For me, personally, I receive numerous compliments on my work that I submit to clients.  I’m not meaning to toot my own horn because, in reality, my ability to write has more to do with my genetic makeup and the talents bestowed upon me by the Higher Power than my education or training in the field.  However – one thing that I am very good about is my dedication to going over my work multiple times before I call it ‘finished’.  On short articles, I probably only go over these pieces three times, but when I get into longer content, such as documents containing in excess of 1,000 words – I revise these pieces a minimum of four times.

By the time I’m making my second pass, I do not find a lot of mistakes – but a missing comma here, an awkward phrase there, and a run-on sentence in the mix really adds up, and can hinder the opinions that your clients have of you and your work.

I’m not saying that my methods are best, but I receive a number of compliments for my work – and I attribute that to the extra time I spend going over my work before I send it on as completed.  At least in my field, clients do not like to have to touch anything after-the-fact; essentially it is my job to forward a perfect document, from the angle and focus to the quality of the writing and accuracy of information, each and every time.  Because I save my clients time by not having to deal with ‘tweaks’ and after-submission revisions, I get a lot of repeat business.  What’s more, though, is that I receive a great deal of referrals from previous clients, which, referral-based business is largely how I come across new clients.

Here is, in general, how I proof my work before shooting it off to a client:

1. I will take my rough draft, and read through it in my head.  At this point I am mainly looking for sentence structure and clarity of purpose.  If the work is for an international audience (non-US English speakers), I’ll eliminate any regional dialect, idioms, etc., that sneak into my work.

2. I will go over the work again, this time paying closer attention to punctuation, unnecessary contractions (depending on how formal the work is), and so forth.

3. I will go over the work again, though this time, I read it aloud.

4. Again, I read over the work one more time, out loud, so that I am not only reading it in my head, but listening to the content with my ears.

That’s about it.  Sure, revising your work multiple times will add time to your project, but the dividends that it pays by way of satisfied clients and word-of-mouth referrals, is well worth it, in my opinion.

Disclaimer: I do not proofread these blog posts in almost any capacity… sometimes I’ll read through it once, but that’s about it. I’m just saying – these blog posts are not indicative of my professional work.

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