Business owners, entrepreneurs, podcasters, content creators, and professionals of all stripes… Everyone needs to write things. Those things could be blog posts for SEO, product guides, repurposed podcast content, whitepapers, social media copy, reports, emails, newsletters, etc., etc., etc.
The people who like writing are writing them; the people who don’t like writing are using AI.
In either case, it’s imperative you carefully edit and proofread everything you write before you hit “publish.”
Why? Because errors are not professional. And AI writing is often bad. Your message is too important to leave without giving it a little polish.
Now, you can totally outsource your polishing to someone who is a grammar nerd (hello, let’s talk) or you can DIY it. In either case, these are the eight essentials you need to check before hitting publish—your guide to fool-proof editing and proofreading.
The obvious: Editing & proofreading 101
These things are so obvious that AI can do it. Seriously, I think Grammarly is an excellent tool for catching key spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. That said, it can make mistakes and it doesn’t always capture your unique style, tone, or message. (I wrote a whole article about this—read more here: Isn’t Grammarly Good Enough?)
So, use AI to help, but also use your brain. Look at:
1. Spelling
Of course. This is what AI is best at—catching spelling mistakes. Make sure you’ve set your default language to the right country so it’s not telling you “colour” is wrong when you’re actually just Canadian.
2. Punctuation
Again, of course, you need to look at this. Common mistakes include:
- Incorrect use of dashes. The standard dash (-) is a hyphen, used to connect words. An en dash (–) is used to show ranges, like 2021–2025, the years I’ve been a professional freelance writer and editor 🙃 An em dash (—) is used to offset a part of your sentence in lieu of a semicolon—like this.
- Mixing up quotation marks. This depends on the English dialect you’re writing in, but US and Canadian English both use double quotation marks (“like this”) first, then single quotation marks within those double ones (“blah blah, ‘like this’”). We ALWAYS use double quotation marks first, even if they’re being used as scare quotes, which are a style choice that elicits a sense of doubt (i.e., they say that these chips are “healthy” for you).
- Overuse of exclamation points. Not a mistake, per se, but a common thing I see in writing that makes it look less professional and aggressively positive. Depends on your style, but you can likely take a few out.
3. Grammar
Grammar is obvious and not-so-obvious. There are many grammar conventions you need to know and follow, but, depending on the type of writing, you may choose to break those conventions for the sake of style.
Grammarly has an extensive list of grammar mistakes to look out for, but here are a few biggies I see often:
- Incorrect use of semicolons. They combine two independent clauses; independent clauses can be two separate sentences. (In case it isn’t obvious, that was an example of how to use a semicolon.)
- Excessive passive voice: Not always incorrect, but an over-reliance on the passive voice makes writing less clear and engaging.
- Switching verb tenses: Are you writing in the past, present, or future? Decide and commit to the verb tense.
- POV mixups: Are you writing from a first-person point of view (“I” or “we”), second-person point of view (“you”), or third-person POV (“she,” “he,” “it”, “they”)? Again, decide and commit to the POV—no switching!
4. Formatting
There is nothing that bothers me more than a poorly formatted document. NOTHING. (Except many more serious things that do, in fact, bother me way more.) Formatting is important because it impacts readability and the overall look of your work.
You’ll have your own formatting style and preferences, but here are some things to look for:
- Consistent H2s and H3s. Are your headings all the same style? Have you used the heading feature to ensure they are consistent?
- Margins. Just use the default setting, don’t do anything weird.
- Alignment. Do not use justified alignment unless you’re writing a multi-column article or something. Otherwise, it’s weird. Look how weird this sentence looks with justified alignment.
- Photos and graphics need to be in correct alignment.
- Go easy on bolding, underlining, and italicizing your text. One or the other looks just fine. Be consistent in how you apply these features, too.
The not-so-obvious: Next-level editing & proofreading insights
If you want to take your writing to the next level, here are a few things to consider:
1. Readability
You’d think it would be obvious to read your work out loud before publishing it, but it’s not. A lot of writing has clearly never ever ever been read through a second time, let alone out loud so you can hear it.
If you take this step to read your work through—fully through, from the first to last line—out loud with your voice, you will catch errors and make improvements to its readability.
2. English dialect
Australians write differently from Canadians, who write differently from South Africans, who write differently from other English-speaking countries.
You can set MS Word or Grammarly to the English dialect you are writing in, and it will catch a lot of mistakes, but it’s also important to know some of these differences so you can adapt your writing to different audiences.
Business owners who are targeting other markets may want to adapt their writing style to another market. So, when targeting a British audience, you’ll use quotation marks ‘like this’. A Canadian audience will think that’s crazy and insist you do it “like this.”
Key differences besides quotation marks and corresponding punctuation (USA/Canada goes within the quotation mark, UK/Australia goes outside) include:
- Spelling. Common ones are -our vs. -or (colour vs. color), -ise vs. -ize (organise vs. organize), and -re vs. -er (centre vs. center). Your AI program is pretty good at checking this.
- Grammar. Sentence structures also vary from country to country. This can be very basic, like Canadians favouring “grade nine” and Americans calling it “ninth grade.”
- Measurements. Metric vs. imperial vs. a mix of everything if you’re in Canada (see this flow chart).
- Informal language. A lot of the differences in English dialects come down to informal language—slang, shorthand, nicknames, etc. This is where you can really tell if someone is from another English-speaking country. Check this and adapt appropriately to your target audience.
3. Brand guidelines
This last one is obvious if you have brand guidelines, but many organizations, businesses, entrepreneurs, and creators don’t establish these for their writing. Hence, not so obvious.
It doesn’t have to be extensive, but you should have an idea of a few different guidelines for your writing:
- What does your brand “sound” like?
- What’s the tone? What’s the feel?
- What grammar conventions can you break for the sake of style?
- What words are allowed or not allowed?
Establish your brand guidelines and then check your writing against them every single time. This helps create consistency, which inspires trust—your audience and your customers will know what to expect from you and will start to identify more strongly with your brand.
4. Ctrl + F your go-to words
We all have words we love and overuse. I’m a big fan of using “well” in the middle of a sentence like, well, like this. I also enjoy a good “So, ….”
Ctrl + F to find those bad boys and evaluate each to see if it’s necessary in your writing. Take a list of your repeat offenders so you can tackle them each time.
Other ways to use your search function:
- Find common mistakes you make. For example, I once had a client who wanted to exclusively use contractions and would always find one or two places where I didn’t contract words. To rectify this, I referred to this document of common contractions and would ctrl + f search for every single option (i.e., “are not,” “can not,” “do not”) to see where I forgot to use a contraction.
- Find double spaces or other grammar errors like misplaced periods in parentheses (i.e., search for “. to see where you typed it wrong).
- Find and replace common misspellings. Say you’re writing about someone named Thomas, but your best friend is also named Tomas without an “H,” it is very likely you will keep writing Tomas, Tomas, Tomas. So ctrl + F “Tomas” and change it to Thomas.
I trust you know that this is a non-exhaustive list of things to check for when self-editing and proofreading your written work. But, it’s a good starting point to polishing and presenting your best work.
And if it’s all a little too much or a little too boring, know that I looooovvvvvveeeee this stuff. Let me know if you want to work together—I edit and proofread professionally so you don’t have to. Contact me with more details about your project, and we’ll go from there!
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