Tips for Successfully Proofreading Your Booklet

Okay, so you have brainstormed ideas, gathered your photographs and copy, designed the layout, and looked your booklet over a couple hundred times, and now it is time to proofread. By this time, you are probably tired of your booklet printing project and ready to be done with it. Do not let your fatigue cause you to skimp on checking your booklet for errors, though. If you print and send out materials full of mistakes, you risk the credibility of your business. Below are some tips for catching as many mistakes as possible.

Use Spellcheck and Grammar Checking Functions
It almost goes without saying, but do not forget to use your computer program's spellcheck and grammar checking tools. They will catch a lot of mistakes. These programs will not catch everything, though, so you will need to follow up with some other proofing methods.

Wait a Day or Two
Give yourself a break from your booklet printing project before you proofread. You will need at least a full 24 hours, but three or four days would be better. When you come back to your booklet, you will feel refreshed and hopefully you will have forgotten some of it. Reading copy with fresh eyes is the best way to catch mistakes.

Ask Two or Three Others to Help
For the freshest eyes possible, ask a few people outside of your booklet printing team to proofread. Since the material is completely new to them, they will be more likely to catch errors. If you have a booklet with a lot of text, give each person a short section, because the more each person reads, the fewer mistakes they will catch toward the end of your manuscript.

Read Your Work Out Loud
When you proof your work, read it out loud. This forces you to read more slowly, and so you will notice more mistakes.

Read It Backwards
If you have a short booklet, you can read it backwards sentence by sentence rather than word by word. This forces your brain to really pay attention, which helps because when you know what comes next, you tend to skip over a lot. Reading backwards fixes this problem.

For the best results, use all of these methods mentioned above for proofreading your booklet. When it comes to marketing, perfection is the best goal to strive for, even if it means a lot more work.