Proofing and Polishing Your Text, Old-School Style

In a previous article we suggested printing out what you've written and looking it over on paper to get a different perspective from staring at the screen. But a printed page isn't the only old technology that still works well when you need to communicate clearly and market your skills, products, or services effectively. We humans and our useful inventions go way back.

Websterware

While you're proofing your work, keep a good dictionary handy, an actual book version.

Look up the spelling of any word about which you're even a little unsure.

Look up the meaning of a word if you're not certain it's the right one for the job.

Online dictionaries are useful and generally accurate, but a printed dictionary has certain advantages. For example, if you don't know how to spell a word, an online dictionary might not be able to figure out what word you're looking for when you type in your best guess. In an old-fashioned book dictionary, on the other hand, you can scan the words in a column to find the desired word even if you don't know its spelling.

Also, looking up a word in a printed dictionary gives you a momentary break from the screen.

Get a full-sized, hardcover dictionary. The small paperback ones may look handy and convenient, but they're very incomplete.

A thesaurus is also an invaluable tool. An online version usually does the trick. It's easy to fall into the habit of using the same old words over and over again. If you find you're using the same adjective more than once in a sentence, or the same term in sentence after sentence, look it up in a thesaurus and find alternative words that mean the same thing. Except when using specific technical terms, you can almost always find ways to vary your terminology, especially with verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

This isn't just good writing form. It benefits your readers. When we see the same word again and again our attention tends to lag. We get lulled into boredom. So by making your text more interesting for your reader, you're really doing yourself a favor.

Article Author: Oren Hope

Oren Hope provides marketing, copywriting, editing, and project management services for marketing campaigns large and small, on the web, in print, with technologies yet to be invented, and on planets yet to be inhabited.

Visit Oren Hope's author page — Oren Hope's Blog