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Nobody's perfect, but with perceptive proofreading your company can appear to be. Good proofreading eliminates mistakes and helps maintain professionalism in all kinds of work. Perfect documents inspire confidence and respect. Documents with typos and inconsistencies instill doubt and hurt credibility. In addition to being a core skill that is vital to professionalism, proofreading saves time and money. If you can eliminate errors early in the document-development process, you save your company from those expensive fixes by designers and printers, and eliminate the possibility of an error in the final document. Good proofreading also sets the foundation for editing, which is a divine skill. When and where to proofread Like flossing, proofreading should be done much more often than one might want to do it. During the draft text stage, a document should be proofed after every version while it is being written, after every change while it is being reviewed and edited, and before it goes to the design stage. During the design stage, a document should be proofed after every design iteration, even if there are only small changes from one version to another -- it's amazing how many digital gremlins are waiting to undermine your document. Special care should be taken in reviewing the last proof before a document goes to press or is posted on a web site. During both the draft text and design stages, at least two people should proof a document to ensure that it is being reviewed with fresh eyes. Since proofreading requires concentration, it should be done in a quiet and comfortable (but not too comfortable) environment where you will not be interrupted. Two essential types of proofreading There are two essential types of proofreading, both of which are needed to ensure effectiveness. The big picture: When proofing draft copy, you should always do a read-through designed to assess copy flow and uncover obvious errors (headline typos, misspelling the company name or the name of the CEO, etc.). When the document is in the design process, the big picture method is used for a global look at the overall design, headline styles, graphics content, datelines and other elements. This is a visual check that makes certain the document is consistent, pleasing to the eye, and doesn't contain show-stopping errors. Microproofing: This is the nitty-gritty
of editing; the roll-up-your-sleeves, get-down-to-it part. This
is when you painstakingly read aloud or to yourself every syllable
in every word, even (or especially) headlines or titles, subheads,
captions, datelines, mastheads and punctuation (yes, you should
say aloud, "period" or "semi-colon"). This is
a bit like hunting for truffles: You might look stupid walking that
sniffing pig around, but the payoff is big in the end.
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