3 Editing Tricks to Catch Errors
It looks bad if your client uses copy that has grammatical errors … typos … or something worse, like misquotes or untruths …
The latter could actually damage their business.
So here are three little tricks you can use to catch errors …
The first one: Read it out loud.
If you’re not already doing this, you should!
It will help you not only catch errors but write more conversationally, too.
A variation on this is to have your computer read the text back to you, so you’ll hear if there are any missing words, mix-ups, or even hard-to-understand passages.
The second one is a little strange, but it works …
Read your copy backward.
After you’ve read through it from top to bottom (preferably out loud) …
Start at the bottom and read each sentence as you move up the page.
This will help your brain notice the words it’s reading, rather than skipping over what it thinks it already understands.
And the third one probably seems old school, but it also helps you catch errors that might sneak by in your familiarity with your copy …
Print out a hard copy and highlight the words as you read through it.
Highlighting or underlining the words as you go through your copy will help you focus on each of the words, and errors or words that are missing will be more obvious.
There’s something different about reading your copy on paper that changes your perspective. If you really want to mix things up for your brain, change the font before you print it out!
If you use these three tricks, you’ll catch most if not all of the errors in your copy.
Turning in error-free copy will make you very popular with your clients, so start applying these techniques today!
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