What are the most effective ways to catch errors in your own work?

I write a lot in my work, and it's still personally frustrating to find an error in my work after I hit "send." I once had a manager who had a sticky on his monitor that said "I am an error, and will only reveal myself after you send me." I think about that frequently, usually after I have discovered an error. I strongly believe reading aloud is key. It uses a different part of your brain, you experience the cadence and flow differently, and you can't help but pronounce the errors you find. This is helpful for someone, like me, who also writes public remarks, talking points, and speeches. If you don't rehearse and discover something awkward in your draft spoken remarks, others certainly will (usually the person you wrote them for).

"Just find the glaring errors." The errors that glare are the ones that other people told me I missed. Sometimes our brains fill in what we think should be there. Slow down. If you use Word, go to the Review tab and click Read Aloud. Read along with the dispassionate voice to discover errors. Read the copy from back to front (strip it of the narrative expectation) to reveal errors. Read the copy against a duplicate version and go slowly word for word from beginning to end. Keep in mind that these methods take time and may rankle clients or other people who expect fast results in the belief that reviewing is the same as reading. A colleague once said you can have it done fast or have it done carefully, but you can't have both.

As an educator I have years of experience helping people write well. I agree with your claim. Reading something aloud is the best way to go. Even subvocal reading counts as reading aloud.

This time-tested technique is still my favorite, but be careful where you do it — you’ll get many more weird looks if you try it in the office than on a work from home day!

This is something I have learned extensively over the past months while working as an editor. Take a break. Step away from the work for at least a day. And then look at it with a fresh perspective.

One trick that works for me is to read the work upwards starting with the last paragraph. It's just enough to break what I'm already expecting.

Actually, 15 minutes isn't enough time. It's important to truly step away from your work--from several hours to several days, depending on the size of the project, to have eyes that are fresh enough to find errors you didn't see earlier. When I'm working on a novel, it's not unusual to let several weeks pass before returning to a draft. The 15-minute suggestion only applies if it's a very short piece that you intend on finishing the same day.

Taking a break is important in two ways: 1) It helps you to literally see errors. The screen can become slightly blurry after you've been working for awhile, especially if you have not followed the 20-20-20 rule. But even if it's not blurry, your eyes can easily gloss over typos as the mind interprets words the way you expect them to be. 2) It helps you to read with a fresh mindset. It is often easy to see how a point can be made more succinctly or more clearly if you've had a rest. You can imagine yourself as a member of your audience reading it for the first time.

Catching mistakes and learning from them requires knowing what a mistake is. This means reviewing concepts *before* going back to edit. Unfortunately, relying on Grammarly or the Word editor to find all your errors and teach you why they are wrong is inefficient because these programs are often incorrect and only give general instruction and reasoning. Instead, it can be beneficial to hire a copyeditor for a few documents to help flag any hidden mistakes (a.k.a. things AI doesn't pick up) and give you an idea of where you could improve.

Editing, as a field, encompasses so much more than finding grammatical and spelling errors. Editors help with narrative organization and progression, syntax and sentence structure, maintaining clarity and eliminating wordiness. And more. Good editors are cognizant of the author's style. Editors specialize in areas of expertise, both in types of subject matter and kinds of editing.

Know the difference between editing and proofreading, and don't try to do both at once. Proofreading looks for technical errors like misspellings, typos, grammar mistakes and incorrect punctuation, while editing reviews for content/messaging elements such as sentence structure and clarity. Editors function like readers: Does the piece make sense? The editing brain can pass over misspellings because it's focusing on the bigger picture; it might see "piuctre" and recognize it as close enough to "picture" to approve it and move on. If you proofread like an editor, you will probably miss at least a few of those proofreading errors.

Some basic mistakes are common even among experienced writers. This includes writing the individual's name and position, company's brands that are less familiar, even countries and cities names. Writing numbers, such as historical dates or company profits, can also be inaccurate. In the past, reporters were encouraged to ask for the business cards of the people they were interviewing. The business card must be kept near you when you write on the laptop to ensure that the name is not written incorrectly. Now it is easier to check and re-check these things by visiting the relevant website. However, this step is often missed because we rely too much on memory.

I do separate rounds of editing, as multitasking between different editing requirements is never ideal or productive. Facts, numbers and absolute statements get checked in the first round. Language, format and style edits go into the second. Coherence and structure comes last. In a dynamic situation, it never hurts to check the facts just before publishing once more, even after it’s been given the green light by the head editor.

A lot of the previous methods are intended to catch writing mistakes (grammar, punctuation, style, transitions, etc.), and they're great for that. However, you also need to avoid factual mistakes. Go through every part of your piece and interrogate it. What facts are you asserting in each sentence? How do you know they're correct? Do you need to add anything to support a claim. Did you quote every source accurately, both in verbatim quotations and paraphrases? Did you spell every name correctly, every time it appears? Did you make any assumptions? Did you back all of them up? Did you write the headline? Does it make any claims not supported in the story? Finally, remember the old copyediting advice: "When in doubt, leave it out."