July 18, 2017 All, Writing in English

How to Proofread your English Blog Posts Online

Let’s talk about something no one likes doing, but is still a crucial part of writing an online blog post: Proofreading. While writing creative paragraphs, digging into the research, and finding new angles to attack a subject and provide insight to your readers may be more important (and more fun!), your post loses credibility if it’s filled with typos and grammatical errors. In this post, we’ll talk about proofreading your blog posts yourself, as well as some great services you can use to make sure your posts are perfect.

 

Tip #1: Proofread after you’re finished writing. Writing takes a lot of creativity. Proofreading does not. Get all your thoughts on the page before you go through the proofreading process.

 

Tip #2: If you catch yourself skimming, take a break and refocus. It’s too easy to miss mistakes when you lose focus when proofreading. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap!

 

Tip #3: Learn your most common mistakes. Everyone occasionally has trouble with too vs. to vs two, or you’re vs. your.

 

Learn which mistakes you make most commonly, and watch for those when you come across your problem words. If you’re not a native English speaker, oftentimes these vary based on your native language (for example, German speakers tend to confuse prepositions in English, while Chinese speakers often have trouble using the right article). Check out our article on common English errors and see if you make any of these mistakes!

 

 

Tools

 

Grammarly: This is probably the best automated grammar and spelling checker online. If you’re a native English speaker, or speak very advanced English, it can be really helpful in identifying your mistakes so you can correct them. However be careful, like with any automated system, it occasionally points out false negatives (corrections that actually don’t need to be made), misses errors that should be corrected, and may make incorrect suggestions in an attempt to correct errors it does catch. All that being said, it’s definitely worth using if you know how to self-correct your posts, and it can definitely speed up the process and catch things you might otherwise miss.

 

Writesaver: If you’re not a native English speaker or an automated tool just isn’t enough, I’d have to recommend Writesaver to get a real native English speaker to proofread your posts for you. It offers the most affordable proofreading prices online, and the fastest turnaround time.

 

Papertrue: There are a few quality online resources for proofreading with added services (like referencing sources or checking for plagiarism), and Papertrue is one of these. While they are a little more expensive than other options, they do a quality job and will cite your references for academic papers in the correct format, if needed.