What’s the purpose of proofreading?
Proofreading is often the last hurdle a text must clear before being published or printed. The goal is to minimise the number of linguistic errors and distracting issues in the text. Not only should the reader be both willing and able to take the message to heart, but the author of the text also needs to come off as sincere and trustworthy. Most of us have come across texts ridden with spelling errors. Pretty annoying, right? Hardly how you would want a reader to feel about something you wrote yourself.
In nine out of ten cases, it is better to have someone else proofread what you’ve written. Not convinced? There’s actually a very logical reason behind this: When re-reading a text you’ve worked on yourself, your brain already knows what’s coming. It anticipates the next words before you even read them. When there is something wrong with the text, your brain wants to help correct the problem – say, by filling in missing words, or transposing the letters in a misspelled word. That’s why it is so difficult to catch linguistic errors in a text you wrote yourself, no matter how careful you think you are.