Proofreading Gotchas

[Katie_Mae]

Cannot get lose and loose straight. Have to google which is which every single time.

I think my brain links my pronunciation of lose with spelling loose and pronunciation of loose with spelling lose or something. I know how to say them and which means which in conversation, just not what spelling matches which word.

 

[SimonDoom]

Considering how marital come become rather martial at times, it's an understandable faux pas.

Bruce Lee, Marital Arts Expert.

Movies:

Enter the Dragon Dildo.
Fisting of Fury.
Game of the Little Death.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Bruce Lee, Marital Arts Expert.

Movies:

Enter the Dragon Dildo.
Fisting of Fury.
Game of the Little Death.

And now we know how he developed that one-inch punch.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Oh and here's another for me. For reasons unknown, possibly typing style (none), possibly some mental glitch (several), in order to type 'breasts' I need to do it one finger at a time or I end up with 'breatss'.

 

[TheLobster]

in order to type 'breasts' I need to do it one finger at a time

I generally recommend applying more than one finger to breasts, especially if you plan on doing some pinching.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I generally recommend applying more than one finger to breasts, especially if you plan on doing some pinching.

 

[MrStill]

Oh and here's another for me. For reasons unknown, possibly typing style (none), possibly some mental glitch (several), in order to type 'breasts' I need to do it one finger at a time or I end up with 'breatss'.

I've found in editing that I have typed "breasts" as "beasts". I think I have corrected all of those, um, little beasts.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I have plenty of such mistakes in my writing and typing, sometimes even missing the space bar between words. And regardless of how many times I proof read, many of those mistakes go unnoticed.

This is why I began using the text to speech programs, to listen to the machine TELLING me what I have written. When I hear the words read by that impartial, and exact reading by the machine, the mistakes jump out at me.

I listen to my work-in-progress after I get to about a 70% completion, and listening to the story helps me with new ideas to change the story flow or insert additional details long before finishing.

But even after listening to the story when I consider it 99.9% complete, after I click "Publish", I'll re-read the online version and find yet another mistake.

"Perfect is the enemy of 'Good enough'"!

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I always encouraged my students to read aloud for the final proofing; the eye tends to gloss over many errors and typos when scanning, but the tongue and ear (and mind) tend to catch 95% of them.

/This sentence no verb./
/This sentence has contains two verbs./
/This sentence has sofa six words./
and even logical errors and omissions
/This sentence would have been in Hungarian, but my grandfather died on Tuesday,/

(and now, if any more of my students are Litsters, they'll know who Tio Narratore is).

 

[Lifestyle66]

I always encouraged my students to read aloud for the final proofing; the eye tends to gloss over many errors and typos when scanning, but the tongue and ear (and mind) tend to catch 95% of them.

/This sentence no verb./
/This sentence has contains two verbs./
/This sentence has sofa six words./
and even logical errors and omissions
/This sentence would have been in Hungarian, but my grandfather died on Tuesday,/

(and now, if any more of my students are Litsters, they'll know who Tio Narratore is).

The problem with me reading my own story aloud is that it's still MY EYE picking up what I think I've written.

It's that third party reading my story which finds my mistakes. And technology has given me a machine perfect reader to read my text exactly as written.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

The problem with me reading my own story aloud is that it's still MY EYE picking up what I think I've written.

It's that third party reading my story which finds my mistakes. And technology has given me a machine perfect reader to read my text exactly as written.

I find it better to read it aloud myself (same for my students). You just have to discipline yourself to read what's there, not what's in your mind. When you read it, then, it's not just a matter of 'seeing' what's wrong; you actually feel the problem as you speak it. I can hear things a person or machine reads aloud to me, but when I do it myself, I feel it as well as hear it.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I just submitted a story with sisters named Keily and Kelly. I went over it with a fine tooth comb. We'll see once it's published how many times I got them backwards...

 

[StillStunned]

I just submitted a story with sisters named Keily and Kelly. I went over it with a fine tooth comb. We'll see once it's published how many times I got them backwards...

That is perhaps the most daring thing I've read since joining Lit.

