Proofreading Tips for Self-Publishing

Self-publishing a book is a really difficult task, even with the availability of book proofreading services UK. No matter how many times you check over your manuscript, you’ll be amazed at the number of errors that can sneak in. This makes editing and proofreading services vital for efficient and high-quality work as an author.

If you can’t use editing and proofreading services for your next book, you can still ease the process of self-publishing by considering a few tips. This article focuses on proofreading tips you can apply to ensure that everything you’ve written – from the cover to the copyright and title pages – is presented in the best possible way.   

 

1. Know your strengths

If you know what you’re good at as a writer, you’ll also have a clear sense of your weaknesses. If you repeatedly make the same errors, being aware of them can help you to avoid them in the future.

 

2. Read your writing out loud

Reading aloud gives your ears a chance to catch the mistakes that your eyes may miss. Using freely available text-to-speech programs can also help in this area.

 

Image: Reading aloud is an important proofreading tip for self-publishing

3. Start with a style guide

You should always begin your writing journey by choosing a style guide and sticking close to it. Whenever you come across a word or phrase that you’re not sure how to write, you can consult your style guide for a clear solution.

 

4. Use a spellchecker

You can’t rely on a spellchecker alone to ensure you have high-quality writing. However, as a tool to use alongside other tools (such as text-to-speech software or book proofreading services UK), spellcheckers are invaluable.

 

5. Devote special attention to punctuation

Punctuation is a pivotal aspect of writing that deserves careful attention during proofreading, but it is often overlooked today. Before you begin proofreading, open up a grammar book and review for yourself the fundamental rules of punctuation.

 

Image: You should carefully check semi-colons and other punctuation marks

6. Vary your sentence lengths

This is more of an editing point than a proofreading point, but when you’re self-publishing, you can also focus on revising your sentence lengths for greater impact and emphasis while proofreading.

 

7. Don’t proofread forever

It’s important to remember that proofreading is just a phase in the self-publishing process. At some point, it needs to come to an end, and if possible, you can use professional services to get through the phase reasonably quickly.

 

Image: Try to proofread well but also efficiently!

8. Work your muscles

Just as professional athletes and musicians practice every day to keep up their fitness, you should also seek out opportunities to maintain your muscles for editing and proofreading. One way to do this is to read excellent writing, which will expose you to new and potentially inspiring ways to recast your old sentences.

Practical Processes in Proofreading

A growing number of people today are paying for editing and proofreading services. However, very few people know about the practical processes involved in professional proofreading and editing.

While proofreading and editing services are affordable for many students, academics, and businesses, the reason they are often priced higher than newcomers would think is due to the complexity of the tasks involved in preparing a manuscript for publication.

For example, the time-consuming nature of proofreading and editing partly account for the pricing of these services. Another contributing factor is the educational background of the proofreader.

An especially important factor that feeds into the pricing of these services, as mentioned above, is the issue of the processes involved. In this article, then, some of these processes are described to help you better understand what proofreading and editing actually involve.

 

1. On-screen editing with paper proofreading

Professional editors and proofreaders know all about the practice of editing using a computer screen and then using a hardcopy for proofreading.

For complicated reasons, our brains and eyes simply do not notice words and letters on computer screens particularly well.

By contrast, when errors are printed onto a page, they seem to jump up and become immediately obvious, even to the untrained eye. This is one of the reasons why you often find spelling errors in many printed books.

For this reason, once the more complicated process of editing has been completed on screen, professional proofreaders print out the document and work on it on paper.

 

2. Follow a one-at-a-time mindset

A professional editor or proofreader knows that it is futile to try to find and solve every problem in a manuscript in one pass. This is because it is difficult for us to keep track of an extensive list of proofreading and editing issues and categories.

For this reason, professionals go through a manuscript on several passes, each time looking for a specific issue (e.g., punctuation on the first pass, wordiness on the second pass, and style on the third).

When you use this approach, you can keep your mind focused as a proofreader or editor. Conversely, if you try to find every single error at the same time, there is a high likelihood that you will miss some errors.

