Sometimes it's better to not read your new book. But LOOK at it closely

Here's an important proofreading tip I discovered the hard way: after you've read your new masterpiece 183 times, sit a bit farther back from your computer screen and LOOK at the pages -- don't read them.

You'll probably be amazed at all of the errors you detect when you are not concerned with content, meaning and story-telling artistry.

I aim my eyes at the nine-o'clock position and make a clockwise scan on each page, but do what works best for you.

Check your book for these bloopers:

1. Wrong typefaces, particularly when text is pasted-in from another source
2. Commas that should be periods -- and vice versa
3. Straight punctuation that should be curly "typographers' marks"
4. Curlies that curl in the wrong direction
5. Missing spaces between paragraphs or sections (!!!!!!)
6. Flush-left justification that should be full justification
7. Bad justification in the last line of a page
8. Chopped-off descenders where you decreased line spacing (leading) or if the bottom of a text box is too close to the text
9. Wrong-size bullets
10. Rivers
11. Too-big word spacing
12. Normal letters that should be ligatures (more for large type than in body text).
13. Accidental spaces after bullets
14. Improper hyphenation
15. Misaligned numbers in a list
16. Roman text that should be italic, and vice versa
17. Normal text that should be boldface, and vice versa 
18. Ignoring highlighted warnings in MS Word.(!!!!!!)
19. Automatically accepting MS Word suggestions (!!!!!!)
20. Gray text that should be black.
21. Insufficient space adjacent to images
22. Images or text boxes that floated over the margin.
23. Images or text boxes that 'slid' down and covered up footers
24. Missing periods at sentence ends (!!!!!!)
25. Missing opening or closing quote marks.
26. Periods that should be inside a closing parentheses -- or outside
27. Repeated words (!!!!!!)
28. Wrong headers, missing headers, switched verso and recto headers
29. Subheads that are too close to the text above and too far from the text below
30. Too much space between lines in a multi-line title, chapter name or subhead
31. Inconsistencies such as 3pm on one page and 3 P.M. on another.
32. Pages with numbers that should not show numbers (blind folios)
33. Words that shifted from the bottom of one page to the top of the next page
34. And one that does require reading: chapter names and page numbers in the table of contents that don't reflect a change made in the actual chapter name
35. And another: chapters missing from the TOC.
36. And another: a topic not in the index because you added something after completing the index
37. And another: words that should have been deleted but were not, and may have accidentally been shifted into another part of a paragraph
38. And another: names that were changed in some places but not in all places (!!!!!!)

(Eye photo from Microsoft. Thanks.)