Proofreading Essentials that Guarantee Polished Projects

The day had finally arrived! April 1^st, 2003 - the day yet another manifestation of my literary goals came to life! I logged in countless hours, brought together some of the best novice talent to showcase, and utilized the best of the best free Web enhancements I could find. My husband and children barely recognize me for all the time I've spent "in the lab", but that doesn't matter. On this day it was all going to pay off! I cut the ceremonial ribbon and launched The Essence Ezine amidst a flurry of flash and fanfare! I promoted my fanny off and positive reviews started rolling in from family, friends, and the writing community. I began to receive potential contributor Emails almost from the moment I set up shop. I was pumped. I was excited. I was floating in a buddle of unabashed euphoria! And then, I took a gander at my announcement Email - typo... repeat word... missing letter... sentences not recognizable in the English language or any other that I knew of. Panic surges through me as I log onto the Ezine hone page and notice more errors. And even more on the corresponding pages. OH MY GOD! How many viewers had seen this? What will they think? How unprofessional has my venture appeared? After weeks of build up and promotion how will I ever live this down?

Hold up drama queen - it's not the end of the world as we know it and there will be no Simon Crowel proclaiming to my peers that I am the worst writer ever. I just succumbed to the first mistake new writers often make: forgetting to proofread in my excitement to present my work. While this is almost as common as Writer's Block, proofreading (or the lack thereof) can make or break your writing career. The first thing that is sure to turn off agents, publishers and readers a like is a writer who does not care enough about their work to present their best possible effort. And nothing says that louder than mistakes in a manuscript or Web site. So how do you keep this from happening? To help you with that, I offer four foolproof ways to present error free work that allows your talent to shine through.

Read, read, and re-red - Once you are done, or even before you pen "The END", continuously read through your work to pick up on commonly make mistakes. If you get to the point where you are "tired" of reading, and time allows for it, put the piece down for a while and come back to it when you are refreshed.

Never trust your PC screen - Always print a copy of your piece and read it, even after you've proofed it in your monitor. There are very subtle errors that can bypass even the most classically trained English professor if they've been staring at a computer screen for too long.

Enlist "editors" - Get friends, family, mentors, and peers in on the job. Sometimes it takes two, three, or even four pairs of eyes to find the most obvious mistakes your eyes may overlook.

Read the piece aloud to yourself - Typos are not the only mistakes that you can make when penning your first draft. Grammatical errors can rear their ugly heads as well when you aren't looking. Reading aloud to yourself will give you a feel for how your work sounds, as well as aid in catching tense, context, and punctuation errors.

There are many more techniques that help spot possible blemishes in your work, but these four should come in as handy staples in your writing process. Always remember, even the most seasoned writers make mistakes. But the most successful ones will never let you see it.