Reading isn't Proofreading

What did you just read? Did you see “Paris in the spring”?

Look again if you did. And then maybe look again.

You see it right… “Paris in the the spring.” The word “the” is repeated.

That’s the thing about your eyes. When it comes to reading, they’ve been taught to see what they expect to see and not necessarily what is there.

When we are learning to read and then striving to excel at reading, our teachers work on two things: reading comprehension and reading speed. I’m sure you remember reading tests in school. There were questions to see if you understood what you read, but then also marking where you stopped reading to see how many words you’re reading a minute. The goal is to read with speed and understanding and to achieve a satisfactory mix of both. (Don't quote me, but I read somewhere that 300 words per minute was the average reading speed)

You see little kids when they start to read… they move one finger at a time under each word and then sound them out. It’s painstakingly slow and could never be sustained as a satisfactory reading approach.

What’s happening when your eyes/brain read is pretty amazing. In fractions of seconds, your eyes and brain are processing words. And, your eyes don’t see linearly. They see in word blocks. And the more words you can fit into a block, the faster you read. That’s why most speed reading programs work on increasing your peripheral intake… more words in your word blocks means faster reading.

It also means trust. Your eyes trust that there are no errors. When you actually looked at the phrase above, your eyes (in a fraction of a second saw “Paris” saw “spring” and glimpsed just enough of “in” and “the” to immediately put together “Paris in the spring.”) It doesn’t help that the phrase is fairly familiar. Your eyes certainly don’t expect to see two “the’s” so instead your eyes/mind cancel one of them out. They often will not see what they don’t expect to see.

Now, a little kid, going one word at a time will always catch the two “the’s”. Maybe little kids would make pretty good proofreaders!

My proof copy of my new collection of stories just came back from the printer. I was excited to hold it.

But, the point wasn’t for me to hold it. It was to give it one more proofread. To be honest, my heart wasn’t in it. I’m an English professor, and I’d already been through galley drafts a number of times. I was sick of my own stories and confident that I'd caught the errors that I could. Also, my publisher at Whistling Shade Press is a technical writer by trade. He’d poured over the galley drafts too. I trust his eye, and he caught many little things that I didn’t catch in my read-throughs. I would suspect that happened because I am so familiar with the stories. My eyes saw what they expected to see.

In any case, I mustered the energy to read through the book one more time. And, no surprise, I caught a few things. Mainly they were forgivable errors. Once, in dialogue, a character said, “What, do you want to live at an airport now, dad?” Well, in that instance, because dad is being used as a name, it needs to be capitalized. It’s the difference between: “Oh, my dad just went to the store” versus “Oh, Dad just went to the store.”

So, those are sort of proofreading errors, but fairly nuanced. But, then (and I wasn’t going to at first) I read over the back cover blurbs… and I found an extra word!

If you look at the picture above, you can see where there is an extra “a” after “who’ve”.

So, I’m really glad I looked at the back cover. And maybe I was better at catching an error there because I was less familiar with the blurbs versus my own stories.

In any case, I’m sure there’s still an error or two in the book… that’s just the nature of proofreading, sadly (unless of course you pay for someone to proofread, which isn’t a bad idea).

The point I want to make goes back to the title of this post: Reading isn’t proofreading. They have two separate goals. With reading, we want comprehension and speed. With proofreading, we want to catch errors. One is built on trust and word blocks. The other needs to assume distrust (don’t trust that the text is perfect) and taking things slowly.

But, too often when we sit down to proofread… well, we just end up reading. And with proofing fiction, it’s very easy to just get caught up in the story (even your own story). And then your eyes go back to their old habits… taking in word blocks, trusting, and missing the errors.

So, what do we do? Well, like I said, hiring a proofreader can make a huge difference. They have specific techniques (usually) and they are motivated to do a good job. They also aren’t as familiar with the text. When you proofread your own work, you are often in a mindset of “I just want to be done with this; I’m sure it’s fine.” A proofreader, however, says, “I know there are errors in here. I’m going to find them. This is my reputation as a proofreader on the line.”

If you can’t afford a proofreader, there is a technique you can try that will slow you down. Just read your manuscript backwards. I don’t literally mean backwards. I mean go to the last sentence, find the beginning of it, and then proof it. Now, find the second to last sentence, find the beginning of it, and proof it. And so on… until you get back to the beginning.

This has several benefits. It slows you down. It forces you to take each sentence one at a time. There’s no story to get caught up in because the story shouldn’t make sense read that way. And, having to find the beginning of each subsequent sentence makes certain you are pausing in between each sentence. (Probably wouldn’t hurt to run your finger under each word, either… just like a little kid).

I’ve done this with my students, and they are always floored by how many errors they find in a story or paper that they were just getting ready to turn in for a grade.

I know the technique I described sounds meticulous and painfully slow. But, it's much less painful than finally holding your book... only to begin reading it and finding silly errors. Just the other day, while reading Love Medicine by Louis Eldrich, I found one of those silly errors. It happens even in big authors' books.

Next time you’re proofreading (and you can’t afford a proofreader) try reading your manuscript backwards.

If you find my blog posts instructive, please consider purchasing a copy of my new book of short stories, The Neighborhood Division, as a donated payment for the "class."

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