Wrod

It's also useful to put aside a piece of writing for a long time so that it falls out of your short-term memory.

I spent 5 years trying to write, rewrite and publish a scholarly journal article. At one point, I left the text aside for a full year. When I came back, I found a major stylistic error in the first sentence.

I had read that document so many times, but missed that error because I was so used to my own text.

When my husband was writing his doctoral thesis he asked me to proofread it. It was very long - chemical engineering is not my cup of tea (I'm an English major) - and even though I didn't 'get' all of the scientific writing I did 'get' the wording in his sentences. Simple things that are easily overlooked, when proofreading, are caught when read out loud. I caught many errors he missed. It saved him a lot of time and embarrassment. No one wants their thesis to be riddled with grammatical errors. And, it's sort of odd/funny how when you read silently you can easily overlook a blatant grammatical error but if you read the words out loud you spot them immediately.

This is what I do. It really helps.