The Ultimate Proofreading Checklist
For First Check:
- Correct typos: (spell check)
- Revise Homophones (their/there/they're)
- Check the document according to your preferred style guide (based on location & audience)
- Check figures and tables are in proper format
- Check faulty parallelism (two or more parts of a sentence have same meaning but are grammatically different.)
- Correct use of hyphen, en dashes and em dashes (hyphen-compound words, en dashes-range and em dashes-breakup sentences)
- Consistent spellings for terms and names in the entire document
- Correct formatting of dates, time, percentages, equations etc. as per style guide
- Eliminate redundancy and shorten run-on sentences
- Revise comma splices
- Introduce all acronyms
- Cut off the 'other hand' (make use of it only if you've used 'on one hand' before or make use of conversely)
- Consistent use of tenses throughout (do not switch between past and present)
- Vocabulary should be varied (do not repeat same words again and again)
- Eliminate Ambiguous words and phrases
- Provide all your reference information
- If making major changes, start editing and then proofread it again
- Rest for a while and then start proofreading again
For second check:
- Use automated spell checker
- Format document according to style guide
- Double check spacing
- Check the important parts of document as many times as you can
- Read the entire document one last time