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"" is an unusual email domain.
Have Microsoft word read it to you. Great feature for catching this kind of stuff.
Yes A12 on MS office you can click the settings icon next to the play/pause button (looks like a wheel) and speed up - I often turn it up to 1.5x speed
Edit one sentence at a time backwards (end of document to beginning). After editing your own work, your mind starts filling in things that aren’t there, so you have to throw your mind off by breaking up the phrasing.
Trying to understand this - so read the boilerplate first (snooze) and then work your way backwards to the definitions?
Huge screen, focus mode, paragraph icon turned on.
Rising Star
Read out loud feature is the best way, but it's pretty tedious. You can also try changing the font style and size. Making the text look different helps keep your brain from skipping the errors. It also helps to take a break. I always like to sleep on a draft and give it another read through in the morning before turning it over to the partner.
Read it out loud to yourself
Not only reading aloud, but reading from the end to the beginning helps, too. Good luck!
Download the grammarly plugin. It’ll automatically flag things like grammatical errors or spelling mistakes and also gives suggestions on how to rephrase to make things clearer - all with the free version
Rising Star
A7–Out of curiosity, why is that? But back when I was in private practice I emailed myself documents and worked on them at home on my personal laptop anyway.
Review in reverse (paragraph by paragraph, not line by line) while reading out loud. Works well for me. Also, create a checklist of your most frequent mistakes and general things to look out for. Review that checklist before you go in to edit. I feel like that primes my brain to look for those things.
If you have the time, getting to put it aside for a day or two will also make it much easier to catch errors. I always try to at least get to sleep once before a final edit.
Honestly who has time to reread/proofread their work? Everything is always so crazy that I proof as I go (paragraph by paragraph or so), but there is rarely enough time to reread the entire doc.
A8 - I was wondering if this was the case. My mind was having a hard time accepting multiple requests with comments to turn on the same document. Glad to know I’m not crazy for thinking this was a possibility.
Ross Guberman’s program, BriefCatch, is designed for lawyers and catches things other programs miss. Alternatively, an old book editors’ trick is to use a ruler to go line by line to edit. It forces you to slow down so you catch things your brain would otherwise skip over. It also helps if you can put a day between when you write and when you pick the document up again to edit. The rest gives you a new perspective. I find that helps a lot.
I usually print it out but you can do these with a hard copy or on a computer. Read it once through and mark it up by hand. Then read it out loud (this one helps a lot as it’s easy to gloss over things reading silently). Then sometimes I’ll read it from the end to the beginning to help.
Also, I’d recommend getting an iPad Pro if you don’t have one. I edit by hand using it a lot.
Reading from end to beginning is how I catch 90% of silly mistakes. Cannot recommend this method enough.
The v50 firm I worked at had a service via Epiq to do routine proofing. I would send things for review late at night and have it back within a few hours. That said I also use Grammarly now and absolutely love it.
If you do not have a printer pdf it and mark it up on iPad. There is also a program that catches stuff like this (Litera).
You can use Litera for stuff like this?? Great to know!
Briefcatch
Reading it aloud works. Reading it back to front works. Reading it in a less normal or just different font or font size works.
Pro
Change the font and size and read it again
Have your spouse proofread for you. Helps if SO is also an attorney.
A6 this is a dangerous road to take. Would not advise this
Having the computer read it back to you. My editing skills were frustratingly bad, but over time, I’ve just gotten better at it. It’s almost like I subconsciously know where to look for the errors
Ross Guberman’s software especially for litigation
Rising Star
I’ve posted this before, but it works for me. Change the typeface for editing purposes. You’ll be amazed at what you catch.
Grammarly works pretty well, but the gold standard is to read your document one sentence at a time, backwards, starting at the end. With each sentence out of context these kinds of errors become glaringly obvious.