My work is a reflection of you • Adding quality and texture to your business communications in writing, photography and design

Writing, Editing, Proofreading

You Don’t Have To Do It All—In Fact, You Should’t!

I am one of the few people that you’ll meet who loves to write. I write every day. There is always something to write about, whether for it’s for business, a new entry in my blog at www.gardentextures.blogspot.com, or the rare, golden opportunity to write a personal letter on real stationery by hand.

BUT, even I do not proofread my own work!

Of course, I re-read what I write and use the spelling checker, but on documents of importance—another set of eyes and a mind that hasn’t read the document already are invaluable.

As writers, most of us know what we want to say. We may change the sentence structure or improve upon the vocabulary after our first draft, but we have a very good idea of what’s down on our digital or literal paper.

That is the main reason, we make mistakes.

Typos happen—However, when you are the primary writer on a document, you will overlook them almost every time! Your mind knows what you wanted to say and you will see those words—even if they are misspelled or omitted from the text.

“I don’t have time to get someone to proofread or edit my document!”

In most instances, proofreading your own writing takes longer than when another person looks at it. BUT, if you have to do it—READ IT BACKWARDS!

Yes. Believe it or not, start at the bottom right of the document on the last page and read backwards through the document. Concentrate on one sentence at a time. You are not reading it for editing or content. You are looking for spelling and grammatical errors. Since you are reading each sentence out of context, you are more likely to catch mistakes.

Writing Portfolio: Editing Example