When wearing my writing hat, I arrogantly call myself an Artist of Words, but when wearing my editing hat, I equally arrogantly call myself The Original Perfectionist. And here’s a tip from the Eagle Eye department of corrections that I use to help me maintain that reputation I have with myself!
When proofreading for typos, it’s easy to miss left-out words, or words typed twice, because you, as the author, know what it’s supposed to say. So try reading it using a dull, monotone robot voice in your head, enunciating every syllable equally. Yeah, it’s boring as all get-out, but it works. You probably don’t want to read a whole book that way, but when you have passages with lots of little words, like “in”, “a”, “the”, “but”, “for”, “it”, “on”, “is”, “to”, it will help you to make sure the words are there and in the right order. I proofread this post that way, so if I’ve embarrassed myself, you’ll let me know, right?
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