Use a Spell Checker.
You can check spelling and grammar all at once by running the spelling and grammar checker of your computer, or you can check spelling and grammar automatically and make corrections as you work. You can search for and replace items such as text, images, captions, bookmarks, or certain types of formatting such as paragraphs or page breaks.
Print Your Text.
Spell checking a document displayed on the screen of your computer might be stressful and error-prone. If you print the document, you will have a better perspective and will be able to check for grammatical errors more easily.
Take a Break
Wait one day before you check spelling in your document. After this free time, you will detect spelling errors faster.
Take a Break As You Spell Check Your Work.
Every person has a different attention span, but nobody can stay concentrated without interruption, so you should not spell check for longer than 45 minutes at a time. You should always take a 15-minute-break to relax your eyes and mind.
Perform a Focused Spell Check.
As you spell check your document, you should focus on one aspect at a time: sentence structure, paragraph structure, word choice, spelling, punctuation and comma placement.
Don’t Forget About Headlines.
Do not forget to spell check headlines!
Read Out Slowly.
Even though reading aloud might sound weird to you at the beginning, this method is effective. The slower you read, the faster you detect mistakes. When one reads aloud, they usually read slower, listen to how sentences sound and notice errors more easily.
Reading a text starting from the end can also help you find spelling mistakes – as you read backwards you decontextualize words and sentences and you can better focus on words and notice mistakes.
Do Not Think About the Meaning of Words.
If you think about the meaning of a word, you can no longer be objective and so you see what you want to see instead of what you should see.
Let Someone Else Read Your Book.
After reading a text too many times, it is easy to develop tunnel vision and to overlook minor mistakes. That’s why you should have your book read by someone else –two heads are better than one.
