Proofreading: What do you do upon finishing a text?

[Englishuser]

Good afternoon everyone,

What do you do upon finishing a text? How do you ensure that it will be as free from errors as possible? Does anyone have any good tips or clues as to how one can try to ensure that the text is as pleasant to other readers as possible? Please bare in mind that all people can't afford to hire a proofreader every time they've written something. And your friends may be busy people as well.

[Jamie (K)]

If I can, I sleep on the thing, giving it a second, third or fourth proofreading after a night's sleep. The sleep seems to flush my memory and let me see the text as if it were new and someone else had written it.

I do at least one sloooooooooow reading, almost letter by letter, and then I read it at least once in larger chunks, the way a normal reader would, but a bit slower.

I don't only look for spelling and grammatical errors, but I look for words and sentences that I think are unnecessary to the point I'm making, and I cut those out. Arriving at a good English text usually involves a lot of cutting.