Proofreading 101: Everything You Need to Know About the Power of Proofreading
Think back to the last time you read something online; it could be a news article, a blog post about where those celebs from your childhood are now, or even just a company website. Now try to remember, was it well written?
If it wasn’t, do you remember why? Were there grammar errors, typos, and spelling mistakes? If you noticed them, you’re not alone — 74% of people say they spot grammar and spelling errors in online content.
Errors in your content can affect how the reader feels about and interacts with your brand. They may think that you’re not professional and don’t care about their needs, or they may not believe anything you say.
That’s why you’re here in our Proofreading 101 classroom, ready to learn all about proofreading.
Welcome to Proofreading 101, an extensive guide on what proofreading is, why it’s important, and what the benefits of great proofreading can be. We’ll take you through everything, from what a proofreader looks out for to how to proofread like a pro.
What is proofreading, and why is it so important?
Our first lesson in Proofreading 101 is to start with the basics: what exactly is proofreading?
Proofreading isn’t just a last-minute, catch-all editing technique, it’s a fundamental part of the editing process, and it’s essential to ensuring your work is ready for publication.
In simple terms, proofreading is the act of reading through content to spot and correct any errors. These errors can include:
Spelling mistakes
Typos
Factually incorrect information
Broken links
Poor clarity
Poor structure
Incorrect punctuation
Advanced grammatical errors, such as incorrect syntax, subject-verb agreement, tense, etc.
Even the most talented writers make mistakes — everybody does, after all — and that’s what a proofreader is for: they double- and triple-check the copy to make sure it’s free from errors and makes sense.
But what exactly makes proofreading so important? What can good proofreading do for you and your business?
Protect your message
The English language can be a minefield. One incorrectly-placed comma can change the meaning of a sentence drastically. It can be difficult to wrap your head around, but as part of our Proofreading 101 lesson, we’re here to make it simple for you.
Take the sentence ‘eats, shoots, and leaves’ as an example.
If we take out those commas, we get ‘eats shoots and leaves’.
You see the problem, right? The first example could be a cowboy in an old Western, but the second sounds more like a panda grabbing some lunch. This shows how every single comma can make a huge impact on both readability and meaning.
Proofreading 101 is all about simplicity, so we’ll give it to you straight: with attentive proofreading, your text is almost guaranteed to be read as intended. Without it, well, your message could have a hard time getting through that aforementioned minefield.
In order to engage and resonate with your audience, they need to understand what your message is. When they do, they’re much more likely to engage with you, now and in the future.
Give authority and make a good impression
Conversion is the name of the game in copywriting, and building trust is how you make that happen. Good grammar and spelling make you seem more professional and more of an authority on the subject, increasing your customers’ trust in you. If they trust you, they’re more likely to do what you’re asking them to do, whether that’s buy, enquire, sign up, or something else. Basically, they’re more likely to convert.
So, how do you build trust with your audience? With great copy, of course! Spelling and grammar mistakes are known to put people off websites, so making sure you don’t have any makes you seem a lot more professional. Become a trusted authority source to your audience by producing well-written, well-proofread content.
Show that you care
When you take the time and effort to ensure your content is well-written and makes sense, it gives the impression that you care about your work — and your reader’s experience. If it looks like you care about your work, the audience will feel as though you’re more likely to care about them and their needs.
Good proofreading takes time, and, if you outsource it, it takes money as well. But the benefit of that time and money is that your audience will be more open to the idea that you care about them.
Think about it: you care enough to answer their questions and bring them value through your content, so it’s not that much of a stretch to suggest you care about them as individuals too. You’ve already put in the time and effort for them, after all.
Improve your SEO
If you have an online presence, you’ve undoubtedly heard about search engine optimisation. SEO is a very large and complex field, and Google has 200 known ranking factors that all determine how your content and website are ranked on search engines.
The biggest factor, however, is quality. The quality of your online content is by far the most important aspect when it comes to SEO. So, what does that mean exactly? What is quality content?
Well, to be considered high-quality, your copy must be fit for purpose, well-written, and meet user intent; you have to solve whatever issue the user had when they made the initial search. Were they looking for information, to buy a product, or doing research?
“What does proofreading have to do with intent”, we hear you ask? Well, high-quality, well-proofread content will make more sense; when Google crawls your site to check for content, it will have an easier time reading and understanding the text as an answer to the initial question.
Google understands your content — mostly. AI is pretty clever these days, but even minor errors in your text could mean the bots misinterpret what your content is about, which could lead to lower rankings in search results and a reduction in reach and engagement.
Instil trust in your abilities
The whole point of marketing is to try and get someone to choose you over a competitor, right? So that means you want to be the best.
But are your audience likely to consider you ‘the best’ if you have spelling and grammar errors in your content? Are they likely to have confidence in your brand? On that note, are your employees, stakeholders, or potential investors likely to have confidence in you?
To be the best choice, you’ll need to prove not only that your product or service adds value, but that you’re a professional with an eye for detail, taking care in everything you do. This includes your content.
