Which task will you most likely perform during the editing and proofreading stage?

Document creation consumes a significant portion of every lawyer’s time regardless of practice area—up to 60% of lawyer time is spent drafting and polishing documents. Even after the words are written, proofreading and editing can drag on for hours—and sometimes errors still slip through the cracks.

Less time spent revising and refining documents translates to more time spent on high-value, substantive work. Here are 10 strategies to make proofreading and editing your legal documents more effective.

1. Let Your Document Sit.

It can be hard to step away from your work if you’re “in the zone.” But if you’ve been working on the same document for hours or days, it’ll become harder for you to notice mistakes. So if time permits, set aside your work to gain distance. Taking breaks could help get a fresh perspective.

If you’re on a tight deadline, even letting your document sit for 15 minutes will help. But if you have time to spare, it’s best to leave it overnight. When you come back to your work, you will see it with fresh eyes and renewed attention.

2. Look for a Quiet Place to Work

For editing, concentration is crucial. This means you must work in a quiet spot where you can avoid distractions. Background noise can make it hard to concentrate—especially if you’re working from home with kids or if a partner or colleague is having a conversation in the same room.

Find a quiet place away from your phone and without access to the internet. Disconnecting helps you resist the temptation to check for email and avoids distracting notifications that steal your focus.

3. Review Your Draft in Stages

Approach each proofreading and editing task separately. Start with structural editing by assessing the clarity of your message and overall flow. At this stage, you’re free to make significant changes by adding, moving, or deleting sections of text.

The next step is line editing, where you focus on revising each line to communicate your ideas clearly. Do it step by step: check for spelling, sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, and so on. If you try to identify and fix too much at once, you risk losing focus, and your review will be less effective.

After line editing, you can proceed with copy editing. This step involves polishing your sentences to ensure correct grammar and syntax. The last stage is proofreading, where you carefully check for remaining errors like misspelled words or misused punctuation.

4. Read Your Text Aloud

Reading your paper out loud is a helpful step in the editing process. Reading aloud forces you to say each word and listen to how the words sound. It can help you notice missing words, run-on sentences, and awkward transitions. Hearing your text spoken helps you discern when something doesn't sound right—even if it’s grammatically correct—so you can make adjustments. You can try letting Microsoft Word read your text out loud to you. (The robotic voice will make your words feel unfamiliar, which will help you notice mistakes.)

Reading aloud is more effective than reading silently to yourself because when you read silently, you tend to skip over errors, fill in words, or make unconscious corrections.

5. Take Regular Breaks from Editing

It’s tough to maintain focus on detail-oriented work for more than 30 minutes at a time. Schedule breaks before your attention wanes. Staying too focused on your piece will make it harder for your brain to spot errors.

Stepping away can also help you be more analytical and less emotionally attached to your draft. That way, it’s easier to see what you can improve.

6. Track Your Editing Progress

You can save time and avoid re-evaluating text you’ve already reviewed by using a blank sheet of paper to cover any text that you haven’t reviewed yet. This keeps your eyes from wandering and your attention from shifting. Circle confirmed punctuation edits or place checkmarks next to paragraphs you’ve checked to see your progress and avoid accidentally repeating the work. Besides helping you track progress, interacting with the text helps keep you engaged as you edit.

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I know it is frustrating to receive negative feedback on your manuscript. However, your supervisor is right about how the grammatical errors hurt your writing. Therefore, you need to improve your editing and proofreading skills. If this is not done, these errors can have a severe negative impact on your work.

 Editing and Proofreading is Essential

Editing and proofreading are essential parts of the writing process. They help with the effectiveness of your writing style and the clarity of your ideas. Often, students and writers think that they are similar, but there are apparent differences between the two. Editing requires you reread your draft to check for more significant issues, including organization, paragraph structure, and content. However, when you proofread, you are focusing on finding and correcting errors in writing, grammar, and language. To begin with, you can inspect your supervisor’s comments. This will help you recognize what to look for as you start the process. You can also run grammar and language checks on your manuscript using a powerful writing assistant like Trinka. It is an AI-powered tool that performs advanced grammar checks, provides tone and style enhancements, corrects the inconsistency, redundancy in writing, spelling, punctuation errors, and more. As a result, you can improve the quality of your writing with Trinka and save a lot of editing time.

The Editing Process

Editing is a big task, but it is a skill that you need to learn. There are many aspects to developing this skill, but the points below offer an excellent place to start.

• Organization
  • A clear introduction and conclusion are needed.
  • Paragraph Structure
    • You need to include clear transitions between paragraphs.
    • Each paragraph needs a topic sentence to introduce its central idea.
  • Main Idea
    • A clear, focused thesis statement is needed.
    • The main ideas need to be supported by clear evidence.
  • Clarity
    • Providing definitions and evidence when needed can improve the clarity of your manuscript and ideas.
    • Look for the repetition of words, sentence structure, and the correct use of technical terms.

The Proofreading Process

After you edit your paper, proofreading it with a more focused eye will help you find errors and make the necessary revisions to improve the manuscript. Like editing, proofreading requires a systematic approach.

• Take your time.
  • If you think you will find all errors on the first read, you are mistaken.
  • Reading the manuscript out loud can help slow down the process and increase your focus.

• Divide the Manuscript into Sections
  • This will increase your focus and decrease the overwhelming feeling of tackling the entire manuscript in one read.
• Highlight Common Errors.
  • This helps with current and future writing assignments. The more familiar you are with your mistakes, the easier it will be to avoid them in the future.

Other Areas to Focus On

As I have already told you, editing and proofreading helps you become an overall better writer. This will also help you with your use of language and writing style. For example, in a thesis, you want to make sure that you use a formal tone. Avoid using the passive voice, including phrases like “I feel” or “I think.”

One area that is also overlooked in a manuscript is the use of tables and figures to present your research findings. This is especially important in scientific writing because tables and figures are essential in giving the reader a chance to interpret and visualize data.

Tables

Tables are used for the reader to understand the data without referring to the text. You want to make sure that your tables include the following:

• A clear title.
• Clear column headings.
• A defined body of data.
• A key/legend and footnotes or references when necessary.

Figures

Figures present data in a visual format: photos, charts, graphs, diagrams, etc. They give the reader a chance to visualize information that might not be clear in the text. Like tables, figures need to identify the data they convey clearly.

• Captions or titles are needed to introduce the topic.
• Figures should be numbered for easy identification and reference.
• Choose images that are clear and easy to view.

I know this is a lot of information. Fortunately, there are a lot of resources that can help you with this process. For example, Enago offers resources to help you become a better writer and to learn about common grammar issues. For using tables and figures in academic writing. In addition, Enago offers Editing and proofreading services for the authors who find this task overwhelming.

What are your experiences with editing and proofreading? Which was the biggest challenge during this process? Please share in the comments section below

What is done during the editing and proofreading stage of the writing process?

Which of the following should be corrected during the proofreading stage of writing?

What is proofreading and editing?

What is the main objective of the editing process?