It’s a given that we all make mistakes in our writing. It might be a typo or a misspelling. It might be a word doubled or left out when we were editing.
Often we can catch those kinds of mistakes ourselves, but there’s another mistake that we’re less likely to catch when we do our own proofreading. That one is lack of clarity.
When we write something, we know what we mean. That doesn’t guarantee that someone else reading it
will also know what we meant.
This week an agent sent me the link to a long web page that he wanted re-written. It wasn’t a terrible page, but it could be improved upon. The biggest problem was that it left the reader with some significant questions. For instance – what does the price include?
In this instance, the information was missing. In other instances, the confusion comes from misplaced modifiers.
I always go back to the old example: “The woman hit the cow in the red car.” This one might make you stop and look twice, but at least you probably do know that the phrase “in the red car” referred to the woman, even though it was placed after the cow.
Other times, it’s a bit more difficult to figure out. Since our local newspaper has no proofreader and an editor who still writes “should of” instead of “should have,” it’s often filled with such puzzles. I’ve re-read sentences 3 and 4 times before deciding what I thought the writer was trying to say.
But... I shouldn't be overly critical. I've seen some pretty fantastic mistakes in hard-bound books produced by major publishing companies. Just last week I read a book in which the writer forgot that he was talking about a woman and referred to her as "He." In another book, the person's hair color changed from one paragraph to the next.
Since those companies have paid, experienced proofreaders, it makes me feel a little better about missing an error now and then.
You don’t have to hire a professional proofreader or even a person with exceptional grammar skills for this one. Just ask a friend or family member to read your copy and let you know if anything confuses them or leaves them with questions. And impress upon them that it’s important for them to give you their honest opinion.
The biggest trouble with using family and friends for proofreading is their reluctance to criticize your work. After all, they don’t want to hurt your feelings. It took me years to convince my husband that I wasn’t looking for approval when I asked him to read something – I really, really wanted to know if there were mistakes or if anything was confusing or in some way “off.”
Thankfully, he’s gotten pretty good at it!
Image courtesy of morguefile.com
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