Before publishing content, it’s important to do a final check on visual, textual and interactive elements.
How and when to proof content
Proofing – or content quality assurance – is the last step before publishing. It ensures the content is ready to go live.
Proofing is not the same as editing. While editing involves refining and revising content, proofing focuses on identifying gaps and eliminating errors.
Content proofing includes proofreading text and checking layout and interactive elements.
Proofing ensures everything on the page is:
- correct – including no misspellings or grammatical errors, proper use of heading hierarchies, alt text and components, and in-line with the nsw.gov.au editorial style guidelines
- complete – for example, no missing or broken links, full stops left off or text that hasn’t been copied across from the approved draft
- behaving as it should – interactive components (such as accordions and form fields) respond correctly when used.
Even if you’ve only made minor changes to an existing page, always proof content before hitting ‘publish’. That way you can be sure you haven’t accidentally introduced typos or broken links.
Using spellchecker in the CMS
Ideally, spelling errors should get picked up in the content drafting and approval stage, but some can still slip through.
It’s a good idea to enable the spellchecker in your web browser. This will pick up typos as you’re editing in the CMS, just like your spellchecker in Word does.
Here’s how to set up the spellchecker in your browser:
- Chrome – Choose between basic and enhanced spell check. Note: Enhanced spell check sends the text you enter to Google for improved spelling suggestions. It is not suitable for embargoed content.
- Edge
- Firefox
Content review checklist
For further guidance on checking content against the style guidelines, see our content review checklist.
Need any more help?
If you have any questions, or require assistance with anything mentioned on this article, submit a request via the webform.