Proofreading Checklist: 20 Things to Check Before Publishing
Published: May 12, 2026 · 8 min read
Proofreading your own work is hard. Your brain knows what you meant to write, so it skips over missing words, repeated typos, and awkward phrasing. The solution is not to "read more carefully" — it's to follow a systematic checklist. This article covers 20 specific things to check, organized into four categories: grammar, spelling and mechanics, style, and formatting.
Grammar (5 Checks)
1. Subject-Verb Agreement
What to check: Every verb matches its subject in number. Tricky cases include collective nouns (team, committee, audience), indefinite pronouns (everyone, each, nobody), and sentences where other nouns sit between subject and verb.
How to check: For each sentence, find the main verb and trace back to its true subject. Ignore prepositional phrases. "The group of researchers is presenting" (group is singular). "The criteria are clear" (criteria is plural).
2. Verb Tense Consistency
What to check: Your verbs stay in the same tense unless you have a reason to shift. Shifting between past and present within one paragraph confuses readers.
How to check: Read a paragraph and highlight every verb. If most are past tense, the one present-tense verb is either a mistake or a deliberate choice. Verify each shift has a purpose, such as stating a universal truth within a past-tense narrative.
3. Pronoun Agreement
What to check: Pronouns match their antecedents in number and gender. Singular antecedents take singular pronouns.
How to check: Find every pronoun (he, she, it, they, his, her, its, their) and identify what noun it refers to. "Every student must bring his or her laptop" — or use the plural: "All students must bring their laptops." Both are acceptable, but be consistent within a document.
4. Article Usage (A, An, The)
What to check: Each article is appropriate. Missing or incorrect articles are the most common marker of non-native English writing.
How to check: Use "a" before consonant sounds, "an" before vowel sounds. Use "the" for specific or previously mentioned nouns. Use no article for general plurals and uncountable nouns. Read aloud — article errors often sound obviously wrong to a native ear.
5. Parallel Structure
What to check: Items in a list, series, or compound structure use the same grammatical form.
How to check: Look at every list and every "and" or "or" construction. "She likes swimming, biking, and to run" breaks parallelism. It should be "swimming, biking, and running" or "to swim, to bike, and to run." Each item must match.
Spelling and Mechanics (5 Checks)
6. Spell Check (But Don't Trust It)
What to check: Misspelled words that your spell checker may or may not catch.
How to check: Run your spell checker first, then manually read backward (last word to first) to catch errors the checker misses. Spell checkers miss homophone errors and often flag correctly spelled but obscure words as wrong.
7. Homophones
What to check: Their/there/they're, your/you're, its/it's, affect/effect, complement/compliment, principal/principle, then/than, loose/lose.
How to check: Search your document for each of these words. Read only that sentence and confirm the correct word is used. Do not trust context — verify each occurrence independently.
8. Punctuation
What to check: Commas, periods, semicolons, colons, dashes, quotation marks, and apostrophes are correct and consistent.
How to check: Focus on one punctuation type at a time. First check all commas (Oxford comma consistent?), then all semicolons (both sides are complete sentences?), then apostrophes (possessives vs contractions correct?). Handle one category per pass.
9. Capitalization
What to check: Proper nouns, titles, headings, and the first word of each sentence are capitalized correctly.
How to check: Scan each sentence start. Verify proper nouns are capitalized. In titles and headings, confirm you are following one style consistently (title case or sentence case).
10. Numbers
What to check: Numerical consistency per your style guide. Common convention: spell out zero through nine, use digits for 10 and above.
How to check: Find every number. Apply your chosen rule consistently. Check that numbers at the start of a sentence are always spelled out. Verify that related numbers in the same sentence use the same format.
Style (5 Checks)
11. Consistency
What to check: Spelling variants, hyphenation, abbreviations, terminology, and formatting choices are uniform throughout the document.
How to check: Make a list of contentious decisions at the start: are you writing "email" or "e-mail"? "website" or "web site"? "per cent" or "percent"? Then search for each variant to ensure you never mix them.
12. Active Voice
What to check: Passive constructions where an active verb would be stronger and clearer.
How to check: Search for "was," "were," "is," "are," "been," "being" followed by a past participle. "The report was written by Sarah" is 11 words. "Sarah wrote the report" is 5 words. Replace passives unless you have a specific reason to keep them (hiding the actor, scientific method sections).
13. Wordiness
What to check: Unnecessary words, redundant phrases, and inflated language.
How to check: Search for padding phrases: "in order to" (use "to"), "due to the fact that" (use "because"), "at this point in time" (use "now"), "in the event that" (use "if"), "whether or not" (use "whether"). Cut every word that adds nothing.
14. Tone
What to check: The tone matches your audience and purpose. Too formal comes across as stiff; too casual seems unprofessional.
How to check: Read one paragraph aloud. Does it sound like you talking to your audience? If not, revise. For professional writing, read the first and last paragraphs — those set the tone. For academic writing, remove contractions and colloquialisms.
15. Sentence Variety
What to check: Monotonous rhythm. If every sentence follows the same structure and length, readers get bored.
How to check: Read the first 200 words. Count how many sentences start with the same word (usually "The," "It," or "This"). Vary your sentence openings. Mix short and long sentences. A 3-word sentence after three 25-word sentences creates emphasis naturally.
Formatting (5 Checks)
16. Headings
What to check: Heading hierarchy is logical and consistent. H1s, H2s, and H3s form a clear outline.
How to check: Extract all headings and read them in sequence. Can you follow the document's structure? Every H2 should be a major section. Every H3 should belong to the H2 above it. Never skip levels (H1 directly to H3).
17. Spacing
What to check: Consistent spacing between paragraphs, around images, and before headings. No double spaces after periods.
How to check: Show paragraph marks in your editor. Look for extra blank lines. Search for two spaces after periods (find ". "). Check that spacing before and after headings is uniform.
18. Links
What to check: All hyperlinks work, open in the correct tab, and have descriptive anchor text.
How to check: Click every link. Verify the URL matches the anchor text expectation — "click here" is bad anchor text; "view our pricing guide" is good. Check for broken URLs, especially if you copied links from other documents.
19. Fonts and Typography
What to check: Fonts are consistent, sizes follow a hierarchy, and special characters are rendered correctly.
How to check: Verify you're using no more than two fonts. Check that em dashes (—) and en dashes (–) are correct — not double hyphens. Confirm that quotation marks are curly (" ") not straight (" "), if your style guide requires typographic quotes.
20. Metadata
What to check: Title, meta description, URL slug, and alt text for images are complete and optimized.
How to check: Read your page title as it will appear in search results. Ensure the meta description is between 140 and 160 characters, includes your target keyword, and summarizes the content. Check that every image has alt text and that the URL slug matches the title (no auto-generated IDs).
Build Proofreading Into Your Workflow
Don't save all 20 checks for the final pass. The most effective proofreaders do multiple passes, each focused on one type of error. Pass one: grammar only. Pass two: spelling and mechanics. Pass three: style. Pass four: formatting. Between each pass, step away from the document for at least five minutes. Fresh eyes catch more mistakes.
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