 

[Jorunn]

I previously had great faith in Word and (free) Grammarly, but I recently did a final read through after both, and saw a number of simple things they missed. It makes me think this AI hype is overdone. AI still can't drive a car nor fully proofread up my messy writing!

 

[AG31]

Internment vs interment. It took me a while, but I've conquered this. I encountered this mixup today in a novel by a well regarded author. Not the first time.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Recently proof read a non-lit document where a trail was turned into a trial.

Walking that trail is a trial, but the context was wrong.

 

[RejectReality]

My most frequently caught one during TTS review is He/Her.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

About half the time, I write "ever" as "every". In fact, no kidding, I just did that trying to type this message.

-Rocco

 

[sinfantasy]

Oh and here's another for me. For reasons unknown, possibly typing style (none), possibly some mental glitch (several), in order to type 'breasts' I need to do it one finger at a time or I end up with 'breatss'.

I've found in editing that I have typed "breasts" as "beasts". I think I have corrected all of those, um, little beasts.

Good to know, I am not the only one messing with breats.. I mean breasts

I am working on a story with MC named Mark, and it is a nightmare with the spellchecker for every instance where M is not capitalized.
Another instance where one character is named Becca and another Rebecca... I need to change these names in the final edit and I hope I won't miss anything.

"Angel" vs "angle" is my nightmare... so much so that I tend to avoid both words

Another learning is not to rely on spell checker suggestions blindly, even for a missing comma... these tools are not meant for fantasy and creative writing

Finally, always proofread your final story and either read it aloud yourself or listen to it with text-to-speech... learned it the hard way on my first story submission

 

[Yogma]

Actually, one of the reasons I write is due to a very mild form of dyslexia, so, yes, I have a lot of issues with misspelled, incorrect and sometimes completely transposed words. A favourite that crops up often is "feel" and "feal", which is a bit of a problem when writing a story for Literotica ;-)

The other problem I have is that I tend to proof-read with my mind/memory, rather than my eyes, i.e. my mind will know what I meant to write, rather than my eyes seeing what I actually wrote. To get over this I tend to leave large gaps between proof-reads, maybe just a single day after the first draft, then anywhere up to a week before final submission. I still end up missing loads of errors though.

 

[alohadave]

Actually, one of the reasons I write is due to a very mild form of dyslexia, so, yes, I have a lot of issues with misspelled, incorrect and sometimes completely transposed words. A favourite that crops up often is "feel" and "feal", which is a bit of a problem when writing a story for Literotica ;-)

The other problem I have is that I tend to proof-read with my mind/memory, rather than my eyes, i.e. my mind will know what I meant to write, rather than my eyes seeing what I actually wrote. To get over this I tend to leave large gaps between proof-reads, maybe just a single day after the first draft, then anywhere up to a week before final submission. I still end up missing loads of errors though.

I wonder if using audio narration of your drafts would help. Others have said it can be useful to hear the words instead of reading what you you expect to see.

 

[Yogma]

I wonder if using audio narration of your drafts would help. Others have said it can be useful to hear the words instead of reading what you you expect to see.

Oh, Good tip

 

[ElectricBlue]

The other problem I have is that I tend to proof-read with my mind/memory, rather than my eyes, i.e. my mind will know what I meant to write, rather than my eyes seeing what I actually wrote. To get over this I tend to leave large gaps between proof-reads, maybe just a single day after the first draft, then anywhere up to a week before final submission. I still end up missing loads of errors though.

Change the font, the font size, and colour regularly. Force your brain to see the words you've written, not the words you think you've written. You'll be surprised how many typos you'll find.

 

[PapaRomantic]

My cross to bear is "waist/waste," the switcheroo of which, as one can easily imagine, produces regrettable results, and has in several of my stories.

I know this is an old post, but I can't help myself...

"He put his hands on her waste, and the warm, silky smooth texture increased his excitement."

I'm afraid now that I will start making this same switcheroo.

 

[XerXesXu]

When Bruno Mars attempted to put his arm around Rosé's back, she may have thought he was reaching for her waste?