Essays on writing

on the craft of writing and rewriting.

March 10, 2022

How to Proofread: The Nine Best Ways to Improve Your Writing

writing, rewriting, and the persuit of perfection

You’ve written and rewritten, read your piece so many times you could almost quote it from memory. You’re done. Then you glance over the text again, and a repeated word jumps out at you. What if you’d hit Publish without…

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March 9, 2022

Rochi Zalani on Proofreading

"Leave comments for yourself while writing the draft and address them while editing."

When you're working as a team of one, proofreading is even more crucial as you may be the only one who can catch your flaws before publication. As a freelance writer with bylines in Zapier 's blog, Business Insider, Fast…

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March 8, 2022

Melanie Pinola on Proofreading

"Read the piece from someone else's point of view."

Over countless Google Docs comments and Slack conversations, Melanie Pinola shaped my writing and that of numbers other Zapier team members and freelancers over the years our tenure overlapped. She’s the editor who got m…

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March 7, 2022

The Next Web's Abhimanyu Ghoshal on Proofreading

"Move the text, change the font and font size, and have a go at it."

You start out doing something, and if you're good at it, very often you find yourself managing others doing that thing. So it goes so often for writers, where writing on the beat leads to editing other writers in the fut…

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March 4, 2022

Adobe's Andy Welfle on Proofreading

"Nothing beats going through pages on a clipboard with red ink."

Microcopy comes in many forms. For Andy Welfle, who co-wrote the book on UX writing with Michael Metts , it might come in the form of the writing inside Adobe 's software in his day job. Or, it might come in paperback fo…

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March 4, 2022

Michael Metts on Proofreading

"Sometimes the stuff you care most about is the hardest."

Sometimes the smallest words are the hardest to get right. That's Michael Metts ' focus in Writing is Designing , the book on UX writing he co-authored with Andy Welfle . Whether writing small bits of copy for interfaces…

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March 2, 2022

A Proofreader's Library

11 books to refine your proofreading and editing skills.

There’s writing. Then there’s the long slog of turning that copy into something others would want to read. Of marking up pages, crossing out words, correcting mistakes, and rewriting things until they feel right. That’s …

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March 1, 2022

Amplitude + Astorik's Arpit Choudhury on Proofreading

"I often spot things to change after moving the draft around."

Writing's writing, whether you're publishing in a community, sending out an email newsletter, or building a blog following. For Arpit Choudhury, building the Astorik community, running the Data-led Academy at Amplitude ,…

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February 28, 2022

Zapier's Deb Tennen on Proofreading

"Read it out loud."

Software automation tool Zapier is one thing few people know they need . They know they want to simplify their work, to turn contacts into customers and data into documents, but they don't know how to get there. Enter Za…

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February 27, 2022

Jason Crawford on Proofreading

"Read the draft."

What's next? Jason Crawford's writing about the history of technology and the philosophy of progress weaves the story of how things changed and how they could change in the future. From the history of concrete to the que…

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Essays on writingwriting

How to Proofread: The Nine Best Ways to Improve Your Writing

Rochi Zalani on Proofreading

Melanie Pinola on Proofreading

The Next Web's Abhimanyu Ghoshal on Proofreading

Adobe's Andy Welfle on Proofreading

Michael Metts on Proofreading

A Proofreader's Library

Amplitude + Astorik's Arpit Choudhury on Proofreading

Zapier's Deb Tennen on Proofreading

Jason Crawford on Proofreading

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