Until now I have been able to use what amounts to a three-tier approach to proofreading. For my books, I read, re-read, have my lady wife read it, send it out to an intrepid bunch of beta readers who subscribe to one of my newsletters, make corrections, and then start this process all over again.
For my newsletters, I read, re-read, ask my lady wife to read, print it out, re-read, make corrections, and start the process all over again.
But for my blog posts, I tend to either not read them before clicking on “Publish”, or read them after I’ve published the post and then make a few corrections if necessary. This has tended to be “low level” mistakes like missing a word out, or accidentally inserting a number into a word, like “i8s” instead of “is”.
Recently, though, I’ve noticed a development that is quite unwelcome. Whereas most of my errors are the result of mistyping, a couple in the last week or so have been qualitatively different. For example, I wrote “waste” rather than “waist” in one blog post. In another I wrote “unless” rather than “if”, with the result that I conveyed the precise opposite of what I’d meant to say.
Of course, one or two errors over the course of several thousand words is not sufficient cause for me to close my notebook and put the lid back on my pen permanently, so to speak. But it does emphasise that even the most accurate (usually) writer cannot afford to become too cavalier. Those people who implore us to always have someone else proofread a piece of writing are, annoyingly, completely correct.
I was talking to my wife about this a few days ago.
“Why don’t you write the blog post, save it as a draft, then come back to it half-an-hour later and re-read it before making it go live?”, she suggested.
“Half-an-hour?”, I said. “Half-an-hour? That’s thirty minutes. My aim is to save the world, one blog post at a time. Anything could happen in thirty minutes. Waiting is out of the question!”
If you spot any dreadful mistakes in this blog post, it’s because I ignored her advice. However, like Oscar Wilde I do believe in passing on good advice to other people. In this case it’s simple: write the piece. Proofread it. Ask someone else to proofread it. Wait half-an-hour (or even a day). Repeat. And then hit publish or send it off to an editor.
You have been warned.
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