Proofreading: The Tricks of the Trade by Kathy Bryson

The Tricks Of The Trade

Kathy Bryson

When I published Feeling Lucky, I knew there was an error in it somewhere. In fact, I thought of about making finding errors a contest for my students. Everybody makes mistakes and you can’t catch all of them. But what makes the difference between an okay story and really good writing is that professionals proofread!

Proofreading can be tedious. But no one will ever know how good your story is if they have to plow through page after page of run-on sentences or oddball punctuation. Sometimes considered the last step in revision, the truth is that you should be proofreading every draft, so your readers have clean copy to hunt in for plot twists and character development. How do you review your manuscript again and again without going crazy? Try these tricks:

1) Accept every change in spelling/grammar checker. This will mix up your writing enough to force reading with fresh eyes. Best done in early drafts and in a second file if you’re nervous about losing your voice.

2) Read your paper out loud. This forces you to slow down and look at what your eyes might skip over. You can also let the computer read. Both Windows and Mac OS X provide built-in text-to-speech capabilities –http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Computer-Say-Everything-You-Type

3) Use a ruler, your fingers, or highlighter to check one sentence at a time. Everything between the capital and the period should be a complete, correct sentence. Particularly helpful if you’re prone to sentence fragments or find a page of text overwhelming.

4) If you’re prone to run-on sentences, circle every comma in the paper or use search and replace in MS Word. This will help you decide if each one is being used correctly. Also works for verb or pronoun problems.

5) Read from the bottom up. Using a ruler as a guide, read the last sentence, then the next to last. Reading your sentences out of order helps you look at what you’ve actually written instead of remembering what you meant to say. Particularly good for final drafts where you’re hunting lone errors.

Proofreading is not rocket science. It’s more like a carpenter using a level to check the frame before layering drywall, texture, paint, etc. If you need more tricks, there is free, interactive grammar training all over the internet; here are my favorites:

ABCs of Effective Writing by the Dept. Health & Human Services, North Carolina

http://www.ncdhhs.gov/humanresources/writing/

The Guide to Grammar and Writing by the Capital Community College Foundation

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/

HyperGrammar byt the University of Ottawa, Canada –

http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/grammar.html

Online Writing Lab at D’Youville College

http://depts.dyc.edu/learningcenter/owl/index.htm

Writing Resources by Empire State College, State University of New York

http://www.esc.edu/online-writing-center/resources/

Finally, ask your friends for help. It’s not the hardship it may seem and can even be fun. We romance novelists love checking out studs!