If you are self-publishing, then proofreading your manuscript is a really challenging task — and you’ll kick yourself if you find a mistake after you’ve told everyone about the book. No matter how many times you’ve read through your work, it’s amazing how often errors can sneak through to the final stages. The problem: You’re so familiar with the text that you see what you think you have written rather than what you actually wrote. For this reason, at the very least, it’s good to ask a few friends to help you proofread.
Don’t forget to carefully proofread the cover, copyright, and title pages as well as any indices, tables of contents, and dedications — mistakes in these areas happen surprisingly often.
So, short of hiring a professional proofreader, what else can you do to make sure your book is as close to perfect as possible? Here are some tips.
10 Tips For Proofreading Your Book
1. Put your writing aside for a while. This allows you to see it again with fresh eyes that are more likely to spot errors.
2. Look at your weaknesses. Do you regularly misspell or repeat words? Do you make particular grammar or punctuation errors? If you are aware of these weaknesses, take extra care to search and spot them.
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3. Read your work out loud. If you read aloud, your ear might catch errors that your eyes may have missed. Alternatively, you can use text-to-speech software.
4. Try proofreading backwards! To spot typographical errors, read your work from the end to the beginning, either word by word, sentence by sentence, or paragraph by paragraph. This disconnects your mind from the content and helps you focus on the text. Particularly useful for checking the cover.
5. Keep style and usage handbooks readily available and use them! The Guardian Style Guide is a good choice.
6. Watch out for those pesky contractions, apostrophes, and homonyms.
7. Run the spell check to catch any obvious errors. However, don’t rely on this alone as it can’t always be completely accurate.
8. Highlight all punctuation marks so that you can evaluate each one for accuracy.
9. Proofread a printed version of your work. People read differently on screen and on paper, so print out a copy of your writing for another read.
10. Get someone else to proofread it. A fresh pair of eyes is a great way to spot errors.
Remember, nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. But hopefully these tips will help ensure your self-published book looks its best when it ends up in readers’ hands.
If you have favorite proofreading tips, please share them in the comments below!
Anna Lewis has a passion for finding ways that new technology can enable people to engage in new and exciting ways with books and authors. She is the founder of CompletelyNovel.com, an online publishing community offering self-publishing tools such as print-on-demand, as well as the co-founder of ValoBox, a company which works with publishers to create web-friendly books.
View Comments (13)
A fellow writer told me she reads her work out loud when she proofs it. I tried it, and it does help a lot.
Great tips! Thanks!
If using Word, run a Grammar check. Do NOT blindly follow its suggestions! Do look closely at the sentences it barfs on, though; it may be that there's a "witch" instead of "which," or a "complement" instead of "compliment." Or the sentence may be correct, but too complex for Word to untangle! If that's the case, it may be best to take the sentence out back and introduce it to a chainsaw so you don't leave a reader pulling out scrap paper to try to diagram the sentence...
Thank you all! These are great advices I will soon put to good use for my second book!
Another great thing to do is have your computer read it aloud to you. I just found 5 errors in my book that I'd missed by having the puter read it.
How do you do this? Is there a special software?
Please do not rely on spellcheck. I see so many errors. I was recently reading someone's manuscript that was full of errors from spellcheck. My favorite was the "pubic" parking lot, instead of the public parking lot.
It was glad to now all of these tips you provided here. A lot of people will surely appreciate your content for it was so helpful to every individual specially to those self publishers.
You may find a low-cost proofreader via http://www.elance.com. In an early version of my fiction collection, I hired someone to critique and edit my book (which led me to re-write or intensively revise every story). Afterwards, I proofread it using a wide ruler underneath every line. You can view my tips on self-publishing on my website at http://www.elizabethsamitbooks.com
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For the publishers making the sure the best proofreading style are the perfect approaches in every possible manner. No matter how hard the situation are the entire way out has been improving the potential move smoother in all the possible manner.