 

3. Work with a style guide from the beginning

Rather than writing your document and then consulting a style guide to fix it once it’s finished, you can save a lot of time by working with a style guide from the beginning. Professional proofreaders and editors commonly follow this process of working with a style guide from the outset.

 

4. Don’t use full justification

If you decide to proofread and edit your manuscript using a computer monitor and a word processor, you should avoid using full justification for your text.

The reason why it is a common practice among professional editors and proofreaders to avoid fully justified text is because this makes it harder to find specific types of errors (e.g., extra spaces).

 

5. Syllable-level rather than word-level checking

When an untrained proofreader checks a sentence, they tend to read it through word by word. By contrast, the process that a professional adopts involves syllable by syllable checking.

The reason for this is that for longer words, which may contain three or four syllables, your eyes will tend to skip over (or compress) each of the syllables. This makes it difficult to spot errors that may occur in the middle of the word.  

Is Proofreading Just About Correcting Spelling Errors?

Professional proofreading services are now becoming increasingly in-demand, but there are still misconceptions about what professional proofreading actually involves. In particular, many potential users of proofreading services are unclear about whether proofreading simply involves the correction of spelling errors, which is a task that most automated spell checkers can easily do.

Different from editing, proofreading is concerned with fixing typographical, spelling, grammar, and other basic errors in a piece of writing. While editing entails making every correction that would improve a document (e.g., clarity, structure, format, tone, word choice, and so on), professional proofreading only involves making a restricted set of corrections and improvements.

 

Image: Editing and proofreading aren’t the same thing!

The fact that proofreading a document is much simpler compared to editing it is one of the reasons why the activity of proofreading is often viewed as a straightforward one. However, proofreading is far from simple, and as the above definition suggests, it is not just concerned with the correction of spelling errors. Indeed, proofreading spans many smaller tasks, many of which overlap with editing.

When a document is ready to be submitted for professional proofreading services, it is important to recognise that it should already have been edited. This means that the content in the document should be well structured, well written, and readable. At this point, it is the job of the proofreader to bring the final manuscript to a place where it could be published. This is achieved by ironing out grammatical, spelling, formatting, and typographical errors, and it may also involve ensuring that the document conforms to a specific style guide.

 

Image: Proofreading always comes after editing

The extent of the proofreading service you receive will also depend to a significant degree on the service provider or freelancer that you choose to work with. The reason for this is that the service descriptions offered by the available service providers and freelancers often differ on key points. For example, newer proofreaders may focus on issues such as the structure of your document, whereas traditional proofreaders may be limited in the number and type of revisions that they make.

Altogether, despite the fact that proofreading is less comprehensive compared to editing, it is a key step in the preparation of any manuscript that is intended to be read by others. In almost all cases, proofreading involves more than correcting spelling errors.Perhaps the best way of thinking about what proofreading involves is that it is a process that will completely revise any confusing, unprofessional, or inconsistent aspects of your writing.

How to Fix a Bad Sentence

There are many reasons why a sentence may be a bad one. It may be too wordy, it may not be very informative or coherent, it may even be boring or not engaging.

Whatever the reasons are why you think a given sentence may be good or bad, it’s always worth having a second pair of eyes check over your writing. This is the reason why proofreading services are becoming increasingly popular today.

Using a proofreading service can be a quick way to fix a bad sentence, but it also requires a small investment of time and money. For this reason, this article covers a few tips and rules of thumb that can help you troubleshoot and correct any poorly written sentences you may have.

 

1. Check for errors and double words

The clearest way a sentence can be a ‘bad’ sentence is when it contains an error, such as a double word. Your spell checker will usually catch double words and blatant mistakes for you, but proofreading services are also very helpful if you need something more comprehensive than an automated spell checker.

 

2. Rearrange your sentences

Some sentences strike the reader as ‘bad’ or inappropriate because they don’t fit the context. Therefore, if the flow or coherence of your writing is undermined by poorly organised sentences, switching their order can be a good solution.

For example, when you re-read your paragraph, you may find that the paragraph’s topic sentence is concealed at the end or the middle. This is an example of a poor sentence due to suboptimal placement, and so rearranging the sentence (i.e., moving it to the beginning) can make it a good one.

