A proofreading checklist for the mistakes everyone misses

Proofreading is hard to do on your own work because you already know what it should say. Your brain reads what you meant and ignores what is there. A few tricks and a checklist help.

Change how it looks

• Print the pages and read on paper.
• If you cannot print, change the font and the size on screen.
• Read the text backwards, one sentence at a time, starting from the last. It breaks the flow so you see each sentence alone.
• Read it out loud, slowly. Your mouth catches things your eyes skip.
• Use a ruler or a sheet of paper to cover the lines below the one you are reading.

Things that hide in plain sight

Doubled words. "The the" across a line break, or "and and". Very easy to miss.

Its and it's. Also your and you're, their, there and they're. Check each one on purpose.

Names. Spelling that changes between chapters. A character called Priya in one place and Pria in another. Make a list of every name and place and search for variants.

Numbers and dates. Check that ages, years and distances do not contradict each other. If a character is twenty in chapter one and the story spans five years, are they twenty five at the end?

Missing words. Especially small ones like "to", "of" and "the". Read slowly.

Inconsistent style. Whether you write "OK" or "okay", "colour" or "color", single or double quotation marks. Choose one and keep it.

Spacing and punctuation. Two spaces after a full stop, a space before a comma, mixed up quotation marks, missing closing brackets.

Hyphens and dashes. Pick a consistent way to show ranges and pauses.

In a typeset book

Extra things to check on the proof pages:

• Page numbers in order, none missing.
• Chapter titles matching the contents page.
• Headers and footers correct on every page.
• No single line stranded at the top or bottom of a page.
• Words broken badly at the end of a line.
• No text running into the margin.

In Hindi

If your book has Devanagari text, check:

• Matras (vowel signs) in the right place and not detached.
• Conjuncts displaying properly, not as broken letters.
• Similar looking letters not swapped, as with ब and व, or ख and रव.
• Nukta dots where required.

If you are not a confident Hindi proofreader, ask someone who is.

Use more than one person

Two fresh readers find more than one reader checking twice. Give each a different task if you can. One reads for typos, the other for consistency.

Do not trust spell check alone

It will not catch a correctly spelled wrong word, like "from" for "form". Use it, but do not rely on it.

The last check

Read the cover, the title page and the copyright page last, slowly. These are the pages most likely to be seen, and the ones where a mistake is most awkward.