Proofreading And Editing For More High-Impact Blog Posts

There are few bigger turn-offs for readers than grammar and punctuation flaws in a piece of writing. Such mistakes indicate to the reader that the article has been written in haste, lacks attention to detail and/or has been completed with little effort. As such, it is critically important that you take the time to proofread and edit your blog posts and any other texts you write.

How to proofread your own blog posts

Proofreading and editing your blog posts need not take substantial amounts of time and effort. After all, managing a blog is already a demanding process that requires determination and at times sacrifice, particularly if you are juggling this with work or study.

Here are some simple tips and techniques for proofreading your posts in an efficient and effective manner:

Read your writing as though you did not write it yourself.

This will help you to be objective and critical with your editing. Furthermore, it is very easy to skim your writing and read it as you had intended it to be written and not exactly as it appears. If you do not read it objectively you will miss out on grammar mistakes and punctuation flaws so be careful.

Consider if your writing makes too many presumptions as to the readers understanding of the subject.

Make sure that you consider your audience not only when writing the article but also when you proofread and edit. It can be easy to get absorbed in your writing and make assumptions about the readers’ knowledge of your article’s subject, especially if it is an area in which you have expertise in. The proofreading and editing stage is a good time to fill in any gaps of information that you may have missed for the readers.

Consider the presentation.

As most bloggers know, the presentation of text on a digital device is best optimized for the reading experience differently than that of print media. Shorter paragraphs, bolded text, and bullet points all make writing in a digital context more digestible for readers. This is the stage upon which you should work on the layout and presentation of your text to make it more reader-friendly.

Send the post to a friend or colleague for feedback – if time permits.

If you’re struggling with proofreading and editing, or just plain hate doing it, you can always send it to a friend or colleague for feedback.This method proved extremely fruitful for Jamie, a writer for the annuities infozine iAnnuityRates. “I found it difficult to be objective when reviewing my own writing. By sending it to a friend, also in the writing profession, I gained a lot of useful feedback and insights which ultimately improves the article significantly,” explains Jamie.

It’s really important to remember that the reason you’re writing an article for your blog is to entertain, inform, or persuade the reader – perhaps even a combination of all three. The clearer it is for the reader to absorb, the more high-impact your writing will be. As such, it is very important to spend that extra 10 to 15 minutes to check your writing for grammatical mistakes, punctuation flaws, and any other shortcomings to ensure that you make the most out of your blog posts.

This is a guest post by Charlotte Beckham, a freelance proofreader and editor for PSUK and Proofreading.org.

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