proofread

Proofreading is the last pass over a piece, made once the writing has been revised and edited. A proofreader reads for what the earlier passes missed: a typo the eye supplies correctly on its own, a word doubled at a line break, a quotation mark left open, a name spelled two ways on two pages. The work is mechanical and slow, and it is done against the finished text rather than against a draft, because changing the writing at this point would undo the passes that came before it. Proofreading is the smallest of the three revision passes (revising, editing and proofreading) and it is deliberately last, so a proofreader who starts rewriting has moved back into revising. The fix for most misses is to slow the reading down and take the text a line at a time.