My Favorite Tricks To Help Myself Create Error-Free Copy

I admit, my copy isn’t always perfect.

When you work alone as a freelance writer, it’s hard to proof your own work! It’s always possible to make an error; no one is perfect. But here are my tricks for cutting down on mistakes when a second set of eyes isn’t readily available.

My best tricks:

• Grammarly: You can accomplish the basics with the free browser extension!
• Hemingway App: Same as Grammarly, though I prefer the paid app.

How To Let Your Copy “Cool” For A While

Nothing works better than writing something and walking away.

Go do something — anything — else as you let your copy “cool” for a few minutes or even overnight. This helps you see it with fresh eyes. This does require the luxury of time.

That’s something I didn’t have in news. So I taught myself another trick…

Copy & Paste Your Words To A Different Screen

When your copy looks different, you will look at it differently.

For example, I’d cut my copy out of an iNews screen and paste it into anything that would format it to look different to me. That could have been a differently-formatted iNews screen, a blank spot in Slack, or even a blank email!

If there was something to spot, this helped it stand out much better!

Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog