3 Reasons You Need a Proofreader
Tomato, Tomato. Potato, Potatoe?
You read that right. In 1992, US Vice President Dan Quayle helped moderate a spelling bee. The word was “potato.” Although the contestant spelled it correctly, Mr. Quayle announced otherwise, saying that it is spelled with an ‘e’ at the end. Despite his claims that it was misspelled on his cue cards, the media grabbed hold of the blunder and ran with it, much to Mr. Quayle’s chagrin. He might have wished for a proofreader.
If you look up the most expensive typos in history, you’ll find countless accounts of tiny mistakes that cost more zeros than any of us will ever hope to see. But you’re not the government of Chile or, famously, the programmers of the Mariner 1 (I hope). So why do you need a proofreader?
You shouldn’t proofread your own writing
I won’t say you can’t proofread your own writing. In fact, I hope you do! But proofreading is that last step before publishing, like the last glance in the mirror. You’ll catch the red squiggle errors and the sentences you copy-pasted twice. But you may read right over the time you said “and and” and changed tenses mid-sentence.
You’ve written, rewritten, read, and reread your work countless times. You may have noticed that writing and editing/proofreading require different mindsets. By the time you’re ready to publish, your brain is tuckered out from switching tracks so many times. It’s harder to catch that pesky “the the” when your brain has already learned to skip over it.
As the writer, you read your work the way it’s supposed to be read.
A proofreader is a fresh set of eyes. Those mistakes jump out at them, and they’re itching to correct them.
You can save time and effort
Beyond the commonly known rules like the often-debated Oxford comma, the use of dialogue tags, and the common spelling of color in your region, there are so many grammar rules. You may be thinking, “I did really well in English,” or “I actually liked grammar in school!” You probably caught quite a few errors already.
What you may not know is that some rules we’ve been taught in school are flat-out wrong or outdated. For instance, do you put one or two spaces after a full stop? It depends on when you went to school. Can you start a sentence with a conjunction and end it with a preposition? It depends on the style manual your grammar rules come from, when you went to school, and what audience you’re writing for.
The Chicago Manual of Style is on its 17th version. It’s quite hefty. Rather than try to navigate the CMOS rules, you could just Google it. But what sources can you trust? What sources are they using? Have the rules changed?
A proofreader is trained to keep up with these rules. It’s their entire job to do that research for you. They know the rules, where to find them, how to use them, and when to break them. As a bonus, they might even enjoy it.
Proofreaders examine more than spelling and grammar
If nothing else, consider this. Spell-check and online grammar checkers can review your document for you. They’ll even do a passable job, though there are some serious (and common) pitfalls to watch out for. Proofreaders go even further than that. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of what proofreaders look at:
Spelling. You know the rule: I before E, except after C, except in words like glacier, leisure, protein, height, neither, and—you get the point.
Grammar. You know about conjunctions and prepositions. Did you know that English has a specific set of adjectives that an English native will know instinctively but usually can’t articulate?
Punctuation. Does the period come before or after the closing parenthesis, and when do you use a comma or a full stop in dialogue? What even is an em-dash?
Word usage. Is it compliment or complement? What about effect and affect or counsel and council? They can get tricky. Even proofreaders have to double-check them sometimes, but we usually have a handy list for that.
Formatting. Proofreaders will check your margins, sentence spacing, paragraph spacing, indentions, italics, boldface, and font.
References and citations. If you’re citing someone else’s work, you want to follow the most up-to-date formatting rules. Easybib is convenient, but it isn’t always correct. After writing twenty-five pages of research, the last thing you want to reread is your works-cited page.
Pictures and captions. Proofreaders will make sure your pictures and captions are related to the correct content, that they’re in the right place, and they make sense.
Finding the right proofreader
Is your head spinning yet? Proofreading involves a lot, and it’s hard work! You don’t have to do it yourself. In fact, you shouldn’t. You can usually find a professional proofreader anywhere that writers hang out. Many of us are writers too. You’ll want to ask about their training. Are they familiar with the manual you use? Have they worked with your line of business before? Many proofreaders specialize in a specific area, such as legal or science-fiction. Sometimes, they’ll offer a sample proof. This is a great way to determine if they know their stuff and if you two will work well together.
Lastly, you should know this: a professional proofreader will not correct your document. Your work has gone through multiple revisions. You’ve probably caught a lot of the errors yourself. But there may be an instance where you intentionally misspelled a word or described a character’s eye color incorrectly. If your proofreader corrected that, you may never notice it until after you’ve published.
Instead, a proofreader will make comments on your document. This is usually done via Track Changes in MS Word or Suggestions in Google Drive. Their “edits” will appear in a different color, with a little comment to say what they did. You can then accept or reject their suggestions. This allows you the final say in your document and the creative license to break the rules when it suits you. Be sure to ask your proofreader about their process!
So go forth! Write! And when you’re ready for that last step, don’t be like Dan Quayle. Get a proofreader.
Briana is a freelance proofreader and the owner of Hall & Quotes. She specializes in business non-fiction and sci-fi/fantasy fiction. She can almost always be found with a mug of coffee or tea in hand. Have a question? Want to suggest a book or a new tea blend? Drop a comment below or email her at briana@hallandquotes.com.
