How To Proofread Your Blog Content: Top 13 Tips For Better Proofreading

How To Proofread Your Blog Content: Imagine you are reading an article and you come across a misspelled word in the first paragraph itself. Or maybe the punctuation are all messed up? What if the sentences are not grammatically correct?

You won’t feel like reading it, right? The way our mind works, we will probably think that the writer has been careless or he is not a professional. Whatever it is, we won’t be able to bring ourselves to trust him and whatever he has written, even though the content might be of the highest quality, utility-wise, i.e. in terms of the information provided.

But we won’t know that because we have decided in our mind that the writer isn’t authoritative. Because of the errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. This will lead to users leaving your site unsatisfied which, in turn, will harm your rankings as well.

So, no. Writing factually correct articles alone is not enough. Your blog posts should be good, if not perfect, in all other aspects. And that’s the reason why proofreading your blog posts before publishing them is very important.

In this article, I will tell you how to proofread your blog content. Read on to find out.

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How To Proofread Your Blog Content?

The first thing to note is that proofreading and editing are not the same. Editing means making changes in the content, make sure factually correct information have been provided and there is proper flow and structure. Sometimes, it means changing the parts of the content entirely. However, this doesn’t mean the mistakes and errors in spellings, punctuation, and grammar have been taken care of. This is where proofreading comes to the picture

So, let’s look into how to proofread your blog content.

1. Brush Up The Rules Of Grammar & Punctuation

You cannot proofread if you do not know the basic rules of English grammar and punctuation. Because you won’t be able to recognize the errors in the first place. So, make sure you have brushed up your knowledge of basic grammar and punctuation. Also, read English books, newspaper and blogs, and put conscious effort to understand the usage and application of these rules.

2. Read The Content With A Fresh Mind

The next step is to read the content carefully, line-by-line. Take a break for an hour or so after you are done with an article and then read it. Ideally, you should read it a day or two after writing the article. But sometimes the circumstances will be such that you will have to publish the article on the same day as you write it. In such cases, at least take a break for an hour or so before reading the article. Do not focus on the facts. See if it is making sense. If you get stuck somewhere, then probably, there is some error in the sentence.

3. Proofread In The Morning

This may not be practical all the time. But if possible, proofread in the morning. Because in the morning you have a fresh mind. You will be more alert and can find out the errors easily. Proofreading needs an eagle eye and extreme concentration. This is not possible when you are tired and brain dead.

4. Read Aloud

One of the things that work for me is reading the blog post aloud, taking pause at the appropriate places. This helps a lot in identifying the errors in punctuation. Also, when you read aloud, you can detect the grammatical errors that you have made unintentionally because the sentences in question won’t ‘sound’ right to you.

5. Consciously Check For Grammatical Errors & Spelling Mistakes

Reading aloud will definitely help but is not enough to find all the mistakes. You have to make conscious effort to find errors, both grammatical and spelling-related. You should be aware of the differences between words like ‘their’ and ‘there’, ‘affect’ and ‘effect’, etc. and see if you have used the correct one.

6. Be Aware Of Your Habitual Errors

Some errors are of habitual type, that is, you know that these are not correct but you still make them because it’s in your habit. These are, you can say, your personal mistakes that you make frequently despite knowing these are incorrect. Being aware of the fact that you make these mistakes and keeping that in mind can help you discover them in your content if you have made them.

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7. Use Tools To Check For Errors

There are scores of free and paid online tools to get your grammar and punctuation right. Grammarly does a decent job at this. But do not rely entirely on online tools as at the end of the day tools are not as smart and sophisticated as humans.

8. Ask A Friend To Read The Article

Ask a friend or any other person to read your article. Since you have written a particular blog post, you might not notice certain mistakes. A second opinion can help in detecting the errors.

9. Proofread More Than Once

A single reading is not enough to find all the mistakes. You need to read the same blog post multiple times to find out errors that you might have missed out before.

10. Take Sufficient Time To Proofread

Do not hurry. Take your own time and sufficient amount of time to go through the entire blog post. Check all the minute details.

11. Check For Content Duplication

Make sure the content is not plagiarised. Plagiarism is unethical. If you have intentionally taken the content from somewhere else, make sure you give them credit. There are various ways to deal with duplicate content issues.

12. Maintain Consistency In Spellings And Format

Be it the spellings, format or any other aspect, maintain consistency. If you are following American spellings (color, honor, etc.), make sure you stick to it and do not switch to British spellings (colour, honour, etc.) in another section of the blog post. Same goes with the format of your blog post.

13. Do Not Repeat Things

Avoid repetition. I am not talking about the facts and information in the content. Of course, that too shouldn’t happen. But here I am referring to usage of certain phrases or way of presentation. This can make the content monotonous and your readers might get bored.

I hope I have been able to explain how to proofread your blog content. Feel free to comment below if you have any query regarding how to proofread your blog content and I will respond at the earliest.