So, what is a proofreader? What do they do?
Hang around online, lecturing people on the correct use of apostrophes? I hope not. Irritate their children by bemoaning the fact that people can’t understand the difference between less and fewer – even when you explain it to them over and over again? I couldn’t possibly comment.
I thought today I’d go back to basics – to what I did (or rather, didn’t) know before embarking on a career in proofreading and working with words. I, like many, had no real idea about what proofreaders actually do – beyond the usual vague assumption that it’s just about being really, really good at spelling and a bit of a pedant (which is probably what attracted me to proofreading). To be honest, I don’t believe you have to be the world's greatest speller or grammarian to be a great proofreader – what you really need to be is a person who is aware of all the things that they don’t know.
Before we go on, let’s clarify what a proofreader doesn’t do. If I come across a badly mangled sentence, I will highlight it and make a suggestion of an alternative wording, but a proofreader should not be muscling in and involving themselves in rewriting large chunks of incomprehensible text: proofreading is not the same as copy-editing. Copy-editors are involved with improving the text itself, the readability and consistency. They ensure the text adheres to any relevant house style and pick up on any grammatical errors. Proofreaders provide the safety-net, picking up all the typographical errors that have been missed, or perhaps introduced during the editing process, just before the content is sent to print or published. The proofreader will usually be working on the text as it will appear when published, so will also check for errors in layout and appearance. (In the non-trad publishing world, the line between proofreading and editing is a bit more blurred.)
So, proofreading is not a simple matter of checking the spelling - which actually makes up only a small fraction of corrections and queries. And is precisely why a spell-check - and even a grammar-check - just won’t cut it. Proofreader check for many things, including:
Hyphens can be the bane of a proofreader’s life (co-operation vs cooperation; well-read person, but a very well read person, etc.).
Spacing.
Fonts: the style and size.
Images not matching their captions,
entering words twice.
Or missing them out altogether.
References (a blog post in itself),
grammar,
capitalisation,
abbreviations.
I could go on,
but I won’t.
The English language is a wonderful, beautiful mish mash, having absorbed many influences - Germanic, Norman French - over the years to become the language we know today. As Stephen Fry says in his lovely book The Ode Less Travelled, regarding the flexibility of English, 'it is more than a question of the thousands more words available to us, it is also a question of the numberless styles, modes, jargons and slangs we have recourse to.'
While this is a fantastic bonus, especially in the worlds of prose and poetry, the myriad options regarding style and preferred spellings (ize/ise, learnt/learned, focused/focussed and on and on) also mean there is a greater opportunity for errors in consistency to creep in. Which is why I can recommend getting a professional proofread every time. It’s not just about the spelling!
I thought today I’d go back to basics – to what I did (or rather, didn’t) know before embarking on a career in proofreading and working with words. I, like many, had no real idea about what proofreaders actually do – beyond the usual vague assumption that it’s just about being really, really good at spelling and a bit of a pedant (which is probably what attracted me to proofreading). To be honest, I don’t believe you have to be the world's greatest speller or grammarian to be a great proofreader – what you really need to be is a person who is aware of all the things that they don’t know.
Before we go on, let’s clarify what a proofreader doesn’t do. If I come across a badly mangled sentence, I will highlight it and make a suggestion of an alternative wording, but a proofreader should not be muscling in and involving themselves in rewriting large chunks of incomprehensible text: proofreading is not the same as copy-editing. Copy-editors are involved with improving the text itself, the readability and consistency. They ensure the text adheres to any relevant house style and pick up on any grammatical errors. Proofreaders provide the safety-net, picking up all the typographical errors that have been missed, or perhaps introduced during the editing process, just before the content is sent to print or published. The proofreader will usually be working on the text as it will appear when published, so will also check for errors in layout and appearance. (In the non-trad publishing world, the line between proofreading and editing is a bit more blurred.)
So, proofreading is not a simple matter of checking the spelling - which actually makes up only a small fraction of corrections and queries. And is precisely why a spell-check - and even a grammar-check - just won’t cut it. Proofreader check for many things, including:
Hyphens can be the bane of a proofreader’s life (co-operation vs cooperation; well-read person, but a very well read person, etc.).
Spacing.
Fonts: the style and size.
Images not matching their captions,
entering words twice.
Or missing them out altogether.
References (a blog post in itself),
grammar,
capitalisation,
abbreviations.
I could go on,
but I won’t.
The English language is a wonderful, beautiful mish mash, having absorbed many influences - Germanic, Norman French - over the years to become the language we know today. As Stephen Fry says in his lovely book The Ode Less Travelled, regarding the flexibility of English, 'it is more than a question of the thousands more words available to us, it is also a question of the numberless styles, modes, jargons and slangs we have recourse to.'
While this is a fantastic bonus, especially in the worlds of prose and poetry, the myriad options regarding style and preferred spellings (ize/ise, learnt/learned, focused/focussed and on and on) also mean there is a greater opportunity for errors in consistency to creep in. Which is why I can recommend getting a professional proofread every time. It’s not just about the spelling!