Five Benefits of Hiring a Proofreader

Being a writer has its challenges. Money may be tight, and the temptation could be to forgo what seems like an unnecessary expense. When it comes to proofreading, this may be especially tempting if you’ve had your book professionally edited.

The bad news is, depending on the kind of editing you’ve had done on your manuscript, there’s a good chance your editor didn’t do any kind of proofreading. For instance, if you hired an editor to perform a developmental edit or a line edit, they would have focused on the big-picture issues of your story. Their edits possibly involved rearranging or rewriting problem areas. Correcting the technical points of grammar, spelling, and punctuation would not have been on their to-do list. In fact, they probably encouraged you to look into hiring a proofreader.

So, if there’s a temptation to forgo proofreading, here are five benefits of hiring a proofreader:

• 1. Correct mistakes: Let’s start with the obvious one—proofreading can help to catch those pesky mistakes that often happen when writing. These include typos and misspellings, but also, homonyms. These are those sneaky mistakes that even autocorrect and spell check can’t help you with because technically they aren’t misspellings. They’re words that sound the same but have different meanings—think: right and write, or passed and past. You may be surprised at how often these get mixed up.

• 2. Avoid wordiness: In this era of scrolling at breakneck speeds, your message has to be on point so your readers don’t lose interest and scroll on. With social media shortening people’s attention spans, you have only about three seconds to capture their attention. Three seconds! Your posts, captions, and graphics must be concise and accurate to slow the scroll.
• 3. Enhance your authority: We’ve all gotten one: an email claiming to be from an official agency. But upon closer inspection, we realize it’s riddled with errors, a dead giveaway that it’s some kind of scam. Errors in your work will have the same effect—they will affect your readers’ ability to trust you, causing them to question your authority, no matter how knowledgeable you are on your subject. Typos and misspellings will make even an expert sound like an amateur, or even worse, like a scammer.
• 4. Improve consistency: In editing, consistency is key. Proofreading helps to ensure your writing is consistent throughout. By following your preferred style guide or your style sheet (if you have one), your proofreader will ensure there is consistency in the way punctuation is used and how words are spelled. This means there will be no obstacles to a smooth reading experience. Readers won’t be left wondering: “I thought Tina was a redhead. How come she’s now brushing back her brown hair?”
• 5. Increase confidence: Imagine the uncertainty of not knowing whether you remembered to proofread that last revision. Imagine having to live with a double “the” in your book. Now imagine the peace of mind that comes from having your work reviewed by a trained and competent professional. While not a guarantee of perfection, having a proofreader take a look at your work with a fresh pair of trained eyes will definitely cut down on errors dramatically.

As we’ve seen, proofreading has benefits for any writer, whatever your genre. It can help to improve the clarity, accuracy, and consistency of the writing, as well as to catch any mistakes that may have been missed. It can make the difference between a good piece of writing and a great one. It won’t break the bank and the ROI is priceless—peace of mind. It’s an essential part of the writing process—one that can help you avoid regrets later on.