Sometimes a sentence sounds off but there is nothing wrong with it. This is important, because proofreading and editing are two different things. Proofreading corrects obvious mistakes, once the decisions about how to organize, present and express an idea have been made: spelling, missing words, incorrect punctuation and capitalization, doubled spaces, etc. Editing can go deeper: sentence and word choice, organization of ideas, tone, etc. Before making a tracked change, ask yourself if the text truly needs proofreading, or is it an editing change.
If the sentence reads, “The team have reviewed the report, and will send their comments Monday,” proofreading will address the singular/plural agreement with the singular verb have, the punctuation of “Monday,” and the style of “on Monday” rather than just “Monday.” In contrast, if the sentence reads, “The report provides information that is useful for people who need useful information about the project,” the sentence needs to be edited as there are better ways of writing it that aren’t just a simple correction.
Beginning proofreaders and editors can make more changes than necessary when all the text that is different than how you would write it is changed in your edits, and you will start to see less of the author’s style in the text and more of the reader’s. The sentence rhythm for a formal report is different from a friendly email to a client or a marketing page for your service. Uncommon word choices are not always bad. Ask yourself these three questions before you mark your text. Is there a definitive error in your text? Is the sentence communicating its message clearly and effectively? Will this change be consistent with a house style or style guide that you have to follow? When you are not sure, put in a comment or a question rather than a tracked change.
A helpful way of teaching yourself when a change is needed and what type is to take a paragraph and mark each potential change with a letter, such as a C for correction, an E for edit and a Q for query. A misspelling would be a C. Repetition is usually an E. A date that doesn’t fit the other dates in a paragraph or a document may be a Q unless you can figure out the date and then a C. This practice may slow down your decision making and may help you decide to only make objective changes rather than subjective changes.
You also have to decide which type of change is needed for a document. During a proofread or the first round of editing, look for spelling errors, repeated words, missing words, extra words, missing or incorrect punctuation and doubled spaces. The second proofread may focus on capitalization, hyphenation, names, dates, headings, numbers and list punctuation. At no time do you re-write awkward sentences. Note these and let the author of the text handle them.
Some programs make the difference between editing and proofreading harder to discern. A grammar program may correct a grammatical error and also ask you to delete words in a paragraph or to change a sentence. The sentence is right, but not in the way the program is asking you to write it. Look to the style you want to convey and use to correct the error as you read through a manuscript. Sometimes, a suggestion for change will make no sense. You can’t edit every change to a document as that may change it into something that the original author didn’t want. And, you also can’t reject every change, as then it won’t be a document that you have edited or proofed. A proof read should leave a text as close to original as possible, while only correcting what needs correcting. Go back to a few of the bigger changes and look at them closely. Can you make a smaller change and correct the same error? Does the bigger change alter the style, tone and emphasis of the original author? Should it have been a question instead? A change can be as effective in its removal of an error as it is in its addition.