As a child, how did you get ready for the new school year? Buying new pens, pencils, notebooks, and erasers? I still love buying supplies! What about you? Do you still get that urge to buy new office products in the fall?
As a young girl, I wanted to be a teacher, so I could grade papers with a red pen. My dream has come true! Ask my students. Nowadays, parents want to ban red pens. I think red pens are a helpful proofreading tool because it’s easy to see the corrections, not that I don’t love purple pens, too.
Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson, the authors of The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time, have a mission to correct errors on signs across the country. The correction kit for their journey included “a variety of Sharpies, of which ‘the black Sharpie was the most important.’ Deck also carried Wite-Out, dry erase markers, chalk, crayons and pens.”
We have so many tools to make proofreading easier, so take advantage—red pens, erasers, correction tape, correction fluid, dictionaries, proofreading symbols, grammar books, professional proofreaders, spell checkers, and grammar checkers. I’ll take one of everything please!
Have I missed any resources? What’s your favorite proofreading tool? Can you pick only one?
Judy Beaver, The Office Pro
Founder of National Proofreading Day
