Good writers and editors agree—proofreading is not optional. Follow these tips and root out those embarrassing mistakes Pick up any good novel and within one or two pages, you're likely to fall under the spell evoked by authors who are masters of their craft. Disbelief suspended, your mind can freely roam through the world that's been carefully stitched and bound for your reading edification. In ways, this is not unlike the spell that all corporate publications should hope to evoke. True, as a business communicator, you'll rarely need to recreate Steinbeck's dusty California exodus, but the copy under your jurisdiction should nonetheless cast its own spell of authority. Your communications wizardry should be such that your messages flow from author to reader without obstruction, a feat achieved not only through precise writing and copyediting, but with meticulous proofreading. Just as it takes little more than a single typo to break a novel's literary grip, the same, simple indiscretion can defrock a corporate publication of its respectability. Bottom line: your copy needs to be error-free. How, then, do you put this ethos into practice? Define the process As your last line of defense against embarrassment, proofreading should be approached with the same degree of care and premeditation as the actual writing of an article. For many busy professionals accustomed to multitasking, this does not usually happen. As the last step in the editorial process, proofreading is oftentimes rushed; with frazzled editors calling upon any staffers with a few free minutes to "look this over and make sure there aren't any huge mistakes" before a publication is shipped off to the printer. That's a recipe for disaster. Editors should allocate sufficient time for proofreading as they do for writing. That means when a story is turned in after deadline, all editorial processes should be bumped back accordingly. | Proofreaders' checklist | • Check the dates on the publication
• Check the footers
• Check the bullets to make sure they hang properly
• Check for boldface and italics
• Check all headlines
• Check all attributions
• Check for proper indentation throughout
• Check numbers in heads and make sure that they are consistent with body copy numbers
• Spell out numbers in heads
• Make sure teasers and page
numbers are accurate
• Make sure there are no hyphens
in heads
• Make sure numbering in lists
is accurate | As you put your proofreading policies into place, you should also be explicit with your team about what proofreading is and what it isn't. Though the lines between proofreading and copyediting can be murky, the two should be treated as distinct functions. Copyediting is the reading and revision of a text with an eye for clarity and structure. Proofreading is the more clinical task of reading a text strictly to catch and correct spelling, grammar and style mistakes. Technically, proofreading can take one of three forms. Comparison proofreading is the least commonly used, involving little more than checking one text against another to make sure they are identical. Format proofreading is the review of a document for purposes of ensuring that headers, photo captions and paragraphs are laid out according to a particular style. Content proofreading is what most of us think of when we think of proofreading—reviewing content for grammar, style and punctuation. Get organized The first lesson I received in a graduate writing workshop was one of hygiene—writer's hygiene, meaning a clean room and a clutter-free desk. At the risk of sounding simplistic, I'll repeat what my professor told me: environment matters. The paper piles that litter your desk can subconsciously clutter your head. Clean desk=clean copy. Once your writing environment is free of all distractions, make sure that it does include the two documents that should regularly interrupt your work—your style guide and dictionary. The style guide can range from a single sheet of paper detailing a few basic rules about typeface, grammar and attribution to more substantive manuals of guidelines found in major corporations. Style guides will help you ensure that all writing under your purview is consistent. Like typos, inconsistencies in style will break the "spell" enabled by professionally written copy. Don't, for example, allow a publication under your discretion to refer to "e-mails" as well as "emails." If you keep your style tightly defined, you'll complement your company's brand and speak more effectively to your target markets. Improve your internal communication from every angle...at a master class coming to your city in 2009!  Depending on the size of your staff, you may have employees specifically assigned to proofread, or you may have several people sharing the duties. Regardless, one fundamental rule applies: no one should ever proofread their own work. Like a friend trapped in a haplessly miserable relationship, a writer is generally desensitized and oblivious to those problems that may seem obvious to everyone else. I've always preferred to print hardcopies of anything I'm going to proof, though I know others who insist on proofing directly through Microsoft Word. It's fine to go with what feels comfortable. When proofing content online, it might be wise to start with hard copies and take another pass after changes have been implemented online. If you're proofreading in Word and posting changes directly into a document, it's important to always give the document a "once-over" once those changes have been accepted. If you choose to proofread hard copies with the proverbial red pen (and this is what I recommend), you need to be fluent in proofreaders' marks. Sure, you can try marking up documents with your own, seemingly more discernable form of shorthand, but this increases the probability that a fellow staffer will misinterpret your instructions. Proofreaders' marks might seem a bit intimidating to a person unaccustomed to communicating with hieroglyphics, but there is a reason that their use is so widespread. They're quick, efficient and universally recognized by writers and editors. Everyone on an editorial team should take a day or two to learn proofreaders' marks if they don't know them already. This will save time and confusion in the long run. Get to work The key to effective proofreading is working in phases. If you're proofing for both format and content, do each of these things in separate passes. You may want to partition your content duties even further, looking first at grammar and then at punctuation. For format purposes, review each of a document's sections in separate sweeps—looking first at a table of contents, then at section headers, then subheaders, etc. The more you've isolated the specific types of mistakes you're looking out for, the easier it will be to spot them. To avoid allowing the lull of the narrative to distract you from the more clinical job of spotting errors, you may consider reading a document from back to front. When proofreading for content exclusively, it might help to use a blank sheet of paper to guide you and cover up all text below the particular sentence you're reading. Again, experiment with different approaches to see what works for you. For those who choose to proof and edit on their desktops, it's important to remember that for all of its stunning artificial editorial intelligence, Microsoft Word is no substitute for human discretion. In fact, if you come to rely to heavily on its spell-check function, Word can actually create problems as it solves them. That's because words that are erroneously placed but spelled correctly will often make it through its spelling and grammar filters: If the show fits, wear it. Don't risk embarrassment for the sake of convenience. One more point: If you're proofreading for an online publication, be sure to look at any changes you make using different internet browsers and on different computing platforms. Remember, proofreading is not a formality but a mandate. A failure to execute in this area could negate hours, days, weeks or even months of hard work on a piece of copy. Virtually anyone who has worked in publishing has a horror story about a headline or other prominent error that managed to evade editorial scrutiny. In searching for an entertaining example for this article, I stumbled upon an old Reuters report, which stated that thanks to concerns over E. coli, the food distributor Quaker Maid Meats would be voluntarily recalling 94,400 pounds of a product it identified as "frozen ground beef panties." The lesson? Before anything goes to print, be sure you've properly covered your behind. | 
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