Why do you need to hire a professional proofreading service?

The short answer is: because you’re human. As a writer, you naturally tend to focus on your message and not your writing. Perhaps you’re not even sure of the precise point you’re trying to make. Perhaps you’re working quickly, under pressure of a deadline, or in an unfamiliar subject area. Perhaps you’re just not confident you can communicate clearly in writing. Under these circumstances, it’s easy to misplace an apostrophe, forget closing punctuation, misspell a word, say something confusing or even completely ignore paragraphing.
In business, especially, that can make you and your company look careless at best or result in catastrophe at worst. In any case, your reader’s trust in you and your message will be diminished. Any deficiencies in your written style, they assume, might reflect shortcomings in your content – or even in you as a reliable professional! That’s why, before you commit your words to publication, you need to hire a professional proofreading service.

Proofreading is more than grammar and spelling

Proofreading – the stage that follows copy-editing – is the process of checking text for errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation and word choice. It is not as intrusive as copy-editing, but it still involves checking for errors that haven’t been caught previously (i.e. in the copy-editing stage). Proofreading contributes to the overall readability and professional appearance of your text. Proofreading will also ensure that formatting is consistent, page numbers are consecutive, references are complete, tables of content match chapter headings, diagrams are numbered correctly, and so on.

Finally, a proofreader from a professional proofreading service will point out inconsistencies in your use of wording or even the arguments you’re trying to make. While the proofreader will not rewrite your text, this second pair of eyes is a reassurance that what you intend to say will be correctly understood by your reader.

Use proofreading to save time writing

For a lucky few, proofreading and editing is an integrated part of their writing process. For many, though, editing and proofreading takes place somewhat haphazardly while the writing is going on, or it can happen at the end, taking even longer than the writing stage.

Leaving the editing and proofreading to a professional not only leaves your finished piece in much better shape; you will also feel reassured that a fresh pair of eyes will pick up errors that you just can’t see. What’s more, it frees up your time to do something else – like moving on to the next task on your to-do list. Some of Wordy’s most productive clients – like San Francisco Chronicle and Rutgers University – have made the most of this advantage to increase not only the quality but also the quantity of their output. Especially for high-value content, which can be anything from an important email to a business letter to an academic article, making sure any errors in your text are eliminated before your actual readers spot them can return the investment in professional editing many, many times.

Use proofreading to ensure wording and grammar is consistently correct across your content

For businesses that publish several pieces of content each day or each week, or where multiple writers work on the same content, ensuring consistency in word usage, avoiding duplication and smoothing out awkward shifts in tone can be an issue. Wordy editors and proofreaders will make sure that the finished piece is clear and consistent in wording, tone and grammar and that repetition is avoided. This also holds true if the content r is written over an extended period of time, which more often than not results in text that lacks internal coherence and consistency.

Use proofreading to mitigate the confusing rules of written English

You will hire a proofreader to ensure that your content adheres to standardised rules of English usage (and/or your house style guide). We admit it: language changes, and sometimes these rules appear to defy common sense and practicality (which is why it’s easy to remain blissfully unaware of them), but our editors love this kind of stuff. They work with the best reference guides at their elbow, and consult the authorities whenever there’s a style query to resolve.

What to expect from Wordy’s professional proofreading services

Wordy editors are committed to making sure your work is up to publishable standard – clean, accurate and correct. Even though you may have pored over your text (what probably feels like) hundreds of times and may be tempted to skip this stage, it’s remarkable how your eyes can simply not notice things that will leap off the page when scanned by a fresh pair of eyes. Your proofreader is there to find the errors that you don’t see and won’t believe you missed. We don’t want you to experience the kind of embarrassment experienced, no doubt, by the unfortunate person who insisted on a tattoo that read “no regerts”. Similarly, if a recipe calls for half a cup of rice, your readers won’t thank you if the instructions fail to mention when to add it.

In many ways, your content is who you are

Your published content is what represents you to your reader or readers (who may number in the hundreds of thousands). It may be the only contact with you that they have, so it needs to be free of blemishes and clunkiness and, instead, reflective of the high professional standards to which you aspire.