 

3. Use interesting words

After writing for long enough, some writers eventually become stuck in a rut, where they feel like they are using the same 15 words all over the place.

If this happens, it can damage your sentences by failing to engage the reader. In the context of web content writing, for example, this can be a catastrophe, given the importance of engagement.

To solve this, you can pick up a thesaurus, find some words that are similar to the ones you regularly use, and make a concentrated effort to use those in the future.

 

4. Strive for cohesion at the paragraph level

Some readers may consider a sentence ‘bad’ if it does not link in a clear way to the previous sentence. If this problem is plaguing your sentences, you can use so-called ‘cohesion words’ as a reasonable solution.

For example, if your sentence describes a consequence of an action described in the preceding sentence, the phrase ‘Due to this’ can be used to show this connection clearly. Another reasonable phrase that could be used is ‘As a result.’

Paraphrasing a Sentence – The Basics

Paraphrasing is the process of recasting another author’s ideas and words in words of your own. In a paraphrasing service, authors can hire paraphrasers to rewrite passages of text without altering the meaning. In this way, paraphrasing services allow authors to avoid overusing direct quotations, which is when you copy and paste someone else’s text and place it inside quotation marks.

At university, as well as in academia more generally, paraphrasing sentences is preferable because it demonstrates to your lecturers and colleagues that your understanding is adequate. This also increases the originality of your work and ensures that you avoid plagiarism. Importantly, when you paraphrase a source or use a proofreading services, it is important to remember to cite it.

The steps involved in paraphrasing are simple, but rewriting a complex sentence is not straightforward. Even the best writers, editors, and paraphrasers find the task very time-consuming, which is why paraphrasing services are usually priced higher compared to editing services, proofreading services, and other writing-related services.

To paraphrase a sentence, follow these four steps:

·         Become familiar with the sentence and its meaning. Read it at least two times.

·         Without looking at the original sentence, write a new one with the same meaning based on your memory of the original.

·         Compare the original sentence and your paraphrased version and change any areas that are too similar or too different.

·         Leave an in-text citation to the original author.

It’s worth noting that you can also follow these four steps to paraphrase larger chunks of text, including paragraphs, pages of text, and entire chapters.

If you try to apply these four steps to a few sentences or paragraphs, you might find it difficult – as mentioned earlier. Despite the simplicity of the steps, following them and producing a new, engaging, and accessible rewritten version is not easy. This is one of the main reasons why paraphrasing services are currently highlypriced; because the process of paraphrasing is time-consuming and often complex.

To ease the paraphrasing process, there are a few tricks you can apply:

·         Restructure the sentence or paragraph. One way to do this is to change sentences from the passive to the active voice.

·         Increase or decrease the number of sentences. For example, you can divide information from the original sentence into two or three shorter sentences.

·         Make use of synonyms. If you use words that have the same meaning as words in the original sentence, you can ensure that the paraphrased version is dissimilar.

·         Begin the new sentence at a different point compared to the original.

·         Maximise the number of synonyms. If you’re having difficulty with this, consult a thesaurus or, if all else fails, call a paraphraser.

In light of the above, it’s always wise to think about when paraphrasing may be a good alternative to direct quotation. In academic writing, it is often preferable to paraphrase a piece of text rather than to quote it directly. Whenever you decide to paraphrase another source, don’t forget to leave a citation alongside it. 

How to Proofread – Ten Key Tips

One of the easiest and most direct ways to improve the quality of proofreading in your documents is to work with a professional proofreader. Professional proofreading services are complex to perform, and to undertake the task of a proofreader or editor effectively, years of training and experience are needed.

If you are not looking for professional proofreading but would still like to benefit from high-quality, consistent, and readable written documents, this article presents ten tips and tricks that will help. For example, if you want to proofread your own work to avoid the cost of professional proofreading services, you can strive to apply some of these tips when you next proofread your documents. 

The ten key tips are as follows:

1. Learn about your common mistakes and errors. If you know what errors you are likely to make, you can approach the process of proofreading your work much more effectively and efficiently.

2. Check over your work when you are most alert. This is a commonly overlooked tip, but it is a cornerstone of success in the detail-oriented task of proofreading.

