8 Tips for Proofreading Your Own Work: Improving Your Grammar and Tricking Your Brain to See Your Writing Anew

Everyone needs a proofreader, even the best creative writers and content creators. The truth is that even if we possess the skills to produce error-free writing, we can still write errors into our own work, and proofreading efforts can result in overlooked errors. These overlooked errors can often be the exact same kinds of errors that we would perceive as glaring were we proofreading someone else’s work. So, why can’t we see the errors more clearly in our own writing?   

For example, I know the differences between their, there, and they’re. But sometimes, when I’m typing really fast, my brain will just decide to type the wrong word (I think my brain usually uses my personal default word—there—which is probably the first of these words that I learned as a child). What’s worse: I sometimes don’t catch this error when I re-read my writing. My brain knows what my writing is supposed to say, so it misreads the text and doesn’t even notice the error. This word-usage error is extremely embarrassing for me when I don’t catch it, especially since there is a lot of hostility towards writers who confuse and misuse their, there, and they’re. Yet, this is a mistake I’ve found myself making, although I’ve definitely become more adept at catching it. 

I’ve had to force myself to get better at catching my own errors. This is because of another truth: not every writer can afford a proofreader or wants to pay for someone to do sentence-level editing for every piece of writing they publish. This especially applies to writers who self-publish their work regularly. 

But creative writers and content creators, you are in luck. When you have to be your own editor and proofread your own work, there are several tricks you can use. 

Before I share these tricks with you, please be aware, if you are not already, that there are several different levels of editing, including proofreading, which is also sometimes referred to as sentence-level editing or copyediting. This type of editing looks for grammar errors (including word usage and sentence structure errors), typographical errors, misspelled words, and more. (Editors usually view this as distinct from stylistic editing, a form of editing that might still look at grammar and word choice but more in terms of the style and flow.) This specific blog post will focus on eight ways to proofread your own work. 

Also: please be aware that this specific blog post is intended for creative writers and content creators. If you are a college student who wants to know the best ways to proofread your essays, some of these tips might work for you, but I plan to publish a post about proofreading specifically targeted at college students in the future!

Without further ado, here are eight methods for improving your proofreading skills.

Get better at grammar.

This should go without saying, but you can only be your own proofreader if you are equipped with the grammar knowledge and skills to recognize grammar errors and understand how to fix them. For many writers, acquiring grammar knowledge is often a lifelong journey, so writers: you had better get used to it while you can. Here are some quick tips for improving proofreading skills involving getting better at grammar.

1. Seek out grammar knowledge. 

Seeking out grammar knowledge is a great way to hone your grammar skills so you can proofread your own work. Blogs like our blog, alongside other notable grammar blogs like Grammar Girl—Quick and Dirty Tips, offer valuable guidance on specific grammar concepts. For instance, our Lifelong Writers blog has a comprehensive post on how to use apostrophes. 

There are also comprehensive books on grammar that all writers (and editors) would benefit from having in their arsenal. For example, the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) contains grammar guidelines, and these stylistic guidelines are the standard for US style in book publishing. This book is both hefty and expensive, but it’s a great addition to any writer’s (or editor’s) home library. If you can’t afford it, your local public library might just have it! The Associated Press (AP) style is used widely across US journalism and other forms of content creation in the business sphere, so studying AP’s stylebook is also a good idea. 

Using the grammar resources at your disposal is one of the best tips for proofreading your own work. 

2. Read, read, read! 

Reading is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to acquire grammar knowledge. The key is to pay close attention to other writers’ use of grammar, and to keep in mind that other writers can and do make grammar mistakes. If you read a lot, you might start to recognize certain grammar patterns and to adopt those patterns yourself. Reading is how I learned specific quotation mark rules, for example. I took note of how quotation marks were used in a single characters’ dialogue that spanned multiple paragraphs. This was how I learned that right-hand/ending quotation marks are not used until the very last paragraph of single-character multi-paragraph dialogue. 

Reading helps you internalize writing conventions, which is why consistently reading helps you to proofread your own work. 

3. Use grammar and/or spelling checkers

Your word program’s grammar and spelling checkers can also be very useful, helping you to catch grammar mistakes and misspelled words. There are also checkers available online, including Grammarly’s grammar checker. Using such checkers is among the many ways to proofread your own work. 

The potential problem with these checkers is that they can miss errors or they can point out errors that aren’t really errors but rather algorithmic preferences (i.e., preferences that are pushed as rules by the checker’s algorithm). For example, many word programs’ checkers still flag all instances of passive voice as problematic, thus pushing the idea that passive voice is always bad. Since passive voice is not always problematic, these checkers can be misleading, but they can still prove useful for proofreading.

