An introduction to proofreading

Welcome!

Welcome to An introduction to proofreading. We hope that you will enjoy the module, which will cover the fundamental aspects of proofreading.

What is proofreading?

This really isn’t a silly question. The word ‘proofreading’ means different things to different people. Below we outline the four main users of such work, and what they are likely to expect.

Publishing companies

If you work for a publisher (books and journals, whether in print or online), proofreading relates to checking the publication content in its final layout, with illustrations, tables, footnotes etc. in the most appropriate position. The proofreader will be looking out for errors made or missed by the copy-editor (see below) and for possible errors made by the typesetter – the person who put the material together for this stage. At this point, it is expected that only actual errors will be amended – the time for making ‘tweaks’ or giving the text a final polish is long past.

Other organizations

Companies and institutions that produce publications – for example, company reports or financial advice to clients – want more than ‘simple’ proofreading. Of course, they want someone to correct any errors of spelling, grammar and punctuation. However, they might also want to make sure that the organisation and structure of the publication is sensible and that the writing style is appropriate for the intended readers; this is more what a copy-editor does, as outlined below.

Independent authors

Now that it is relatively easy to publish a book oneself, an increasing number of writers are ignoring the route via a publishing company and are self-publishing instead. These authors can ask someone to ‘proofread’ their book but might actually want it to be copy-edited (see below) and possibly to be critiqued, and for the ‘proofreader’ to help develop it into something ready to be launched into the world.

Students

Many students want their thesis or dissertation to be ‘proofread’ before submitting it to their examiner. In some cases, a proofread is all that is required (as for a publishing company) but often such students are working in English as a second (or even third) language and want their text to be looked at for correct grammar and usage, making sure that what they have written is clear. This sort of work verges on copy-editing and might not be allowed by the student’s supervisors, as it means that the result is not entirely their own work.

To summarise, a ‘proofreading’ job can range from making a final check before publication of something that has already been thoroughly revised (copy-edited) and carefully laid out to doing detailed work on a ‘raw’ document from one or more writers.

Proofing

‘Proofing’ is another term that people often use instead of the word ‘proofreading’. In fact, the definition of ‘proofing’ is to supply proofs, not to check proofs. This bit of trivia is given to help you understand how important it is to determine exactly what someone means when they ask you to ‘proof’ or ‘proofread’ something! We discuss this later, under ‘Getting a good brief’.

Copy-editing and proofreading

The person who does the copy-editing might not be called copy-editor but the work will be part of her/his job. For example, this person could be a marketing assistant or a secretary/PA whose language skills (also known as pedantry and nit-picking!) are well known.

Another possibility is that you work for an auction house and you are responsible for preparing the catalogues for each auction. Or you work for a museum and must check that the descriptions of items in a forthcoming exhibition give all the information correctly and in the same order and style. Although the copy-editor will have looked out for spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors, none of us is perfect so a few mistakes might have slipped through. Moreover, it has been known for the copy-editor to change something correct to something wrong. It doesn’t happen often but we are all human!

This is where we proofreaders come in. As with the copy-editor’s role, our job might not be solely proofreading but it will be part of our work.

If you are (or will be) working as a freelance, you should know that copy-editing pays better than proofreading. The responsibility is greater, so it deserves higher rewards.

You can find out more about copy-editing in our What is Copy-editing? e-Learning Module.

The typesetter

We use the term typesetter to indicate the person who takes the material and does the laying out and formatting. This might be someone in your department or in your company or possibly a freelance designer/typesetter or an outside company that specialises in producing documents, whether in print, digitally or online.

The person who produced your document for checking will probably be very experienced but can make the occasional mistake in formatting certain aspects. This again is where we proofreaders come in. As well as looking out for obvious – and not so obvious – typos, we’ll be checking for inconsistency/errors in layout.

Frequently used terms

There are many terms used for different roles in editorial work – which is what proofreading and copy-editing are.

Workflow

In an ideal world, all text should be copy-edited before it is sent to a typesetter for laying out and formatting. The copy-editor will liaise with the author(s) to resolve inconsistencies and queries – the aim is to make the work as perfect as possible before it goes to the typesetter.

The typesetter will put it into the desired layout and format, as specified by the designer, and then supply proofs to be read/checked – by the author(s) and the proofreader. A single, merged, proof will be returned to the typesetter for final amendments before the work is signed off for publication. However, outside the publishing industry, the sequence can be very different.

For example, a company report has to be prepared and the deadline is fast approaching. So each department head writes his or her report and they are all merged into a single document. The result can be something of a hodge-podge and someone gets the task of whipping it into shape (copy- editing). With luck, this can be done while the text and associated material are in a Word document; it is lots easier to refine the work at this stage. Sometimes, though, the unedited reports have already been laid out and formatted, and the people allotted the task of ‘proofreading’ the document have a major job in front of them; we call this proof-editing.

