It’s after hours. You just finished drafting your brief and you’re feeling pretty good about it. You’ve read it numerous times, caught a few typos and errors, and cut out some of the fat. But you’ve lived with this thing for too long. You need a fresh pair of eyes on it because we all know that after that many times reading the same thing your brain sees what it expects to see. And besides, you still need to cut a few paragraphs to comply with the rules. So you wander the halls of your office to find someone to put eyes on this thing. But alas, your colleagues don’t share the same commitment to work (or skill at procrastination) that you do and have long since left for home. Pop quiz, hot shot: What do you do now?
Go back to your office and change the font of your brief to something different than Times New Roman (or whatever you’re using): try Courier or Palatino Linotype. Then print it out and read it again. Yes, print it. Don’t review on the screen. This is like putting a fresh pair of eyes on the text. It slows down your review, you see things you missed before and end up quickly spotting and cutting the expendable. Make your revisions, convert back to standard font, good to go.