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gmw · 03-05-2020, 12:21 AM

Proofreading your own work can be very difficult because, as you no doubt already know, your brain keeps reading what it knows you intended rather than what is actually on the page. Even proofreading other people's work is difficult because our brains are wired to provide large amounts of auto-correct. (On the plus side, it means readers tend to miss at least some of our mistakes

.)

So, aside from experience and education (that is, actually knowing whether something is right or wrong), the process requires that we find ways of making our brains see what is actually on the page. I'm not sure how professional editors do it, but here on MR various suggestions and advice has been offered, including...

* don't do too much at once (this level of concentration causes rapid fatigue and you will start missing things)

* work away from other distractions

* One great trick was put up a few years ago by Lemurion: "Start at the end of the book and read each sentence in turn going backwards." It's so simple, and it's free and a great way to force your focus to the right level for proofreading.

* My favourite is using text-to-speech software that will read my text back to me. I use TextAloud by NextUp - it's not free, but it's not very expensive ... until you go shopping for extra voices. But I like it. I bought a few different voices so I can chop and change for variety. I copy the text into the TextAloud window so that it will highlight each sentence as it reads, and I can play with the speed to get what I want.

* Learn the things you often get wrong (my fingers have certain things they screw up quite regularly even though I know better) and set up searches to help you explicitly check for these problems. (These will evolve over time as you gradually train out your worst habits.)

There is also a wide variety of grammar and editor software out there, but while these can be useful to help you find things to check, for a lot of it you need to know what you're doing in order to only take their advice when it's right and to ignore it otherwise - which begs the question of whether you need the software in the first place. But some also offer analysis of repeated phrases and other such attributes that are rather harder to simply see, and so that can be useful. The last such software I used seems to have disappeared, maybe others will have suggestions or opinions on current options ... anyway, this is moving into editing rather than proofreading.

03-05-2020, 12:21 AM	#2
gmw cacoethes scribendi Posts: 5,818 Karma: 137770742 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650	Proofreading your own work can be very difficult because, as you no doubt already know, your brain keeps reading what it knows you intended rather than what is actually on the page. Even proofreading other people's work is difficult because our brains are wired to provide large amounts of auto-correct. (On the plus side, it means readers tend to miss at least some of our mistakes .) So, aside from experience and education (that is, actually knowing whether something is right or wrong), the process requires that we find ways of making our brains see what is actually on the page. I'm not sure how professional editors do it, but here on MR various suggestions and advice has been offered, including... * don't do too much at once (this level of concentration causes rapid fatigue and you will start missing things) * work away from other distractions * One great trick was put up a few years ago by Lemurion: "Start at the end of the book and read each sentence in turn going backwards." It's so simple, and it's free and a great way to force your focus to the right level for proofreading. * My favourite is using text-to-speech software that will read my text back to me. I use TextAloud by NextUp - it's not free, but it's not very expensive ... until you go shopping for extra voices. But I like it. I bought a few different voices so I can chop and change for variety. I copy the text into the TextAloud window so that it will highlight each sentence as it reads, and I can play with the speed to get what I want. * Learn the things you often get wrong (my fingers have certain things they screw up quite regularly even though I know better) and set up searches to help you explicitly check for these problems. (These will evolve over time as you gradually train out your worst habits.) There is also a wide variety of grammar and editor software out there, but while these can be useful to help you find things to check, for a lot of it you need to know what you're doing in order to only take their advice when it's right and to ignore it otherwise - which begs the question of whether you need the software in the first place. But some also offer analysis of repeated phrases and other such attributes that are rather harder to simply see, and so that can be useful. The last such software I used seems to have disappeared, maybe others will have suggestions or opinions on current options ... anyway, this is moving into editing rather than proofreading. Last edited by gmw; 03-05-2020 at 06:44 AM. Reason: Removed some irrelevancy.