"natashavita@earthlink.net" wrote:
>
> Anybody have a good exercise for proof-reading and spell checking?!
>
> I just can't seem to get the knack of the eye-to-brain-to-finger-to-keyboard routine. I rush through the darn exercise without any zen-type focus. If I did this with yoga I'd loose my balance in no time flat. If I did this with bodybuilding, I'd surel
y suffer from a sports injury or worse. (Damien, no comments please -:))
The difficulty I've found with authors proofing their own work is that
the work already exists in their mind in the same form, so the mental
template tends to camouflage the text on paper, and you scan right past
stuff that should be obvious. If you can't get someone else to
proofread for you, you need to get your work out of your mind. Forget it
somehow. Either go away for a week or two doing ANYTHING but stuff
related to the writing, or take some substance that degrades memory.
If you are talking about using a spell checker in a word processor in a
fast way, I find that training the dictionary to the proper nouns and
other non-standard words you use has to occur for efficient spell
checking. Note that its not a very rhythmic exercise to begin with.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:22 MDT