HOW TO BEST PROOFREAD YOUR OWN WORK
The following is an excerpt from my book:
How to Get Better Reviews for Your First Novel: 11 Convos on the Basics of Fiction Writing
The first step will be to create some distance between yourself and your writing. The reason for this is to enable you to see it somewhat objectively and spot typos and omissions you couldn’t isolate because you have been too close to your work. Many writers who self-publish believe they can proofread their manuscripts; it is a fallacy, however. Writers cannot do it effectively. This is because they are too close to what they have written.
An interesting disconnect takes place between what is in our minds against what is on the paper or screen when we read over what we have written. Let me illustrate: The following sentence pops into my head: ‘MY LIFE IS A SERIES OF RECURRING MOMENTS OF ANXIETY.’ I feel it is a great line that I need to get down; so, in the eagerness of the moment I write: ‘MY LIFE IS SERIES OF RECURRING MOMENTS OF ANXIETY.’ And every time I re-read the latter sentence on paper or from a screen, I only read what’s in my head where there’s an ‘A’ before the word ‘series’ even though it’s missing on the screen or that printed sheet. And that’s why we all need objective proofreaders before our work is deemed ready to be typeset.
But let’s not get so far ahead; let’s get back to our raw manuscripts: We do not want to send them riddled with typos to our developmental editors. We, therefore, need to find ways to catch and correct as many mistakes in our manuscripts as we could. The following are a few methods writers employ to proofread their own work.
a: PUT YOUR MANUSCRIPT IN COLD STORAGE
Put it away for a month or more and start working on something else. What you’re trying to do is to create that personal distance between yourself and your story. After revisiting it, you may find that you’re discovering typos, omissions, and other mistakes.
b: REFORMAT, PRINT OUT, READ
Somehow the perspective can feel as if you’re reading a printed book. Something about a print-out helps to catch flaws. You might even take it a step further: Justify a chapter of your manuscript; make it single-spaced and print it out. It will appear as if reading someone else’s work and help you see typos and omissions. Do this for each chapter.
(A popular variation of the above is to read what you’ve written aloud.)
c: EMAIL CHAPTER AFTER CHAPTER TO YOURSELF
Copy and then paste one single-spaced chapter after another into the body of an email to yourself. Change the font to 12-point, Times New Roman. Send it off, and then read it on your smartphone. I don’t know if it’s because of the size of the screen or that it looks like someone else’s eBook, but a somewhat objective distance will be achieved between you and what you read on your phone’s screen.
d: USE THE TEXT-TO-SPEECH (TTS) FEATURE ON YOUR PC OR MAC AND LISTEN TO YOUR WORK READ-BACK TO YOU
By and by, you will HEAR the gaps that denote missing words and typos. As a bonus, you may also hear too-close repetitions, lumpy flow, and downright bad sentences. I swear by this method. I am, you see, someone who suffers from acute anxiety and would often miss typos in my work—never mind how often or how loudly I re-read passages. For me, the TTS feature in my Word program falls into the ‘best-thing-since-sliced-bread’ category.
FOR PC USERS: There is a Text-To-Speech feature built into Microsoft Word that you may not be aware of. It carries a capital ‘A’ aligned to a symbol of sound waves. The ‘READ ALOUD’ program allows you to sit back, close your eyes and listen to your manuscript. Should you hear something that’s not right, you simply stop the playback, make a correction, and then continue from where the playback stopped. I swear by this feature. The following link will open to a tutorial on how you can find the Text-To-Speech program in Word:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-...
FOR MAC USERS: The link below opens to a YouTube video tutorial on how to use the TTS feature in the Apple system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38C_g...
IN CONCLUSION
Believe me, it is unsettling to discover a lot of typographical errors in your manuscript after sending it off to someone to read. I recall the times I have sent out manuscripts to a colleague who publishes traditionally, only to discover, afterward, that there are blatant typos I should have spotted and rectified. What did I do on those occasions? I quickly sent follow-up emails that said, ‘Scrap that manuscript I sent you earlier. I made some corrections in it. Will resend updated version!’ I can assure you; it’s not a nice feeling when you must do that. The remedy is to make sure the manuscript you send out has been raked over for typos and omissions. It also helps to think as a copy editor as you write. Write defensively.
