Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to look with new eyes. Whenever you are
Speaker 1: working on something important, try to give it a final
Speaker 1: review in a slightly different format than you have reviewed
Speaker 1: it before. You just might catch something your old eyes
Speaker 1: didn't see. No matter how skilled and careful a proofreader
Speaker 1: you are, you can miss things. Our brains have a
Speaker 1: way of reading what was meant instead of what was written.
Speaker 1: This comes in handy if you're trying to get the
Speaker 1: gist of a text a friend dictated while driving, or
Speaker 1: if you are reading the letter that your first grade
Speaker 1: nephew wrote you all by himself. But this feature of
Speaker 1: our brains is no, I'm not so helpful when we
Speaker 1: are looking at something we created, specially if we've been
Speaker 1: looking at it for a while. You've read that last
Speaker 1: paragraph three times. You know what it says, but do you.
Speaker 1: I can speak from personal experience with embarrassing typos that
Speaker 1: know you do not necessarily know what it says. Our
Speaker 1: eyes can glaze over after a while. So the trick
Speaker 1: to catching errors is to look at whatever we have
Speaker 1: created with new eyes. One easy way to do this
Speaker 1: is to put a little space between your first review
Speaker 1: and your final review. A day or more is good,
Speaker 1: though I know that's not really reasonable for short things,
Speaker 1: but an hour would be nice. Write that important email
Speaker 1: before lunch, save it as a draft, and then review
Speaker 1: it after lunch. Maybe you will see that you repeated
Speaker 1: the word the Probably not a deal killer, but best
Speaker 1: not to let it happen. Another trick is to print
Speaker 1: out the document or switch the font or type size.
Speaker 1: Your subsequent reading experience will be different enough from your
Speaker 1: previous editing experience that you may catch something you missed
Speaker 1: before In a different font or type size. That word
Speaker 1: that was at the end of the line may no
Speaker 1: longer be at the end of the line, which means
Speaker 1: that you will see that your sentence doesn't make quite
Speaker 1: as much sense as you thought it did. Finally, reading
Speaker 1: what you wrote out loud, either from the screen or
Speaker 1: from a hard copy, can be wise too. Even if
Speaker 1: the piece is designed to be read silently, reading out
Speaker 1: loud may draw your attention to any awkward phrasings and
Speaker 1: the overall flow of the text. It will also slow
Speaker 1: you down, which may let you catch any typos that
Speaker 1: have slipped by thus far. I spend much of my
Speaker 1: work time writing, and I'm pretty good at catching my mistakes.
Speaker 1: But I never regret giving an important document a final
Speaker 1: review with new eyes. It's not a waste of time. Indeed,
Speaker 1: sometimes it saves time When the final document is more clear.
Speaker 1: People know what you intend, so you spend less time explaining,
Speaker 1: and that is a big win. In the meantime. This
Speaker 1: is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the
Speaker 1: most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 1: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.