How to Reduce Errors in Your Blog Posts

Many blogs are solo operations, run by one person and one person only. If you are the only person who works on your blog—or more specifically on your blog posts, you know what this means. As the blogger, you write your posts, format them, find the photos and handle search engine optimization (SEO), categorization, and tagging—all before you hit the “Publish” button.

Allowing your eyes to be the only ones that see your posts before they are published leaves a lot of room for error. And the margin for error increases if you are blogging in real time—writing and then immediately publishing.

Solo Blogging Leaves Room For Error

I know this better than anyone. For years, I’ve been the solo blogger at my sites. And on many occasions I’ve been up late or early writing posts so I could publish them on my regular schedule. (I never want to disappoint my readers, and I would if I didn’t publish a post on time.)

Even if I don’t rush and, instead, write a post three or four days in advance, proof it numerous times, and then schedule it, I still might find errors after the post goes live. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to edit or revise a post after it has published to fix typos, grammar issues or other problems with the content.

No matter how many times you look at what you write, your eyes won’t catch all the errors. And if you aren’t a grammarian or a phenomenal editor, you will miss more than just the occasional typo or missing comma. Again, I know this; it’s happened to me, and I’m a good proofreader and a seasoned editor.

If you are the only one who reads your work before it goes live, you increase the chance of leaving errors in your posts.

Your Automated Proofreader

With public errors fresh in my mind, I decided to seek a solution. I sought out a way to reduce the number of errors in my blog posts.

First, I tried having my virtual assistant read my posts prior to publishing them. That worked pretty well, but she isn’t an editor or a grammarian. She caught a lot of typos, however!

Next, I hired my proofreader, who is a grammarian. But I couldn’t get the posts to her early enough, which meant I sometimes didn’t get the edited posts back in time. This workflow made it difficult to meet my publication deadlines. Plus, just as with the virtual assistant, the fees began to add up. I couldn’t afford a regular proofreader.

Then, I discovered a way to computerize my proofreading needs. I found an online program to proof my posts (or any document) and check for grammar. Now I use this program before I publish any work anywhere, and I have fewer errors than ever before.

What is the program? Grammarly.

Grammarly catches all my errors, suggests changes and forces me to improve my writing! As the program proofs my work, I rewrite and revise to correct grammatical issues—issues I had no idea my writing contained.

These days, my posts are cleaner and better-written thanks to Grammarly.

If you are the sole “proprietor” and writer, editor and proofreader on your blog, Grammarly provides an economical and efficient way to proofread and to reduce the number of errors in your posts.