How to Get Better Reviews for Your First Novel: 11 Convos on the Basics of Fiction Writing
The first step will be to create some distance between yourself and your writing. The reason for this is to enable you to see it somewhat objectively and spot typos and omissions you couldn’t isolate because you have been too close to your work. Many writers who self-publish believe they can proofread their manuscripts; it is a fallacy, however. Writers cannot do it effectively. This is because they are too close to what they have written.
An interesting disconnect takes place between what is in our minds against what is on the paper or screen when we read over what we have written. Let me illustrate: The following sentence pops into my head: ‘MY LIFE IS A SERIES OF RECURRING MOMENTS OF ANXIETY.’ I feel it is a great line that I need to get down; so, in the eagerness of the moment I write: ‘MY LIFE IS SERIES OF RECURRING MOMENTS OF ANXIETY.’ And every time I re-read the latter sentence on paper or from a screen, I only read what’s in my head where there’s an ‘A’ before the word ‘series’ even though it’s missing on the screen or that printed sheet. And that’s why we all need objective proofreaders before our work is deemed ready to be typeset.
But let’s not get so far ahead; let’s get back to our raw manuscripts: We do not want to send them riddled with typos to our developmental editors. We, therefore, need to find ways to catch and correct as many mistakes in our manuscripts as we could. The following are a few methods writers employ to proofread their own work.
a: PUT YOUR MANUSCRIPT IN COLD STORAGE
Put it away for a month or more and start working on something else. What you’re trying to do is to create that personal distance between yourself and your story. After revisiting it, you may find that you’re discovering typos, omissions, and other mistakes.
b: REFORMAT, PRINT OUT, READ
Somehow the perspective can feel as if you’re reading a printed book. Something about a print-out helps to catch flaws. You might even take it a step further: Justify a chapter of your manuscript; make it single-spaced and print it out. It will appear as if reading someone else’s work and help you see typos and omissions. Do this for each chapter.
(A popular variation of the above is to read what you’ve written aloud.)
c: EMAIL CHAPTER AFTER CHAPTER TO YOURSELF
Copy and then paste one single-spaced chapter after another into the body of an email to yourself. Change the font to 12-point, Times New Roman. Send it off, and then read it on your smartphone. I don’t know if it’s because of the size of the screen or that it looks like someone else’s eBook, but a somewhat objective distance will be achieved between you and what you read on your phone’s screen.
d: USE THE TEXT-TO-SPEECH (TTS) FEATURE ON YOUR PC OR MAC AND LISTEN TO YOUR WORK READ-BACK TO YOU
By and by, you will HEAR the gaps that denote missing words and typos. As a bonus, you may also hear too-close repetitions, lumpy flow, and downright bad sentences. I swear by this method. I am, you see, someone who suffers from acute anxiety and would often miss typos in my work—never mind how often or how loudly I re-read passages. For me, the TTS feature in my Word program falls into the ‘best-thing-since-sliced-bread’ category.
FOR PC USERS: There is a Text-To-Speech feature built into Microsoft Word that you may not be aware of. It carries a capital ‘A’ aligned to a symbol of sound waves. The ‘READ ALOUD’ program allows you to sit back, close your eyes and listen to your manuscript. Should you hear something that’s not right, you simply stop the playback, make a correction, and then continue from where the playback stopped. I swear by this feature. The following link will open to a tutorial on how you can find the Text-To-Speech program in Word:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-...
FOR MAC USERS: The link below opens to a YouTube video tutorial on how to use the TTS feature in the Apple system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38C_g...
IN CONCLUSION
Believe me, it is unsettling to discover a lot of typographical errors in your manuscript after sending it off to someone to read. I recall the times I have sent out manuscripts to a colleague who publishes traditionally, only to discover, afterward, that there are blatant typos I should have spotted and rectified. What did I do on those occasions? I quickly sent follow-up emails that said, ‘Scrap that manuscript I sent you earlier. I made some corrections in it. Will resend updated version!’ I can assure you; it’s not a nice feeling when you must do that. The remedy is to make sure the manuscript you send out has been raked over for typos and omissions. It also helps to think as a copy editor as you write. Write defensively.
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