AaronTurpen.com

There is one skill, above all others, that is the most important and vital skill every good writer needs.  For most of us, it’s also the most boring of tasks and the hardest to force ourselves to accomplish readily.  That skill is proofreading.

Proofreading (also called “proofing”) is a very necessary process and great writers (or at least steadily employed ones) are often marked by their ability to proof their own work and hand editors and publishers ready-to-print material.  These writers are, in most editor’s view, true professionals.

Here are some examples of how quality proofing can make-or-break your career – or at least your ability to get in print.

I work with an editor at a well-known online site regularly.  I submit work and she usually accepts it or asks for simple revisions (another info source, a change of wording or removal of a corporate name, etc.).  We’ve worked together for nearly a year and she’s never once returned something for grammatical revision.  After she’d approved four articles in a row without comment, I asked her if she was happy with my work.  She responded that it was top quality and I was one of the few she worked with that required little supervision in terms of staying on subject and grammar/readability.

Curious, I asked her to elaborate and she used a well-known person who occasionally writes for the same site as her example.  This person is a medical doctor and holds two PhD’s in related fields.  She said that despite this, the written pieces he submits are horrible.  “His on-target and general flow are great, but his grammar and total lack of punctuation are painful to read.  I spend a lot of time cleaning up his submissions.  If he weren’t a ‘special guest’ to the site, I would have asked that he be kicked to the curb long ago.”

In another instance, I was bidding on a job writing a handful of technical articles based on Microsoft software for someone’s website.  He’d narrowed it down to me and one other person and suggested a “write off” where we would each write one article on the same subject, he’d pay us both for that one article, but would hire the best of the two for the rest of the job.  We accepted and I submitted my article the next day.

After I’d won the job, I asked him what had won him over about my writing and he sent me the other guy’s submission and said, “Because with your stuff, I won’t have to proof read it and make sure it’s OK before I put it online.  His stuff is like this.”  I read through it and while the writing was good, the lack of punctuation and the huge paragraphs and large number of misspellings were the obvious work of someone in a hurry.

What you’ll find as a writer is that you’re more likely to have your work accepted, to win the job you’re bidding on, and to win over your editor to get the extra assignments or better payments if you are a professional.  A big part of that is making sure you’re proofreading all of your work and submitting only high-quality, top-notch stuff.  Each time, every time.

The following is a fun little Reading Test and proof primer from Udder Buffoonery:

It appears that the Udder Buffoonery website has gone the way of the Dodo.  Oh well.

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1. Writing as Therapy