I use Grammarly’s plagiarism checker because coming up with new ideas makes all of us better writers!
Writing is, of course, a crucial part of creating content – whether it’s an email, a resume, a report, an essay, or other documentation – but by no means is it the only part of creating content! Editing and proofreading are vital to the writing process, and here’s why:
1) Checking your work makes you look better. This one’s a no-brainer: typos, spelling mistakes, and grammatical errors are embarrassing. Any kind of mistake in your writing is going to make you look bad, but you can solve that easily by editing and proofreading your work.
2) Mistakes suggest a lack of respect. If you don’t take the time to check your writing for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, it shows that you don’t have enough respect for the person reading your work to take the time to ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and correct. It also suggests a lack of respect for yourself: mistakes make you look bad, and when you let yourself make mistakes without bothering to look them over, it shows that you don’t care about putting the effort in for yourself.
3) How you write shares something about your work style with others. Are you detail-oriented? Do you want to do as good of a job as you can? Do you put care, effort, and time into your work? If your work is riddled with spelling errors and poor sentence structure, the answer to all of these questions is no. A well-written piece, on the other hand, will do all the talking for you (especially if this is your resume or you’re trying to attract a new client): it shows that you are willing to go the extra distance to make your work as good as it can be.
All of this being said, at some point or another, most of us are going to make some errors in our work. That’s human! But when your work consistently has errors, it says a lot more about you than just that you don’t like to edit or proofread. It says something about who you are as a person, what your work ethic is like, and how much you respect the other people reading your work.
If editing and proofreading don’t come naturally to you, that’s okay! You can use programs like Grammarly to help you out, you can ask someone else to read your work over, you can look into resources on how to improve your editing skills, or you can hire an editor. There are a lot of options out there!
Why is editing / proofreading important to you? Do you enjoy editing? Share in the comments section below!