I’m editor in chief of a maths journal. You wouldn’t believe how sloppy most of the manuscripts we get are. Fewer than half have even been spellchecked.
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It’s very hard to spot your own mistakes. Sometimes they are mistakes that you have passed onto your computer’s dictionary. You want more eyes on what you have written, but you aren’t going to show it to anyone just yet.
This doesn’t make your eyes behave like someone else’s, but it helps. It is like the layout trick of looking at it upside-down, or in the mirror (which probably would not work for writing).
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When I was part of a more professional workflow, I proofread as a designer, the manager would proofread, we (sometimes) provided PDFs to the client to proof, and then we had a proofreader (who also watched for legal stuff) - before we sent to the printers.
My last design job, they tried to ‘save money’ by making the designer the beginning and end of the proofing process.
Usually a post-author editor will work with a version that is formatted for proofing before typesetting happens. When you are editing a hardcopy - which my editors have insisted on - the proofreading fonts allow for clearer placement of proofreaders marks.
Actually, I often turn writing upside down to proof, because it slows my reading down enough to pay attention.
^^^ This! I’ve all but given up on trying to spot my own mistakes. I’m not lazy, I’m just terrible at catching them. I’ve tried all the tricks (reading backwards, letting it sit, reading out loud, even having the computer read it to me). The only thing I’ve found that effectively helps me catch errors at all is having someone else read my stuff. Otherwise all kinds of stupid little things slip through. It’s… frustrating to say the least.
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Maybe the author should proofread it while writing it. 
This has become my coding font of choice:
It’s sooo nice 
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