You can but you have to use various tricks to make it work:
- Play back what you've written with text-to-speech software. On a Mac, you can do this with the option-escape keyboard shortcut.
- Read it out loud yourself, slowly.
- Leave at least 24 hours between drafting and proofreading, longer if possible.
- Print the text in a different font and proofread on paper, marking errors with a pen.
- Use a "focus mode" that dims everything but the sentence you're proofreading. Read through each sentence slowly and deliberately. iA Writer can do this, as can a few other text editors.
- Use tools like Grammarly, but consider what they say guidance rather than hard-and-fast rules. They are often wrong or have an overly narrow definition of correctness, but they will help you to catch typos and and errors such as repeated words.
However, depending on time and money constraints, it's often more efficient to pay someone to do it for you.
- Play back what you've written with text-to-speech software. On a Mac, you can do this with the option-escape keyboard shortcut.
- Read it out loud yourself, slowly.
- Leave at least 24 hours between drafting and proofreading, longer if possible.
- Print the text in a different font and proofread on paper, marking errors with a pen.
- Use a "focus mode" that dims everything but the sentence you're proofreading. Read through each sentence slowly and deliberately. iA Writer can do this, as can a few other text editors.
- Use tools like Grammarly, but consider what they say guidance rather than hard-and-fast rules. They are often wrong or have an overly narrow definition of correctness, but they will help you to catch typos and and errors such as repeated words.
However, depending on time and money constraints, it's often more efficient to pay someone to do it for you.