Proofreading: spelling, punctuation and grammar

Proofreading removes accidental errors of spelling, punctuation, grammar and usage. You need strong skills yourself, or you will miss errors — or add new ones. A writer must be his or her own first editor.

Spelling traps: definite, embarrassment, occasionally, occurred, privilege, separate, rhythm; and confusable pairs: affect/effect, desert/dessert, lose/loose, their/there/they're, principle/principal, stationary/stationery.

Punctuation changes meaning: the panda that 'eats, shoots and leaves' (Lynne Truss) instead of 'eats shoots and leaves'. Oscar Wilde took a comma out in the morning and put it back in the afternoon.

Grammar checks: subject-verb agreement ('Some of the apples are'), pronoun case ('her and me'), pronoun-antecedent agreement ('The jury delivered its verdict'), tense and verb forms (lie/lay, drunk, were), and misplaced phrases ('Kunal walks almost 10 kilometres').

Learn the proofreading symbols (p.172) for work with printers; a badly proofed manuscript may not even be considered for publication.