Whether it’s your customers, employees, stakeholders, or potential investors, you need people to have confidence in your brand and understand what you’re trying to say — so memos, contracts, reports, and investor materials all need to be proofread as well.
Remember earlier when we mentioned that well-proofread content is more professional? It’s not just that you look more professional and gain trust, it’s also about being better than the competition. Proofreading your content thoroughly, and to the highest possible standard, can help you do that.
Tips and tricks for perfect proofreading
Proofreading 101 isn’t just about explaining why proofreading is important — it’s also a practical lesson! If you’ve been wondering how to achieve perfect proofreading like the pros, you’ve come to the right place.
Let’s talk about our top tips and tricks for getting proofreading right.
1. Read in full, don’t just skim
Skim reading is pretty popular these days; consumers do it all the time, but you definitely shouldn’t. Professional proofreading means you need to know the full context of the content, rather than just scanning through to look for obvious errors.
Something may look like an error at first glance, but in context, it may be perfectly correct. You also risk changing sentences or words to something you think sounds better, but, when you read the whole thing, it actually makes less sense.
Going through the text as a whole lets you check for consistency, repetition, and more, and it guarantees that you’ll be left with one coherent piece, rather than a collection of unrelated paragraphs.
2. Relying solely on spell check could be disastrous
Whilst they can be lifesavers on the small scale, spell checkers are not the full package. They do catch minor typos and errors, and some can even catch complex grammatical errors — but AI can easily miss things. Automated proofreaders often miss context, especially when it comes to an entire document, and they sometimes suggest grammar or sentence changes that are unsuitable for your meaning.
It’s also very easy to miss regional language settings in spell checkers, so you may end up getting American English suggestions when you’re trying to write in British English, for example.
Automated spell checkers and proofreading software can often miss ‘mistakes’ that are still technically words, too. We all know ‘ten’ is a word, but if you’ve got it in place of ‘then’, there’s a chance a spell checker won’t pick up on it, since it’s still a real word.
Typos can be costly for businesses, so make sure you’re vigilant about them. Cut out the automated middleman, and make sure a human proofreader goes through your text.
3. Be on the lookout for homonyms
A homonym is a word with the same pronunciation or spelling as another word, but a different meaning. ‘Complement’ and ‘compliment’, for example, are two different words with different meanings, but as they sound the same, they may initially seem correct when reading through the content.
Be on the lookout for words like these. Not only will you maintain your overall message and keep your meaning clear, but you’ll also avoid looking like you don’t know the difference!
4. It’s a ‘contastrophe’: pay attention to contractions and apostrophes
Don’t worry, we didn’t make a typo in a post about proofreading — it’s just a bit of wordplay! We know some lessons can be boring, but not Proofreading 101.
What we mean is that incorrect contractions and apostrophes can be pretty catastrophic, both for the comprehension of your text, and for how professional you look.
Let’s go through some of the most common examples.
‘It’s’ and ‘its’
With an apostrophe, ‘it’s’ is a contraction of ‘it is’, but ‘its’ (no apostrophe) is possessive, so getting them mixed up can change the meaning drastically.
For example:
‘It’s rainy day weather’ means ‘it is rainy day weather’, whilst ‘its rainy day weather’ would read as though the rainy day weather belonged to something.
This is an extremely common mistake to make, and even a professional can make it if they’re not careful enough. That’s because most possessive nouns do use the apostrophe and S, like ‘Sam’s’ or ‘the cat’s’. It’s a tricky exception to the rule that can easily catch you out if you’re not careful.
’They’re’ and ‘should’ve‘
‘They’re’ is a contraction of ‘they are ‘, ‘their’ is possessive (‘it belongs to them’), and ‘there’ is a location (‘it’s over there’).
‘They’re’, ‘their’, and ‘there’ are a great example of homonyms, too; they’re all said the same, but mean different things, and that’s why people often confuse them for one another.
For example:
‘They’re going to the party’ is the correct use of ‘they’re’.
‘Putting their best foot forward’ is the correct use of ‘their’.
‘The candles are over there’ is the correct use of ‘there’.
‘Should’ve’ is ‘should have’, and it’s surprisingly easy to get wrong. Formal writing uses fewer contractions than informal, which is fine, but some people write ‘should’ve’ as ‘should of’, which is incorrect.
It’s a common mistake that’s become widespread due to how ‘should’ve’ sounds when you say it out loud. The same rule goes for ‘could’ve’ or ‘would’ve’ — they should be ‘could have’ or ‘would have’ when written without contractions.
For example:
‘We should’ve left sooner’, when written without the contraction, is ‘we should have left sooner’.
‘Dog’s’ and ‘dogs’
Adding an apostrophe and S to the end of a word is (usually) possessive — it means something belongs to that noun. If you want to make something plural, you just add the S (no apostrophe).
Okay, so we know English is a little more complicated than that (is the plural of ‘moose’ ‘mooses’ or ‘meese’?), but it’s still a general rule that goes for most cases.
