I have been writing for Associate Content for about two months now, to say that I practice these tips at all times myself isn’t true, and I have had my share of spelling errors and typos, but I am trying my best to learn from my mistakes. One thing I have learned after eighty plus, and counting, articles is that there are a few things that can do to help prevent mistakes in an article.
1. Re-read Your Work
Read your work as many times as you can, if that would drive you insane at least re-read it once.
2. Read Your Finished Piece Out Loud
By reading it out loud you will likely not just scan through what you wrote. I mean you know what you meant to say but is that what you wrote? When you scan when you read you might see the phrase “apples are good” and read it as “apples aren’t good” because that is what you knew you wanted to write. Well those two phrases have very different meanings which can lead to your entire sentence having the wrong opinion or fact.
3. Use Spell Checker
Remember to use a spell checker, this way you can instantly see and change any spelling errors that you made.
4. Use Grammar Checker
If you have a program that has a grammar checker then you should use that as well. That way if you use homonyms like “there” and “their” the grammar checker should point them out when the wrong word is being used. This can also be handy if you meant to type the word “of” and hit the I key, since it is right next to the O key, and F key, “if” being a word won’t get picked up by the spell checker.
5. Search Common Errors
Now if you have made mistakes in the past, and we all do, you will want to search for those. Sometimes forgetting to add an S to the end of a word can lower the readability of your work as well as how serious that you are taken by your readers. Watch out for words that end in IST because when you read them out loud they will still appear to sound right if you want them to be plural. Say the word scientist and now say the word scientists. Not a huge difference in sound.
6. Read Slowly
By reading both out loud and slowly you will increase your chances of catching an error.
7. Come Back To It
Now if you are submitting a news article you probably won’t be able to take a break from working on your piece before you submit it. However when you are writing a general article once you are finished writing it step away from the article. That way when you re-read it for errors your mind will be fresher and you won’t have every single sentence still in your memory.
8. Read Preview
Even after you hit the Finish and Preview button read your article one last time. You will still be able to make changes if you need to.
9. Proofread Everything
While you are re-reading your article after you have submitted it and are viewing the preview you can read the takeaways, engaging fact and the headline and sub-headline. Remember if you spell something wrong where you enter the headline the red squiggly line won’t appear like it does in the article body portion. Consider copying and pasting what you write for the headline and sub-headline into the abstract to make sure that no red squiggly line will come up. Also consider copying and pasting what you write in the content highlights into the engaging or interesting fact so you can see if any red squiggly lines appear.
10. Minimize Detractions
It is a good idea that when you are proofreading your work that you minimize all distractions or as many distractions that you can. I try to proofread my articles when my son is napping, he is ten months old and when I am writing I am constantly making sure that he is playing safely, and it can be hard to make sure that I am seeing all of the errors when I have divided attention on my work.
Don’t beat yourself up if you make an error. Just learn from your mistakes, that is what I am trying to do.
