Proofreading and Editing Service

Many customers who have used a proofreading and editing service in the past, especially if the service provider has proved to be very reliable and effective, they know first-hand how their written documents has been improved upon to get the right result. Due to this, some customers are curious about what kinds of approaches professionals take when revising a piece of writing.

In some cases, an author, a student, or a copywriter is interested in knowing how they themselves can proofread and edit their work to the same standard without having to pay for these types of service. Even though I am a professional proofreader who believes it is always best for a trained, experienced professional pair of eyes to look over a written document, I understand this perspective, yet despite their highly-affordable nature and the impressive return on investment associated with these types of services, not everyone has the funds needed to proofread or edit every single one of their documents.

For this reason, I thought I would write an article that briefly explains several of the common techniques and procedures that are used in a proofreading and editing service. This article is by no means comprehensive, but it should provide some directions that people who are interested in proofreading or editing written documents can follow to improve their performance.

The spellchecker is your friend, but not always!

Spellcheckers are best used once the proofreading or editing process has been completed. They are extremely effective at catching blatant errors you may have overlooked, and they can identify many of the errors that modern text editors obscure (e.g., double spacing between words). Nevertheless, a critical point to note is that spellcheckers are truly awful when it comes to certain types of errors (e.g., homophonic errors, punctuation errors, typographical errors, and nonsense).

Start from the end, read backwards, and do so word by word

This is one that sounds ridiculous, but as soon as you try it, you’ll see how effective it is. It’s self-explanatory, so give it a go.

Read before you proofread

The core of this strategy is to pass through the document twice. On the first pass, you should only read the document. Resist the temptation to make changes if you find any mistakes! Then, on the second pass, correct any errors that you come across.

The benefit to this approach in a proofreading and editing service is that, because you only make corrections and changes after having read through the entire document, you have a clear view of the document’s trajectory, arguments, and problem areas.

When I tell aspiring proofreaders or editors to do this, a common objection is that it will take twice as long without improving the outcome.However, in my experience, the two-pass approach is actually much more efficient than the one-pass approach. Try it and see for yourself!