For example:
‘The dog’s bark’ is the correct use of a possessive apostrophe; the bark belongs to the dog.
‘The dogs bark’ changes the sentence; ‘bark’ is no longer a noun, but instead a verb performed by multiple dogs.
Like in ‘it’s’ above, however, there is another common usage of the apostrophe and S — contraction of ‘is’. It’s usually quite casual to do this, so you may not be using it in your business emails or press releases, but it’s still important to know.
For example:
‘The dog’s barking’ could mean both ‘the barking of the dog’ or ‘the dog is barking’.
The main takeaway from all this is that, even if you’re familiar with these common errors, there are always exceptions to the rule.
5. Check it more than once
Don’t just go through it once; do it twice, three times, four times even! No one is perfect, and even professionals check through content more than once to pick up on anything they might have missed the first time around.
This also lets you proofread in ‘sections’ if you want — you can look for simple errors in grammar or spelling for your first round, syntax or wording improvements on your second, and full contextual checks in your third.
6. Follow the 2i approach (second eye)
The 2i or ‘second pair of eyes’ approach is simple; get someone else to look through your content with you.
The human brain is an expert at learning patterns, but it also falls into the trap of ignoring things it’s already learnt before. Getting a second pair of eyes to go over your work will help you catch tiny errors that your brain has missed — either as an accident, or simply because you’ve read it so many times already and memorised how it should sound.
The GOV.UK pages, for example, use a 2i approach as part of their proofing checklist; it includes ensuring that summaries are short and expand on the title without repeating it, that the body text begins with the information that’s most important to the reader, and that there are subheadings at least every three or four paragraphs.
7. Check for ‘the five Cs’
And now, the final stretch of Proofreading 101 — last, but certainly not least! ‘The five Cs’ of proofreading help you to ensure that your content is clear, consistent, concise, complete, and correct. Here’s how they break down.
Clear
Your content needs to make sense to the audience, but it needs to be easy to understand as well. No ambiguity; it needs to be clear.
Checking for grammatical errors, like those we’ve been through before, is a great way to make sure your content is clear. You can also check to see if you’ve got any sentences that are too long to keep track of, or make sure that you’re 100% sure what your words mean before you use them — there are a lot of ‘synonyms’ that actually mean slightly different things.
Consistent
Your content needs to retain the same tone, style, and message throughout. The tense, voice, tone, and what you’re trying to say all need to flow throughout the entire copy. It needs to be consistent.
Like we said before, checking through your whole text (instead of skim reading) is a great way to ensure that the entire thing works. It’s usually a good idea to make sure there’s consistency across all your material — not just within a single piece of copy.
Concise
Your content needs to get to the point. People don’t like waffle — they’ll likely just skim past it anyway, so it’s a waste of time to write it. It needs to say what you want it to say in as few words as possible. It needs to be concise.
Always ask yourself when proofreading; can I cut this down? Can I get my point across the same way if I cut these extra words? You need to do it carefully, but it’s an effective way to keep everything concise.
Complete
No one likes a piece of content that feels unfinished, like it met its word count and then just… stopped. It’s not that common, but it’s always a bit irritating to find content that still leaves you with questions. It needs to be complete.
Remember what the piece was written for in the first place. What questions are your readers asking in order to find your content? Will they still need answers when they’re finished? If so, your text may not quite be complete yet.
Correct
Always provide sources when available and, most importantly, ensure you always tell the truth in your content. Everything from factual information to marketing claims needs to be accurate and honest. It needs to be correct.
Anyone can post just about anything on the internet. In fact, did you know that in 1989 Einstein said, “always check your sources”?
You didn’t? Well, that’s because we made it up.
The point is that anything you say in your content needs to be accurate. Whether or not you should provide sources depends on what you’re stating and the type of content it is. For instance, if you’re speaking from experience, on your own website, no sources are needed — but what you say still needs to be true.
Consider a professional proofreader
We’re going to summarise everything you’ve just learnt in Proofreading 101, but first we want to ask you a question: given the complexities of proofreading, and how vital it is to gaining your audience’s trust, have you considered hiring a professional?
Following our proofreading guide to perfect your content is a great idea, but can you really catch all those mistakes? Will you use automated proofreading software or rely too heavily on a spell checker? Are you going to catch all those homonyms, and remember all the exceptions to the contraction rules?
You’ve learnt about how a simple typo can go terribly wrong, that it’s always best to proofread more than once, and how ‘the five Cs’ are fundamental to good proofreading. But it’s a time-consuming process that requires an expert-level understanding — at least if you want it to be perfect.
Our proofreaders have the understanding and experience necessary to reach that perfection (they passed Proofreading 101 a long time ago!). They ensure that your tone of voice is correct, that your content is typo-free, and that ‘the five Cs’ are followed to the highest standard — all with a fast turnaround and excellent customer service.
Interested in taking the stress out of proofreading? Get in touch with ZippyLingo today.
