Proofreading is a must!

Released on = July 4, 2006, 8:05 pm

Press Release Author = Proofreading

Industry = Small Business

Press Release Summary = Do you understand that critical proofreading is to your
information? You must proofread to assure you release professional and accurate
information.

Press Release Body = Proofreading experts who are completely familiar with all the
aspects of proofreading. Heed their advice to avoid any proofreading surprises.

PROOFREADING: Proofreading is not an innate ability; it is an acquired skill. The
following exercises will help you master it, or at any rate will impress you with
how difficult it is. Hints for successful proofreading: Cultivate a healthy sense of
doubt. If there are types of errors you know you tend to make, double check for
those. Read very slowly. If possible, read out loud. Read one word at a time. Read
what is actually on the page, not what you think is there. (This is the most
difficult sub-skill to acquire, particularly if you wrote what you are reading).

Proofread more than once. Most errors in written work are made unconsciously. There
are two sources of unconscious error: Faulty information from the kinesthetic
memory. If you have always misspelled a word like accommodate\", you will
unthinkingly misspell it again. A split second of inattention. The mind works far
faster than the pen or typewriter. It is the unconscious nature of the worst that
makes proofreading so difficult. The student who turned in a paper saying, \"I like
girdle cakes for breakfast\" did not have a perverted digestion. He thought he had
written \"griddle cakes\", that\'s what he \"saw\" when he proofread. If he had slowed
down and read word by word, out loud, he might have caught the error.

You have to doubt every word in order to catch every mistake. Another reason for
deliberately slowing down is that when you read normally, you often see only the
shells of words -- the first and last few letters, perhaps. You \"fix your eyes\" on
the print only three or four times per line, or less. You take in the words between
your fixation points with your peripheral vision, which gets less accurate the
farther it is from the point. The average reader can only take in six letters
accurately with one fixation. This means you have to fix your eyes on almost every
word you have written and do it twice in longer words, in order to proofread
accurately. You have to look at the word, not slide over it.

In proofreading, you can take nothing for granted, because unconscious mistakes are
so easy to make. It helps to read out loud, because 1) you are forced to slow down
and 2) you hear what you are reading as well as seeing it, so you are using two
senses. It is often possible to hear a mistake, such as an omitted or repeated word
that you have not seen. Professional editors proofread as many as ten times.
Publishing houses hire teams of readers to work in pairs, out loud. And still errors
occur. When word gets around about your command of proofreading facts, others who
need to know about proofreading will start to actively seek you out. Check out -
http://proofreading.informationvalet.com


Jerry Cahill
http://proofreading.informationvalet.com

Web Site = http://proofreading.informationvalet.com

Contact Details = Jerry Cahill||16235 49th Ave ||Seattle ,
98188||$$country||||2064312942||jc1@hotpop.com||http://proofreading.informationvalet.com

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