Working on becoming a better writer is one thing. Then, we have to work on becoming better proofreaders.
Not proofreading well is a pesky problem of mine. It’s one
of those I don’t see what I don’t
see. Of course, much more so for my own writing and ever more if the proofreading
comes minutes after writing.
Standard advice is to put writing aside and look at it
later, as in days/months later. This is not practical for posts responding to online forums or for emails.
.
Relying on Microsoft WORD or GRAMMARLY (insert any other
spell/grammar check of your choice) is foolish. They catch some things, miss
many, and misdirect often.
Let’s face it; some people are excellent proofreaders. Some
of them become editors because of this advantage. But many superb writers
confess they aren’t blessed with the proofreading brain.
{Yup. I *just* had to correct "proofreading" above,👆 because I had typed "prrofreading." 😬 }
An excellent beta reader gave me a helpful suggestion, which I have found to reduce my rate of typos. In addition, it catches echoes; those repeat words coming too close together in a paragraph.
{I like this egregious example of echo: "She looked at him. "Look at it," she said. "When I last looked it didn't look half as bad as it looks now." 😰 }
It’s the text-to-voice feature, where a
mechanical voice reads highlighted text back to you. It’s better than my
reading aloud, (something I also do) because when reading my own words, I often
read what I thought I wrote and not what’s on the screen/page.
Here is what this feature looks like in WORD. Other writing
platforms have similar functions, though you’d have to find them yourself
because I only use WORD. I red-penciled it on the upper left:
In addition to catching echoes, this device is literally an
echo. It, too, isn’t perfect. You won’t catch homonyms with it. But if you
haven’t tried it, you will be pleasantly surprised at how helpful this editing
feature is.
