decide on a Style

You may already have a certain style guide you adhere by in your writing (Chicago, AP, MLA), and really, they’re all about 90% the same. But before you go into a piece, you need to make hard-and-fast decisions on things like using Oxford commas, if you’re going to use semi-colons or not, what your date formats are going to be, etc. If you’re doing freelance editing, ask your client which guide they use. One of my greatest resources for all things style guides is the Purdue Online Writing Lab.

Note the Voice

This is more for copyediting, but it’s always good to note the voice of the piece you’re proofing. In other words, if someone uses short, direct sentences with simple word choices, you’re not going to add in long, flowing sentences with elaborate vocabulary. Additionally, if the copy is meant to be fun, exciting, and engaging, you’re not going to edit out all the exclamation points. Which gets us to the next point:

Actually Read

Don’t skim. Don’t do “Find and Replace” to make corrections. While mechanics are codified, the way they’re used can often vary depending on context. For example, if you come across a comma splice (two independent clauses separated incorrectly by a comma), you need to know based on the context of the piece and the style of the writer if you need to make that into two separate sentences, make it into one longer sentence by adding a conjunction (and which conjunction?), or separate the clauses using an em dash. For another example, you may see a sentence that uses passive voice, but find that, in context, the passive voice is making more of an impact than the active voice. Therefore, you’d leave it in. (This is why copy/paste online AI grammar checkers are the worst!)

Build a Unique Style Guide for That Project

As I go through, I make my edits based on my knowledge of style, grammar, mechanics, spelling, all of that. But you’ll begin to come across words that may not be used consistently throughout the piece: you may find a name spelled one way in a few places and another way in a few other places; you may find that the author hyphenates a certain compound word here but not there; you may find that they use an “s” after a possessive apostrophe for a word that ends in “s” one place, but they may not in another; you may find that most of the spaces between sentences are singular, but that some doubles got in there. Short of checking everything as you go, start making a list of all these specific, unique instances in a document so that you can go back later and correct them.

Do You Know the Outliers?

Have you written dates consistently throughout? Remember, it’s written May 19, 2020, not May 19th, 2020.

Have you written times consistently throughout? You really can choose your own style for this, but make sure it’s consistent: 3:00pm, 3:00 PM, three o’clock…

Are you using your Oxford comma? Are you using commas where there would normally be vocal pauses if spoken out loud? Are you not using commas for emphasis (that’s done differently)? Are you not using comma splices?

Are you using the right dash? Yes, the dashes all have different meanings and usages, whether they be a hyphen (-), an en dash (–), or an em dash (—).

Are you closing your quotes outside the punctuation mark? Did you know that America and Britain do it differently?

Speaking of Britain, did you know that “gray” is the American spelling (“a” for America!) and “grey” is the British spelling (“e” for England!)?

Did you know that Dumpster is capitalized because it’s a proper noun? So is Kleenex. And did you know that La-Z-Boy is spelled the way it is?

Did you know that you add an apostrophe where you’ve dropped a letter? For instance, “rock and roll” becomes “rock ‘n’ roll”? (Oh, question marks go outside the quote when they’re not part of the quote.)

That’s why “it is” becomes “it’s.” If you can expand your “it’s” to “it is” within the sentence, then it’s supposed to be “it’s.” If you can’t expand “its” into “it is” in the sentence, then it doesn’t have the apostrophe, because it’s a possessive. (Follow?) Same thing with “you’re” — if you can expand it to “you are,” then you are right! If you can’t expand it, it’s the other one (“your” the possessive). Same thing with “they’re.” If you can expand it to “they are” in the sentence, then there should be a “they’re” there!

Are you using e.g. and i.e. correctly? There’s a difference (and I did it wrong up top, but fixed it!).

Do you know which words in a title or heading should be capitalized? Do you know that you can make the style decision to either abide by capitalization rules, or just capitalize every single word?

Do you know that all those holiday cards that come with some kind of apostrophe after the last name are not only incorrect, but are actually changing the meaning?

In Conclusion…

Proofreading, as you can see, isn’t just “taking a pass” through a document to see what sticks out at you. It takes a pretty sharp eye — with some knowledgeable brains behind that eye — to get your copy, article, blog post, or book in perfect shape so that the reader doesn’t even notice the workings of the writing mechanics at all.