10 Red Flags to Look Out For When Proofreading

When you're proofreading a blog post, email or landing page, sometimes it just feels off. Perhaps it’s a typo, a punctuation error or a grammatical mistake, or maybe the tone just doesn’t flow right. Proofreading thoroughly helps to improve your credibility, which is why it’s such an important step in the content creation process. Here are 10 proofreading red flags to look out for - be sure to catch them before your readers do!

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10 red flags to look out for in your content:

❌ Random Capitalisation

“We help Small Businesses grow with Powerful Marketing.”
Don’t capitalise Every Important Word. Instead, use capital letters at the start of a sentence, at the start of bullet points, for people’s names and job titles, for legislation titles and for titles and headings.

❌ Overuse of Exclamation Points!!!

“Sign up now! We have the best products ever!!”
You only need one exclamation point to signal enthusiasm, anything more than this can come across as unprofessional or insincere, so use them with care.

❌ There/Their/They’re

“Their going to love this new product.”
Be careful not to confuse words that sound alike but have different meanings (homophones), such as there/their, your/you’re, knew/new, dual/duel, allowed/aloud…

❌ Inconsistent Formatting
“– Web design
-> SEO
- Social media marketing”
Pick a style and stick to it, as consistency builds trust and looks more professional. For example, if you’ve chosen to do a numbered list, bullet points or arrows, then stick to what you’ve chosen for every point throughout the content.

❌ Apostrophe’s’

“The business’ employee’s and the business’s premises’.”
Apostrophes are a minefield, so always double check them. Do use an apostrophe to contract ‘it is’ or to signal possession. Don’t use an apostrophe anywhere else!

❌ Repetitive Words

“Our team is a team of expert team members.”
Avoid using the same word more than once in a sentence. Instead, swap out the repeated word for a synonym or restructure the sentence to remove them.

❌ Typos That Spell Real Words

“Double check your work, especially is you’ve not paid attention ”
Tiny words like of/on/in/is are often not picked up by your spellchecker as they’re always spelled correctly, they’re just not necessarily used in the right place. It’s an easy mistake to make if you’ve been typing quickly and written ‘of’ instead of ‘or’.

❌ Awkward Sentence Structures

“It’s important to consider the factor of how the solution could be possibly implemented.”
Shorter, more concise sentences are always best. If you read through a sentence and it sounds clunky or confusing, or you have to read it twice to understand it, then reword it.

❌ Mixed Styles or Tones

“Hey there! We are processing your inquiry with the utmost diligence.”
Pick a tone of voice and stay loyal to it throughout your content. Avoid mixing casual and formal wording, or jargon and colloquial terms.

❌ Unnecessary Keywords

"Online content creation is simple if content writing is part of your content creation plan.”
Overuse of keywords makes your copy sound un-natural and can actually work against you when it comes to people finding your page via a search engine. Avoid keyword stuffing and instead insert them more organically.

Bonus top tip: read everything you write out loud to catch easy-to-miss mistakes. If it sounds complicated, confusing or clunky out loud, then it’ll come across that way to your reader.