Whether you’re writing a one-page flyer or a 100,000-word book, your manuscript will eventually be ready for publication. Before that happens, proofreading is your chance to see the manuscript in its final form and check for spelling, grammar, and formatting errors.

Because manuscripts go through so many revisions, it’s easy for tiny errors to go unnoticed. That is, until the proofreading begins!

At this stage, you shouldn’t be making any major or moderate changes, but you will want to make sure you haven’t misspelled compliant for complaint or excluded any Oxford commas. A misplaced comma might not compromise the heart of your message — but it definitely doesn’t help it, either.