3. Take a break before proofreading. If you have only just finished writing your manuscript, leave some time before you begin proofreading. The task takes time, and so if you approach it in a rush or without focus, you risk producing a low-quality outcome.

4. Ask someone for a critique of your writing. When you use a professional proofreading service, or when you ask a knowledgeable and trustworthy friend to review your writing, you can receive valuable feedback about your writing (e.g., errors, wordiness, or low clarity) to improve your proofreading.

5. Check your work at least twice. Many authors make the mistake of proofreading their work only once. This is often a fatal error because in the process of proofreading a text and making changes to it, there is a good chance that human error will introduce a new error.

6. Use a spellchecker. Spellcheckers like Grammarly and Microsoft Word’s built-in spellchecker are invaluable. The final check for any document should include an automated spellcheck.

7. Don’t be hesitant to ask for help. If you are unsure about anything in your manuscript – such as whether to use a comma in one sentence or an apostrophe in another – remember to do a Google search, look it up in a style guide or book, or consult with a professional proofreader.

8. Start from the end. If you proofread your work back to front – that is, by starting from the last sentence and reading backward, one sentence at a time – you will be able to focus much better on the language rather than the content of your paper or the stream of the argument.

9. Address all errors of one type in a single pass. Consider proofreading in multiple passes. In one pass, look for spelling errors; in another, look for incorrect double spaces in a manuscript; and in yet another, look for a different type of error. This will increase your speed and accuracy.

10. Proofread on paper. You may find that printing out your document and reviewing it on a piece of paper is less straining for your eyes, allowing you to proofread more effectively.

How and When to Use Rewriting Services

Paraphrasing (or “rewriting”) a sentence involves expressing something written by another author in your own words. Professional paraphrasers offer rewriting services, which enable you to benefit from their expertise to avoid plagiarism and rewrite lots of text to meet your deadline. However, if you are interested in using a rewriting service, it is important to know a few key things to get the greatest return on your investment.

 

Image: Paraphrasing a piece of text is all about change and transformation

When to hire a rewriter

The first key question to think about is when to use a rewriting service.

Things to consider when reflecting on this question include whether you can complete the paraphrasing task yourself, whether you can use direct quotation to avoid having to paraphrase, and whether you can achieve a better result by collaborating with a professional rewriter.

For example, if you have a tight deadline, you may wish to focus on finding a professional rewriter to work with.This can ensure that you complete your work on time and enable you to focus on other tasks, speeding up the delivery of your manuscript.

Likewise, if you have overused direct quotations in your document, hiring a paraphraser to reduce the number of direct quotations may be a worthwhile idea. Quotes can limit the accessibility and readability of your text, and if you paraphrase instead of quoting, you indicate that you have a clear understanding of the meaning of the text.

Another ideal use case for professional rewriting services is to avoid plagiarism. For example, if there are passages in your paper that are too similar to those in other documents, collaborating with a professional may be a good idea. This is especially true if you have a tight deadline.

 

Image: Avoid plagiarism by rewriting your problematic sentences

How to use rewriting services

First of all, you should prioritise finding a professional rewriter who:

·         Can meet your deadline

·         Has a communication style that is suitable for your audience

·         Is experienced in your subject area (for academic papers) or genre (for book authors)

·         Can meet your budget

To contact high-quality rewriters, the best place to go is a company – not a freelancer – that can draw on a large network of paraphrasers. If you do a quick online search and check a few online reviews, you are likely to find an effective and affordable paraphraser fairly conveniently.

Word of mouth is also one of the best ways to ensure that the way you use a rewriting service is optimal, enabling you to maximise your return on investment. If you know someone who has used these services before, have a chat with them to see if their rewriter might work with you.

 

The role of rewriting

Rewriting is a valuable tool that can help you articulate your ideas and demonstrate your understanding in academic papers, business documents, and other pieces of writing. If you use it to avoid plagiarism, always remember to cite the original author. Also, try to aim for a balance between your use of direct quotation and paraphrasing; it’s sometimes appropriate to use a quote, such as when you need to give a precise definition or make a point about another author’s style, but you should usually be seeking to paraphrase.