Proofreading and editing
English · Key Stage 2 · The School
Why normal reading misses mistakes
When you read your own writing normally, your brain often autocorrects mistakes without you noticing. You know what you MEANT to write, so your eyes skip right past an error. That is why proofreading needs a different method, one that stops your brain filling in the gaps.
Reading it differently
Read your writing OUT LOUD. Your ear catches things your eye slides past. Or read sentence by sentence, starting from the LAST sentence and working backwards. That breaks the story's flow, so each sentence gets checked on its own, rather than carried along by the story.
What to check
Check spelling. Check capital letters and full stops. Check that each sentence actually makes sense on its own. Check for a repeated word, like "the the". One pass rarely catches everything — check for one kind of error at a time if you can, rather than trying to spot every kind at once and missing most of them.
Read this: "the dog ran across the field he was chasing a ball his owner had throw for him it was a sunny day." Read it forward, normally — many of the errors slip past. Now read it sentence by sentence, checking one thing each time. Capital letters missing at the start of each sentence. No full stops at all. "Throw" should be "thrown". Slowing down and checking ONE thing at a time catches far more than one quick read-through ever does, however carefully that first read felt, because your brain already knew what the sentence was meant to say.