I write a lot about grammar: how to use punctuation marks, the importance of spelling, the challenges of sentence structure. But I realized I haven't talked a lot about proofreading. Proofreading, editing, revising, copyediting: these are all terms that we use to talk about what we do to our writing after we have written it. "Editing" tends to be the broadest concept and can refer to changes from content and ideas, to structure and organization, to grammar and punctuation. Editing means taking something that has already been written and making it better.

"Revising" has a similarly broad conceptual scope. The word broken down is re: again + vise: to see. So, "revision" is actually about just that, looking at your work again. Ideally, this second look will give you clearer insight into what you are trying to say and how best to say it.

"Copyediting" is a more professional term that basically points to the details. When we "copyedit" we check references and facts, make sure that citations are accurate, that the writing follows a particular style guide, and that its grammar is correct.

"Proofreading", at least for my students, is the more focused and deliberate review of work solely to find grammar errors. While I try to differentiate between this correction-minded review and more substantial revision and editing, students cling to the idea that if they can just make everything grammatically correct, they won't need any other revision. For some, that may be true, but for most of us, it just isn't.

In any event, people tend to struggle with all kinds of editing/revising/proofreading because they know what they want to say. When they read their work, they understand it because they know what it means; they know what the words intend. So, people aren't reading the work on the page; they are "seeing" what their minds already know. This is the challenge of revision: to see the work with new eyes.

What follows are some techniques for proofreading that can help us see our work with new eyes.

1. Use another set of eyes, literally. Get a friend, relative, role model, person-who-you-perceive-as-a better-writer-than-you, anyone to read over your work. They will find errors you miss. They will point out things they don't understand. But you have to ask them to help you. It doesn't work if you ask them things like "Is this ok?" or "Do you think this is good?" Those questions will lead them to pay more attention to your ego than your writing. Ask them to help you improve your writing by helping you look for grammar errors and things that don't make sense or feel clear to them.

2. Try reading your work backwards, one sentence at a time. This strategy prevents your mind from making sense of whatever is on the page. You are just focusing on the sentence itself and whether it functions grammatically.

3. Read out loud. When we read our work out loud to ourselves or someone else, we engage a whole additional area of the brain through our auditory processing centers. Our eyes are easily deceived--in fact, our eyes are already making up (as in inventing) a substantial part of our reality. We think we see one whole, coherent picture, but our eyes are actually bouncing around, filling in a blind spot, and taking independent pictures of our surroundings. Our brains put together a clear picture of what we "see". So, we cannot trust our eyes/brains because our brains are used to filling in details from our eyes--we trick ourselves. Our ears are not so easily deceived. If you read out loud, your ears will pick up mistakes that your eyes simply "auto-correct" for you.

Apart from these three basic techniques for proofreading, another key is to allow yourself time to proofread and to expect proofreading to be part of your writing process. Correctness matters, as I have discussed before, so we need to make sure to review our own work to make our ideas as clear to our audience as possible.