Why Proofread?

A common misconception:

“surely a word processor like Microsoft Word can pick up spelling and grammar errors? Plus, I’ll give it a look over before I’m finished with it…”

There are two reasons why this strategy won’t give you the best result…

Your word processor isn’t smart enough

Word processors will pick up obvious spelling errors like ‘wrting’, but won’t pick up homophones like ‘their’, ‘they’re’ and ‘there’.

Your brain tries to trick you

Proofreading your own work is nigh on impossible. A writer is too close to their writing to notice spelling mistakes – your brain is designed to take shortcuts (called schemas). These shortcuts lead you to miss certain things because you’ve already seen something and processed it – you don’t always see something how it actually is; your brain does a lot of guesswork. It’s a bit like how a website ‘caches‘ information – it only reloads something when it’s new or the original information has been deleted. That’s why you press F5 to get a website to reload when something’s been changed on a page. I often wish I could ‘F5‘ my own brain after a late night!

Warning: Paris Springtime beauty ahead

Notice anything strange? Until you find it, you won’t see what the point of the picture is.

Once you’ve worked it out, you’ll know what we mean about the difficulty of proofreading when your brain is tricking you with schemas!

If you’re looking for a fast and accurate proofreader/editor, then please contact us for a no-obligation quote.