4. Use a proofreader to inform your own proofreading efforts. 

If you can afford it, you can always pay for a proofreader to offer you feedback on a small portion of your text. For example, if you have a 300-page manuscript, you can get feedback on 10 pages. If you go this route, make sure that the proofreader won’t just fix your errors but will instead offer you detailed feedback on what constitutes each specific error and how to fix your errors. What you really want your proofreader to do is to find patterns of error you have made in your writing so that they can give you feedback that will help you to recognize and fix the error patterns in the rest of your writing. 

If hiring a professional isn’t an option but you have a friend who could serve as a proofreader, ask them for a favor! I often provide my friends with proofreading feedback on their writing, and I don’t mind doing this, especially if I know they are going to use my feedback to improve not just the piece of writing they’ve give me but also their future writing. 

You can view hiring a professional or calling on a favor from a willing friend as an investment towards your own proofreading skills, as the feedback you get should equip you with more knowledge to proofread your own work. 

Now, if you already have the grammar know-how and skills to be your own proofreader, but you still struggle to catch your own errors, you might need help with the next major step: 

Try to see your text anew. 

As mentioned above, one of the main reasons writers suck at being their own proofreaders is because they know what the text should say, and so when they read the text, their brains trick them into seeing the intended text, and they miss errors. 

Tricking your brain into seeing your text anew—through fresh eyes—is one of the best ways to proofread your own work, as this method helps you catch far more grammatical and typographical errors.

So, here are some more tips for tricking your mind into seeing your text anew. 

5. Read the text backwards

Some people swear by reading their text backwards to find errors. What does this even mean? It does not mean reading your text from the end of the sentence to the beginning of the sentence. For example, you won’t read, “The cat’s moew could curdle milk” as “klim eldruc dluoc weom s’tac ehT.” If you do this, you probably won’t catch any errors, including the misspelled “meow,” because nothing will look familiar anymore: you won’t even be reading English. 

When you use this trick, you read each sentence from beginning to end, but you start with the last sentence in the document. By reading the sentences out of order, you aren’t giving your brain a chance to alter your perceptions of what comes next, which means your ability to recognize errors won’t be overridden by your brain’s idea of what a sentence should look like. 

I’ve personally never liked this trick, but I’ve heard enough writers swear by it that I know it has its place. Try it out to see if it helps with improving your proofreading skills. 

6. Read your text aloud.

Reading your text aloud is another trick writers swear by. This is a trick I use both when I edit my own work and when I edit others’ work. I make sure to read the text slowly and meticulously, and suddenly, I can see and hear errors I had missed on previous silent reads. 

I think this trick works because it forces your brain to focus. When you have to vocalize the text, you have to pay more attention to each word, which means your brain won’t try to take shortcuts, and you should be able to both see and hear certain errors better than you would by reading the text in your head. This trick works especially well if you are guilty of skimming your text to check for errors when you read silently, as many overlooked errors can result from skimming text. 

You can also have a friend or computer program read your text aloud, but this won’t help you to catch certain errors, including confused words (like there and their) and apostrophe errors. 

Try this trick out to see if you might adopt it as one of your ways to proofread your own work. 

7. Change the font of your text.

Changing the font is another trick, and it has become massively popular amongst writers lately, who use the trick for various purposes, including productivity and, you guessed it, proofreading. When you are proofreading, changing the font of your text can do just enough to help your brain see the text anew. Try using a font that is drastically different from the font you normally use. For example, if you usually use Times New Roman, try using Comic Sans or Courier or Raleway. You might be amazed at just how well this trick works.

This might become one of your favorite tips for proofreading your own work. 

8. Give your writing to a reader/readers

Another great trick is to give your writing to a reader/readers (or, if you are good at pretending, then you can pretend like you’ve given your writing to readers; this doesn’t work for me). I’ve found that whenever I give my writing to a reader or readers, I suddenly start to see my writing from an outsider’s perspective, as I begin to imagine what my text looks like to another reader. This can be extremely frustrating, as I often won’t catch certain errors until right after I’ve submitted my writing to readers, which means those readers are already privy to all of those errors I failed to catch. It’s so silly to me that I’m unable to see my errors before submission, but again: this is my writer brain at work. If you are part of a critique group or if you have a friend who is willing to read your writing, this trick is a low-risk, high-reward technique. You risk nothing by showing your writing to early readers, despite its potential errors, but you will reap the rewards of being able to see your text through fresh eyes. 

If you often self-publish your writing online, this trick still works. After you’ve hit “publish,” go back and read your writing, and you might see errors you didn’t catch. This is what revision is for. If you are in charge of your online publishing, you should be able to update your writing with ease. Forcing your brain to assume the perspective of an outside reader is a great way to be your own editor and proofread your own work. 

Now you know eight ways to proofread your own work. What did you think of these tips on how to proofread your own writing? Do you have any other tricks that you use to proofread your own work? If so, please consider sharing your methods below!