As a freelance proofreader, I like to help small businesses to be able to check through their own business content and make sure it reads well and meets the highest professional standards it can.
And, of course, as a small business owner, you care about the content your business is putting out to the world.
Starting out, you may want to check through your content yourself or have a colleague take a look over it.
So, before you press that publish button to release your content, proofreading for errors is essential!
The tiniest mistake or typo might cause your readers to lose interest or make them question professionalism.
By proofreading, even tiny errors or typos in your written content can be found and corrected.
Punctuation and grammar are still important parts of professional writing and getting it right says you’re a business or brand that is expert, knows what it’s talking about and can be taken seriously.
What is a freelance proofreader, exactly?
It’s that last little drop of fairy dust at the end of the editing process to shine up your work. It’s the final check before your work goes to print.
They know a colon is more than just a stomach part.
They know the different types of tense and when to use them.
Even after editing, mistakes can be missed!
When it comes to copy or any kind of written content, a proofreader will read it through and check for different mistakes. They’re trained to look for different aspects, taking their time to read through every sentence, every word following a certain process.
You want your business to be taken seriously. You want to build a reputation for being professional and experts in what you’re doing.
When working with your own written content, it can be easy to miss mistakes in your own content. Even professional writers need an outside person to go over their writing to spot errors!
That means it’s time to get a freelance proofreader on board to check it through first – and here are reasons why:
Others can spot errors you can’t see
When you have been working with a piece of content for a long time, you can get ‘fuzzy eyes’. That means that, as the main writer, you can’t always see small errors or typos.
It happens to every writer and editors, too. A freelance proofreader has laser eyes and knows which types of mistakes to look out for. They check through several times for different types of errors.
Uphold your business brand and reputation
By working with a professional proofreader to check through your content and take out event the tiniest of errors can uphold your brand reputation. Clean, error-free content looks and professional and makes the reader see and believe it.
A freelance proofreader will check for all sorts of mistakes.
It’s not only about typos!
Though these form an important part of the proof-checking process, there are other aspects, including:
- Consistency with capital letters
- Use of tense (past, present, future tense – ie. did, do, will be doing
- Use of speech marks
- Adapting style and grammar depending on whether it’s American-English or British-English
A proofreader will highlight the different errors and comb through identifying and changing them.
Save time on perfecting your content
You can spend ages staring at your screen, proofreading your website content, your latest report or blog post, trying to work out what’s not quite right.
It can take up a lot of your time when you would probably much rather be out there developing your business.
A proofreader can not only take this time-consuming task off your hands, but can get it done efficiently and accurately.
BONUS BENEFIT: Feedback on repeated and common mistakes!
An added bonus to help clients! Where there are common errors repeated throughout a piece of written content, a proofreader can highlight this to their client, to help them from making that error in future. For example, if it’s a semi-colon being used where it should be a comma, it can help businesses to let them know.
As a freelance proofreader, I have found that some of my clients have asked to be shown repeated errors because they want to know for themselves and so that they can correct in any future content they do write.
So, before you publish or get ready to distribute, it’s crucial that your content is checked through. This is to make sure it’s consistent in style, grammatically correct and is absolutely pristine before going to print.
Do you have content deadlines coming up and need the expertise of a freelance proofreader?
