When you observe amazing content online, you find the following qualities – relevance, authenticity, and credibility. These articles, blogs, posts, and videos provide unique, valuable, and relevant insights to their audience. Creating these may take time, given how much information a content creator needs to gather to support their claim, but it is worth it. However, the work does not stop at just creating. It has to be edited and proofread as well.

Editors working for academic proofreading services then review the content through proofreading. They check the content before it goes out to the world. To see what these editors do and how you can proofread content, read on:

1. Ensure That The Content is Relevant To The Target Audience

Content creators pick a relevant topic for their target demographic and work around that. They aim to get their attention by making a simple but catchy title. For example, if a social media influencer would like to discuss building a pc, they would write the title “An Easy Guide on How to Build Your PC,” or “5 Steps to Building a PC.” 

With the title and topic in mind, you, as an editor, can now determine:

  • The content’s core audience: In this case, those who are planning to build their own PC.
  • The extent of the content: The content creator can discuss manual hardware and software configuration on their video.
  • How the content can help its audience: The audience will learn what to buy, where to buy, how to install, and more.

If the content written has parts that are irrelevant and off-topic, you may ask the content creator to redo the content. You may also leave some comments on which parts to improve, remove, or rewrite.

2. Review The Content’s Authenticity

Writers and creators turn to credible sources when they do their research. These websites, articles, books, and more save them more time by providing clear examples and valuable knowledge. However, plagiarism is a different context. Plagiarizing refers to taking someone else’s work without due citation or credit. It’s an action that violates copyright laws and may be subject to lawsuits when caught. Amazing content sure does have amazing ideas, but if they contain data copied from other sources, it loses its quality and authenticity. 

To prevent content from getting tagged as plagiarized, an editor needs to utilize tools like Copyscape aside from search engines to ensure that the article is original. The content creator must rewrite the information they gathered in their own words aside from acknowledging the researcher or author of the source material.  

As an editor, it is also your duty to spot if the article has been spun. A spun article is the result when the writer copied another article’s format and content and just paraphrased some sentences to evade the plagiarism checkers. This is still poor writing and will affect the quality of the content.

3. Check Out The Content Sources

Content relevance and authenticity are not enough for it to become amazing. It also needs to obtain credibility. Content creators often base some of their thoughts on others’ work and adapt to them, but to ensure that they’re factual, an editor needs to review the following:

  • The source: Sources like the internet provide loads of information, but not every website or article is credible. The editor needs to check out the source background, experience, and if their content has a logical structure.
  • The date of publication: Some sources may now be invalid or outdated. The editor needs to review the publishing date of other sources and check out the latest articles regarding the topic they discussed to see if there are updates that they need to apply to their content.

4. Edit and Polish the Content

Now that you’ve checked the topic and the sources, it’s time to turn to the careful work of proofreading the article. Check for spelling errors, faulty grammar, format inconsistencies, and more. 

Some of the common issues to look out for are:

  • Subject-Verb Agreement
  • Proper spelling and capitalization
  • Use of prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, and modifiers
  • Passive Voice Misuse or over-use

Aside from the technical corrections mentioned above, the editor also observes the flow of sentences. Each sentence must vary in length and composition to avoid sounding monotonous. To ensure that the content’s overall grammar and structure are well, the editor must be literate with the language used. They can also utilize tools like Grammarly to lessen their work time, but it can never fully replace the editor’s keen eye.

Conclusion

Content creators create amazing content that is relevant to their target audience, authentic, and credible. To ensure that they produce excellent material, editors must review and proofread their work. You can proofread content by checking the topic’s relevance and credibility, checking the sources, polishing grammar and sentence flow, and correcting spelling and format errors. With these tips, you, too, can proofread amazing content.