You can’t beat a second set of eyes
These days nearly everyone has access to a keyboard and a publishing medium which allows their words to be read by others.
Meanwhile, commercial news outlets are under ever-increasing pressures to publish more quickly while also cutting costs.
So with more and more words being published by the person who wrote them - often within seconds of being written –and other content undergoing only the most cursory review, is it any wonder that more errors are being made and getting through?
It so happens that I have a very “editorial” eye, in that I sometimes look at a printed or web page and spot a typo* without even reading the content, so I see a lot of typos (as well as incorrect word use, such as using the wrong homophone**).
I cannot advocate highly enough that if you are writing words that will be read by an audience, at the very least re-read your writing yourself before clicking the publish button.
Preferably - particularly if the correctness of your words is important to you or your business - have someone you trust read them with the brief “check to see if there are any mistakes”.
I have specified the brief because if you want to know whether a friend or colleague likes what you have written, ask someone else to be your proofreader, because reading for correctness requires a specific mindset.
*typographical error
**a word that has the same sound as another but is spelled differently and has a different meaning
