I recently published a post with an embarrassing error: who’s instead of whose. Gasp! How did I let this happen and how can I help you avoid doing the same?
Who knows how that pesky apostrophe slipped in there in the first place? Perhaps I’d used the contraction of ‘who is’ in an earlier draft and forgot to change it, or perhaps it was my over-eager apostrophe pinkie (I tell you, that pinkie has a mind of it’s its own). Either way, I should have picked it up before I published, but I didn’t because:
1. I broke the golden rule of self-editing and published it immediately after writing it.
When I read the post a day later, the error jumped off the page. But at the time of writing I was too close to see it. I was also impatient to get it posted and get on with the next thing. If it’s something important, always give yourself a little space before hitting send, submit or publish. This helps not only to pick up bloopers, but also to get a feel for whether the writing is communicating exactly what you want it to. I nearly always find little tweaks to improve my message when I return after a break.
2. I read it about a gazillion times to see if I liked the tone and flow, I even read it out aloud, but I didn’t actually PROOFREAD it.
Proofreading is a whole other style of reading.
You need to look closely at every single word.
Our brains are very good at joining words up without seeing all the letters. To stop your eye running ahead, try the proofreader’s trick of holding a ruler or piece of paper under the line you are reading, or pointing at each word with your pen. I guarantee that one slow and careful read using either of these techniques will pick up more errors than reading it over and over. (I have tested this with my proofreading students – about 80% pick up something they’d missed just reading it normally.)
So my tip of the day, give yourself time to come back to a piece to review it, and do one slow and careful proofread before publishing, sending or submitting.
And why the picture of the pool? Well lucky me, this is my local, and it’s often where I go for a few laps between finishing a job and submitting it.
