10 Proofreading Techniques for Flawless Blog Posts
How often do you find errors in your blog posts after they've gone live? It’s a common challenge, especially for those managing conditions like ADHD, where focusing on details can be tough. This guide will walk you through 10 proofreading techniques for bloggers that are not only quick and easy but will significantly improve your blogging accuracy to “90% Good” and help your reader love your blogs even more.
The most effective proofreading technique is to mix up these strategies! Mixing these techniques up every time will prevent your eyes from glossing over and result in you missing things. As you try these out, make a list of a few of your favorites so that you can quickly pick a different strategy every time.
What's 90% Good?
Perfection is not attainable in blogging. Even if you get rid of the typos, there is always something else you can add or say better. So how do you proofread a blog that can never be perfect?
Aim for 90% Good. “90% Good” means ensuring your blog post is sufficiently valuable, accurate, and engaging for your audience while accepting that absolute perfection isn't required or even desirable.
In practical terms, it involves meeting your own quality standards without obsessing over every minor detail. If you're looking for more inspiration to set up your blog with a 90% Good mentality, check out Sadie's Blogging Foundations course.
If you're struggling to proofread because you're ADHD or just can't feel *over it* when it comes to your post, try using the Pomodoro technique to do short but targeted proofreading sessions. Spend 20 minutes proofreading until you're done, or do a single Pomodoro session and speed proofread – remember we're going for 90% Good, not 100% perfect.
Strategy 1: Take a Break
Leave your draft alone for a few hours or even overnight to distance yourself mentally from the content.
Try taking a walk or listening to music to clear your mind and refresh your thoughts. When you return to your draft, you'll have a renewed focus that makes it easier to spot errors and areas needing improvement, ultimately leading to a more polished final product.
Sometimes a fresh set of eyes is your most useful tool. Make it a habit to break up your blog post publishing workflow across multiple days so that you automatically build in those fresh eyes.
Strategy 2: Read Out Loud
Reading your blog post out loud is a good way to catch awkward phrasing and missing words that you didn't notice when you wrote them out.
By listening to the words as you speak them, you can identify run-on sentences and improve the flow and rhythm of your writing. This technique makes it easier to detect inconsistencies in grammar, tone, and structure that might go unnoticed when reading silently.
If you don't want to read it out loud yourself, you can try using screen reader software. While you may miss out on some of the benefits of having a live person reading, a screen reader will still help you catch some areas where you can improve.
Strategy 3: Check for Consistency
Maintaining consistency in your tone of voice, your perspective (are you saying “we” or “I”?) helps provide a better experience for your readers and makes you look more professional.
Run through your post with this in mind and fix any inconsistencies in person and voice.
You'll also want to check on formatting and styling. If you use a hyphenated bullet list, you need to use a hyphenated bullet list for every list, not alternating between circles and hyphens.
One last thing to watch out for is using terms and acronyms consistently throughout your post. Make sure you've defined every acronym the first time you use it, and use the same acronym throughout the rest of the post.
Strategy 4: Use a Grammar and Spell Checker
For the most part, these mistakes will be found automatically by grammar and spell checkers. Grammarly has a free plug-in (and premium upgrade) that you can use to take your standard checkers to the next level.
Rather than trying to edit while you're drafting (which can really slow you down and interrupt your thought process), take one pass after writing to fix grammar and spelling errors. Give yourself permission to be wrong in the draft phase so you can get things out on paper (or onto the screen).
Strategy 5: Print a Hard Copy
Sometimes it's hard to read your own writing, especially on a screen where you can get distracted. If you're writing an especially long post or a pillar post that is really detailed, try printing out the blog and marking it up the old-fashioned way with a marker and highlighters.
This strategy can end up being expensive and a waste of resources, so that's why I recommend using this proofreading technique sparingly.
Strategy 6: Backwards Reading
Start at the end of your post and read each paragraph from the end to the beginning. This strategy will help you to read through for clarity and mistakes without getting bogged down in or distracted by the actual content. We want to get the post proofread and published – not send you down 10 different tangents without hitting publish first.
This technique is similar to the drawing technique where you draw upside down so that you don't trick yourself into drawing what you think should be there instead of what is there.
Strategy 7: Peer Review
If you have a blogging buddy, doing peer reviews of each other's drafts can be a great way to get an outside perspective while also helping each other out! Getting that fresh set of new eyes on your content will help you find things you can't see, and vice versa.
Sometimes we're so much in our heads that we fill in the gaps in our writing without realizing it, so having the other person reviewing means you can fill those gaps before the post goes live.
Strategy 8: Change the Medium
A major theme in proofreading is making your work look new to your brain so you can catch things you missed the first (or second or third) time around. One way to do that can be changing what you're reading on.
If you wrote your blog on a computer, proofread it on a tablet or a phone. If you don't have a different device to use, copy it to a new word processor. Google Docs, Obsidian, Notion, WordPress, text programs – anything different from where you primarily work.
Strategy 9: Reverse Outline
A reverse outline can be a great way to go back and double-check that you are following through on your promises. Are you actually delivering on what you said you are in the title and introduction? By the end of your post, did you go totally off-topic?
Create an outline of your blog post after you're done writing it, using the headings and topics that you actually covered. Does everything make sense? Does everything need to be there? Does it flow logically? Take this time to move things around and edit parts out to make things clearer for your reader.
Strategy 10: Zoom In/Zoom Out
Change the percent zoom on your browser window when you're reviewing your post to make it seem different. Zoom out or in, depending on which you prefer. Zooming in is great for focusing on smaller chunks of text at a time and zooming out can help you review the overall structure and flow of your post by seeing more of it at once.
Now that your post is proofread and looking beautiful, review how to write a sales page here and some ideas for titling blog posts here so that you can level up your online presence all around.
