Read! (Aloud)
You’re making the final round of edits on a piece. And boy, it sounds like perfection.
Or does it? If you didn’t take the time to read your piece out loud, then it might actually sound . . . well . . . awkward.
For instance, your eyes may have glanced over that typo in the third paragraph. But your ears hear it when you say “candy stripper” instead of “candy striper.”
You also feel how out of breath you are after you read that one run-on sentence that was missing some sort of punctuation maybe a comma or a dash or maybe just a period to split it into two or three sentences you’re not really sure but it definitely needs to be rewritten because now your stomach is starting to tighten and you can’t breathe.
You also might hear that you missed the mark on tone. A piece doesn’t have a chatty tone if you feel like you’re addressing the masses.
Reading out loud can alert you to a number of errors that your eyes missed. So next time you’re editing, give it a go — and see what your ears discover.
