10 tips about proofreading

Posted on 13th Nov 2016 21:44:46 in Proofreading

(Post was wriitten and proofread by International Student "Duik Lan" and posted as it is)

I perfectly understand all of you who for some reason sabotaging proofreading articles. During the work a copywriter I've been on the side of "the infallible", and believe in "edit without proofreading", and laziness, too, went through me at the time, a heavy roller.

Fortunately, the reality over and over again clicked on the nose, each time proving that proofreading is not a joke. To be honest, not every copywriter is enough motivation for proofreading of texts, especially if you are creating cheap content in an industrial scale. It is understandable: crazy conveyor to the stamping of unique materials does not imply love of their articles. There is some meticulous proofreading of the text when you need an hour to pass 7 000 characters about the properties of commercial carpet, and you have more the horse is not lying... Still, the skills mandatory proofreading need not even "for" and "against". The higher lifting copywriter career ladder, the more they will mean for him the texts. The person who is planning to grow in the profession, must develop for himself the "rules for the future." Proofreading of the text is one of those fundamental rules, and therefore learn the proper algorithms need ahead of time. Then we will learn!  

10 rules for proofreading texts before delivery

Be sure to pronounce all of the material aloud. The melody of the text – complicated, some invisible to the eye roughness "catch" exclusively at the hearing.
Do not proofread the text of "piping hot". As a practicing copywriter, I'm well aware that the average web author has no chance to leave the reading materials on the following day, as recommended by many "serious" sources (I confess to a certain point, I too advised like).
Experience has shown that such recommendations only make confusion in the life of a freelancer: office worker can afford impressively, the copywriter need to finish a text as quickly as possible to pitch with peace of mind for the next order.

Still, I recommend you do the minimum pause after writing the first edits. Have a drink tea, take the time give brain to remember the pattern of the text at least ten minutes. I assure you, even with such a small interval proofreading of the text will be much more productive.
Monitor the logical connections. Many authors (and even yours truly) there is a problem of "inclusions" too much information. Let's try to explain: the text seems organic, monolithic and completely natural, but when you begin to get a grasp of the work, you know that some of the pieces do not need.
Usually this happens when you wanted to develop some idea, but then failed to disclose to the reader. It turns out that besides the author, no one will never understand, why the article did this piece. Try to remove such "vestiges" with final proofreading.

Watch for repeats of the same root words. The long-standing problem: at some point, the copywriter begins to "record" over and over again inserted in the text the same words. As you can imagine, great beauty material is not added. Try to replace repetitions with synonyms.
Try to avoid too complex sentences. Some authors believe that the longer the sentence, the more impressive it is. This is not so. Even the most loyal reader is unlikely to be happily clapping, if your text consists of sentences the size of a paragraph.

Do not try to fit the essence of the story in one sentence. The idea is that one sentence should contain one thought. And rightly so!
Proofread your texts with the eyes of an ordinary person, not the author. If something "tripped eyes" – simplify, without a moment's hesitation.
Follow paragraphs. Rather, try to make paragraphs had at least some kind of logical perfection, and not only have been broken with mathematical precision. Totally inappropriate principles "Panda I said that you need five sentences for a paragraph here and sitting here with a calculator".
If you see that the paragraph leaves large, because to break it down simply nowhere, and let be large. It is not critical. Proofreading of text in one sitting. Even the replay of the goals of your favorite football team or sound that only open in the kitchen a bag of chips should not keep you from editing the article. If you start to throw all sorts of external stimuli, it will be complete nonsense.

Subtracted material – with peace of mind go and get your chips from encroaching. Not before. Check for errors. If it's good, you had to get rid of the errors at the last stage of edits of the material. But since we are all human, not without flaws, often editing and proofreading of the text merge in one step. Even so, do not curse yourself for it. Pay special attention at the end, mention the two words twice, placement of hyphens, eliminating extra spaces between words and after the brackets, punctuation.

The organic nature of keys (for SEO-texts). The realities of modern SEO copywriting are as follows: Business Proofreading Services, the presence in the material of a large number of unnatural keywords can hurt your site. How to fight? To simplify, look for an opportunity to weaken the artificiality of occurrences, carefully hiding too obvious SEO component.  Love your text after reading. If you checked out material, and at the end proofreading approvingly patted himself on the shoulder, so everything is done well. It has long been observed that when the author likes his material, customer, as a rule, also takes this text with pleasure. Don't know, probably some mental connection or another kind of mysticism. The fact is – it works. That's all, friends. This tips for proofreading is finished, if you have additional information that would you be willing to share, look forward to seeing you in the comments.