One of the things that people don’t take long to learn about me is that I’m really big on proofreading and editing properly. I yell at the TV when there’s an errant apostrophe in an ad, get very annoyed about typos in online news articles (but not people’s blogs – I hate when people comment just to point out a misspelling) and I love predictive text for the amount of time I save in writing messages properly.

It’s almost ruined my day before to discover a typo in something I wrote, so I’m very careful to do my proofing and editing properly.

This is how I do it:

- I try and make sure it’s right first time. Not as far as word choice and sentence structure goes, but just the words themselves. I’m lucky in that I don’t have a problem with how to spell words, or remembering which witch is which, but my typing skills are sometimes less than exceptional. I tend to take the slow and methodical approach to writing anyway, so it doesn’t really slow things down or interrrupt the flow. And the red underlines in Word distract me more than correcting typos does.

- Wherever possible, I leave a decent amount of time between finishing a piece and deadline so I can sit on it for a couple of days. Then I can come back to it with fresh eyes and edit to my heart’s content, and because it’s had a day or two out of my mind I’m not sick of the sight of it. And it’s a good way to come up with new ideas you wouldn’t have had a couple of days before.

- When I’m done with the writing, I read it again slo-o-owly. Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. Often something will jump out at me and I’ll wonder how missed it (and be pleased because I caught it!). Then I repeat as often as I think is necessary.

- I try not to get obsessive about it. There are only so many times you can re-read your own work without going crazy. Usually, once I’ve made a pass through it without finding anything new, I consider it done and will send it off. While I try very hard to not let anything squeak through, it’s ultimately the client’s responsibility to double-check it. I remind myself I’m only human.

There are some good tips for proofing out there. One I want to try is reading backwards – I can see how that would work but haven’t given it a go yet.

Any other suggestions?

I saw an article a few weeks ago about people’s most despised words. Apparently, ‘whatever’ was voted the most annoying word by about 50% of respondents in a US poll. I don’t have a problem with it, but I have got in trouble for using it when I couldn’t be bothered finishing an argument before (oops – must try harder).

So to follow up my words I like, here are some (or their uses) I don’t:

1) ‘Of’ used incorrectly. It’s should have, or should’ve, people. Not should of. I know it’s a common dislike, but I don’t always have to be different.

2) ‘Gay’ to mean something someone dislikes. It just annoys me.

3) Most business speak. This includes words like ‘synergy’, ‘moving forward’, ‘stakeholders’, ‘strategic development’, and dozens of others that make me twitch.

4) ‘Literally’ when people are exaggerating or using metaphor. You’re literally starving? Someone call World Vision! You literally died of embarrassment? Aaaah! Zombies!

A lot of people I know hate the word ‘moist’ (mind, meet gutter) but I don’t really. It makes me think of cake, and I like cake. Especially moist chocolate cake.

I love this. Thank you, twittch.com

As well as living and breathing words, I’m now finding that I have to eat them too. After all I’ve said about Twitter being ridiculous, I have now taken a deep breath, started an account, and begun to use it.

I decided that, as social networking is a big part of my industry, it would be unhelpful for me to deliberately ignore one of the major players. No longer the domain of giggly schoolkids, I’m noticing more and more industry professionals have hopped on the Twitter bandwagon, and there’s no point in me trotting behind it, trying to keep up.

I’ll do my best to keep my tweets relevant though, and not tweet for the sake of it – which I suspect is where all the ‘vacuous drivel’ I’ve railed against has sprung from. Even I’m not that interested in what I eat for breakfast, and I’m sure you aren’t, either.