by Michy Lynn

Created on: January 22, 2009   Last Updated: December 12, 2009

Easy Steps to Proofread Content Articles and Speed Up Writing

Writing for content sites, article directories, blogs, or even your own websites, means churning out a lot of writing quickly. Proofing and editing that content is often the most time-consuming part of the process!

When a content writer spends more time proofreading content than writing, it's time to speed up the process. Since most on-line content has the same process - research, write, edit, submit/upload/publish - this article will help to speed up the entire process, paying particular attention to the proofreading/editing phase of the process, in eight easy to remember and implement steps.

* Learn to Write Better

Taking a few minutes every day to read about writing, learn a new grammar rule, or read something about writing in a style guide will eventually speed up your writing. The few minutes spent to learn something new about writing can cause you to write better, find fewer things to correct after writing, and make proofing articles much faster!

* Wait a Day, or Two

After writing an article, wait a day or two before submitting for publication or submission. Monday, write, and write and write, and save the articles on the computer desktop. Ignore them until Tuesday. On Tuesday, open the first article from the day before and proof it, correct errors, and then re-save the file and move on to the next article.

More will be caught on the second day than immediately after writing. Plus, proofreading and editing are different mind skills than writing. When the brain switches between the two, the process of both things is slowed. The brain works best and fastest when it can 'repeat' patterns.

Try 'processing' articles in 'batches' - 'write-write, 'proof-proof', 'submit-submit' - and it's likely more articles will be processed over the same amount of time then 'write-proof-submit', lather, rinse, repeat.

* Print it out and read it.

Print the article on paper and read with something covering everything except one line at a time. If you feed your brain only one line at a time, it is more likely to find the errors and missing words.

If you cannot afford to print it out or don't have a printer, move the text on the word processor down (enter enter enter) until you can only see the first line, then scroll up one line at a time while reading.

* Read out loud.

We read different when we must speak what we're reading than when we speak it inside our heads. When we speak it out loud, we have to read each word.

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