The importance of proofreading

Well, after a slight hiatus from blogging I stumbled across something I thought was worth blogging.

When working on the basic information for a RPG I use a plain text editor just to get all the core information in place. I don't know whether this is the best way, but I do know that if there is a fancy widget to format tweak or do something else then I will end up procrastinating and playing with those rather than concentrating on the content.

So this evening I decided to give my document a quick initial read through. When I got to one section I found the quite interesting word "seethe" hiding amongst my text. It didn't take long for me to realise what I really wanted there was "see the" but I had somehow skipped the space, and the spell check had quite rightly allowed it through. Now on the face of it this is not a big thing, but it is the small things that make a big difference to 3rd parties reading your adventure.

Sometimes I can be reading something, and actually the content, the meaning, the ideas can be absolutely fantastic, but this can all get lost if someone leaves small errors in there. It massively detracts from the overall feel of a piece of work, which is a real shame. After spending days, weeks months or years crafting your masterpiece to allow it to fall over on something as simple as proofreading is a real shame, it can have a massive impact on how others perceive what you write.

OK by now you probably get the impression that I think that proofreading a document is a big thing, I certainly think it is a simple thing that can help your chances of people taking what you write seriously. But then there are also multiple steps (in my opinion at least).

Step 1 Read your document, read it slowly, read it thoroughly. Correct everything you spot.
Step 2 Do Step 1 again .. probably a few times.
Step 3 Now your pretty bored you are probably skipping bits you are 100% sure you have right so it is time to break the boredom. Break your work into different chunks and read them in a different order. Trust me it will help break up that boredom a bit!
Step 4 Get someone else to read it ... actually get a few people to read it. Or if you can afford it pay someone who does this professionally to read it.

Now you will have something that will be as bullet proof as you can hope to make it. Will there be mistakes in there still ... quite possibly, no-one is perfect, but it will be infinitely better for going through the process. I also find I often re-write bits while I'm proofreading as well so it is a win win all the way through.

Well there you go, all that just from seethe!