Tips for Proof Reading Web Pages

If you have just created a web page, you will want to proof read it for spelling and gramatical errors. Lots of spelling and gramatical errors can make the page look rushed and unprofessional.

One way to speed this up, is to use a spelling and grammar checker to flag up the errors. There are various free spell checkers available online if you google for them, and one example on my free web design resoucres page. Often, though, they will not check the grammar. Much better are the spelling and grammar checkers found in word processing packages such as Microsoft Word.

Simply open your web page in your browser, select all (ctrl + a) and then select copy (ctrl + c) and then paste (ctrl + v) into an opened blank word processing document. You can then run a spelling and grammar check on your page content to locate any errors, minus the code.

You will have to make any amendments to the actual webpage, not the word processing document. If you are using a simple text editor such as notepad, you can open your full webpage alongside the word processing document and use Edit>Find to locate the word or phrase for correction.

Believe it or not, some errors may be worth including! For example, if I had a webpage in the search engines which wrote about watercolour painting, it would be good to also have the phrase watercolor painting on the page. This would help the page to be found by both UK and US English speakers. Another reason for retaining some errors is common misspellings of keywords, such as gramma and grammar, although care needs to be taken that the page does not look unprofessional, and that the misspelling is common enough to warrant inclusion.