Proofread

Proofreading is the last pass, and its discipline is restraint. A proofreader fixes what is wrong and leaves what is merely different from how they would write it. The author has already made the style choices; the proofreader's job is to make sure nothing embarrassing goes out: a misspelled name, "their" for "there", a figure that says 12 in one paragraph and 21 in the next, a heading in a different case from its siblings.

Every change is listed, so the author can accept or reject each one. Anything that is a matter of taste (a long sentence, a word that might be better) goes in a separate list of questions, unchanged in the text.

When to use it

• A document is finished and about to be sent, submitted, or published.
• A cover letter, application, report, post, or email that must be clean.
• After an edit, to catch errors the edit introduced.