One of the many jobs I’ve held in Writing over the years was Proofreader at a publishing house. Went to work, got coffee, proofed book manuscripts for 8 hours, went home. The job required me to proof every project twice, first backwards and then “full-bore” forwards.

   The best way to catch misspelled words is to read the manuscript backwards, last word to first. Doing this frees your mind from the meaning of the sentences and lets you focus fully on each word. Reading “face baby’s the toward crawled spider big The,” you’re not distracted by the vivid mental image that sentence conjures.

   Having found all misspelled words, I then did the full-bore proof, which meant reading front to back, with massive concentration, to check all of the following 8 things.

   Legalities (Is anything actionable [likely to get the publisher sued]?): checking for permissions and libel (“permission” to publish from a copyright holder, such as using a stanza from a song; “libel”: anything that ridicules or defames a named person—the print equivalent of slander, which is verbal).

   Aesthetics (Is it attractive?): assessing font selections and sizes, leading (space between lines), and kerning (space between letters, from condensed to expanded), and eliminating widows and orphans (“widow”: a short line at the bottom of a page; “orphan”: a short line at the top of a page—both are visually unattractive).

   Sensibility (Does it make sense?).

   Continuity (Does it contradict itself?): on p. 12, she’s right-handed, on p. 86 she’s left-handed.

   Flow (Does it read pleasingly?): smooth versus choppy.

   Suitability (Is it reader-appropriate?): if it’s a kids’ book, you don’t want long, dificult words; if it’s a book for old people, say a gardening book, you don’t want long passages extolling the glories of being young.

   Accuracy (Are all the facts correct?): fact-checking.

   Mechanics (Is everything correct?): grammar, capitalizations, punctuation, footnotes.

   Style (Is it in compliance?): every publisher has a “house style” for all kinds of things, like “7,000” instead of “7000,” and like “PhD” instead of “Ph.D.”

   Integrity (Is anything missing?): four names are followed by their academic degrees, one name isn’t; an address is missing a postal code; Chapter 3 promises to discuss something in Chapter 9, but Chapter 9 fails to deliver; etc.

   So that’s what I did as a professional proofreader—and that’s why I roll my eyes when people assure me that their article is perfect because they used Spell-Check.

   P.s.: Just for fun, I put 3 mistakes into this blog—an integrity error, a typo, and a wrong word—did you catch them? If you caught all 3, then you have already mastered Proofreading, one of Writing's 5 essential skills, and I salute you.

   [Integrity error: promises "8 things," gives 10; typo: "dificult"; wrong word: "in these blog" should be "in this blog."]