These five tips for decreasing writing errors are from Brent Sampson, best-selling author of Sell Your Book on Amazon: Top Secret Tips Guaranteed to Increase Sales for Print-On-Demand and Self-Publishing Writers.

Before we jump into these tips, here’s a quip from a famous American author:

“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil,” said Truman Capote.

Fellow scribes, remember that great writing is in the editing, not the original writing…so get it all down and then go find your scissors! To that end, here’s a guest post from Brent Sampson about decreasing writing errors….and, for more info about his book Sell Your Book on Amazon, click on the book cover.

5 Tips for Decreasing Writing Errors

These five tips will decrease the chance of mistakes finding their way into your business writing, whether it be a proposal, a website, or a newsletter. 

1. Use a professional editor. The most common mistakes are minor, such as misspellings or incorrect use of punctuation. Other common writing errors are incorrect word use (their, they’re, there; or worse, worst, borscht, etc.). A professional editor is adept at noticing and correcting these kinds of mistakes. If your professional writing will be seen by many (like a website, for example, or an emailed newsletter) do not make the mistake of relying solely upon a computerized spell-checker, which cannot tell the difference between “worse” and “worst” since they are both properly spelled words. Use an editor – a human one.

2. Get a second (and third) set of eyes. Even if you do not wish to pay a professional, anyone who reviews your writing will find mistakes you invariably miss. Since you are overly familiar with your own work you are much more likely to miss obvious mistakes because your mind already knows what it is supposed to say, rather than what it actually says.  When someone else reads your work, they have no preconceived notions about your writing. At the same time, human behavior will often motivate them to find fault. Use that to your advantage. In addition to finding mistakes and decreasing writing errors, other people may offer helpful suggestions to make your business writing stronger.

3. Come back to it later. Do you wait long enough after writing something to begin editing it? Many writers edit their work as they write it. Not only does this slow down the creative process, it increases the chance that your mind will ignore blatant errors in deference to your intentions. Once your brain thinks a paragraph is free from writing errors, it tends to overlook any new errors that are introduced during the rewriting process. Put your writing away for several hours, days, or weeks (depending upon your deadlines) and revisit it later. After some time away from your work, you will be more likely to read the words as they appear on the page, not as you envisioned them in your mind.

4. Read your material backwards. Fortunately, you are only familiar with your writing in one direction – forward. Reading your material backwards makes it seem entirely different and fools your mind into ignoring the intention and only concentrating on the reality. Furthermore, your critical view of the writing at its most technical level will not be corrupted by the flowing exposition you have massaged into sparkling prose. When you read your manuscript backwards, it becomes a collection of words. Without contextual meaning, the brain has nothing to focus upon other than the words themselves. Mistakes literally jump off the page – which will help decrease your writing errors.

5. Read your material out loud. When you read words aloud, your brain must slow down and concentrate on the material. How fast can you read the following sentence? The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.  Now how fast can you read it out loud?  It takes at least twice as long, and those precious milliseconds sometimes make all the difference between a typo that is missed, and one that is caught and corrected. An extra bonus for reading your material out loud is that you may discover stumbling blocks and writing errors such as awkward sentence structure and choppy dialogue. Strong business writing is not only dependent on error-free prose; it must be crisp and clear.

About the author: Brent Sampson is the best-selling author of Sell Your Book on Amazon and the award-winning Self-Publishing Simplified. As the president & CEO of Outskirts Press, Brent offers turn-key, on-demand custom book publishing services to authors seeking a cost-effective, fast, and powerful way to publish and distribute their books worldwide.

What are your tips for decreasing writing errors? I rarely read aloud, even though I’ve heard it works a gazillion times! (and that sentence would be better if I read it aloud, I bet   )