Not only is Sunday 8 March the UN International Women’s Day, it is also National Proofreading Day in the USA!
I am going to insist on receiving an extra big dollop of respect from my other half on Sunday as I waft through my household chores (vacuuming under the bed and scrubbing the lavatory are my particular highlights), while he loudly reminds me that there is no UN International Men’s Day and no National Electrical Engineer’s Day.
Meanwhile, you can amuse yourself with finding out more about National Proofreading Day (https://calendar.cx/national-proofreading-day-march-8/) and observing it by:
- Stepping away – proofreading text after leaving it for a couple of hours will mean you’re reading it with fresh eyes
- Avoiding distractions – switch off your phone and distance yourself from traffic, noise, and interruptions
- Keeping a list of your routine errors and looking for those first
- Turning off the autocorrect – only use it as a final sanity check
- Reading text aloud – it’s amazing the nuances you can pick up compared with reading by sight alone
- Reading it backwards – start with the last sentence and work your way to the beginning: trust me, it works!
- Asking a friend or colleague to read your text: they’ll see things that you won’t have thought about
- Printing it out, ideally using a different font – your eyes will see the document differently when it is printed on paper
A big shout out to the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) which continues to wave the flag for upholding standards in such a crucial area.