Getting a good brief

As we mentioned earlier, it is very important to establish exactly what you are being expected to do. Even if a job is ‘proper’ proofreading, not a variant of copy-editing, it is vital to know what must be covered and what is to be ignored. This is what the brief is all about. For example:

• If the document you are proofreading is by a group of people, including the company’s chief executive, you might be told to ignore/accept terms that perhaps are a little old-fashioned because they are what the chief executive has written!

• Can you rely on people’s names being spelled correctly, or should you check them all?

• If there are tables containing numbers, has anybody checked them or are you expected to verify them?

• What is the deadline? Is it crucial or is there scope for leeway of a day or two, if you are very busy? If the deadline is fixed, find out what, if anything, you don’t have to check; for example, it’s not necessary to check the numbers in the tables.
• If you have any queries, who is going to answer them? And how should you present them:
  

• If you have any queries, who is going to answer them? And how should you present them:
  • as they arise? (unlikely if that person is busy);
  • in batches at times to be agreed between you? (possible if the document is large);
  • when you have finished the job? (likely if it’s a short-ish document).

You've been given a proofreading job

First steps

When you are given a job, the very first thing to do is to check that everything is present. If anything is (or seems to be) missing, raise the alarm immediately so that it can be found for you. The longer you leave it, the harder it will be to track down the missing material. If part of the job is still to come, establish as precisely as possible when it is to arrive so that you can take this into account with your workload.

Before you start work – having obtained a good brief about what is wanted, of course – skim through the material to see whether the job is really as straightforward as you’ve been told. If you discover that the quality of the material is poor, let your supervisor know. If you will be able to cope with the problem(s), try to judge how much extra time you will need so that the schedule (and perhaps the budget) for the job can be adjusted.

Don’t struggle on in silence: problems can have far-reaching effects, involving other people. If there are many and/or extensive changes, it may be necessary to have an extra proof stage to make sure that the amendments have been made properly. This will delay production and, because of the need to check the extra proof stage, add to costs.

Coping with a large document

If you are proofreading a large document or a number of short documents over a long-ish period, do take the occasional break, particularly if you’re working on screen. Get another cup of coffee, do some filing or look out of the window for a minute or so. After a prolonged period of proofreading, your eyes blur, your brain goes numb and you lose concentration.

You might need to get back into proofreading mode after the break but this will help remind you to read slowly (it’s easy to speed up gradually when proofreading a long document).

Updating information

Some documents contain information that is updated annually. It’s always wise to check dates carefully – it is very easy to overlook last year’s dates or forget that some years have February 29.

Look twice at dates that have been updated in case the change was not made thoroughly: for example, a report dated ‘21st’ last year would need to become ‘22nd’ this year – but it’s easy to change just the numbers and end up with ‘22st’! Similarly, with notices of meetings or events, it is sensible to check both the day and the date. We have heard of notices going out with a day and date that don’t tally: ‘Wednesday 16’ should be either Wednesday 15 or Thursday 16.

Proofreading technique

The main thing to remember when proofreading is to read slowly! When we read for pleasure or for information, we let our brain correct obvious typos. In proofreading, though, we mustn’t let this happen – we must look carefully at absolutely everything.

If the material has been copy-edited, the proofreading should be fairly straightforward, especially if a spelling checker has spotted mis-spellings and incorrect spacing with punctuation (e.g. no space after a full point (full stop) or colon). Even if the spelling checker was run, though, it is possible that some text was added later and it contains some spelling mistakes. And of course the spelling checker won’t pick up words that are real words but the wrong ones.

Have a look at the following sample exercise, which has lots of errors, and see how many you pick up – without using the spelling checker! Don’t worry about correcting them; just see how many you can spot.

That passage included several words that are commonly mis-spelled: separate, recommend and accommodate; a spelling check would spot them along with other typos where a letter appears too often (prooofreaders, willl) or should be doubled (automaticaly). However, there were quite a few others that wouldn’t be picked up because they are real words, just the wrong ones or, as with ‘is it’, the right words are in the wrong order. Also included were a couple of pairs of words that people often muddle: accept/except and affect/effect; so you need a very good grasp of grammar as well as of spelling.

Even if your document has been copy-edited, it is possible that a mistake or two have slipped past the copy-editor. So it is important to have a good dictionary to hand, either a print copy or online,  to check unfamiliar or odd-looking words. Your company may prefer to follow a particular dictionary – the Concise Oxford Dictionary or that of Chambers or Longmans, for example. We suggest the Collins English Dictionary, which is available both in print and online (www.collinsdictionary.com). It is considerably bigger than the average ‘concise’ dictionary and will be more helpful to you.

Don’t be tempted to use a dictionary to check the use or absence of hyphens. Dictionaries vary a lot! Go with what is there (or not there) if it’s consistent and not misleading.

Reading a first proof

If this is the first proof to have been supplied, there are two types of proofreading:

• you are going to compare it against the original (possibly Word) document, which has had input from the typesetter, as well as from the copy-editor; this is known as proofreading against copy
• you have only the proof itself to check; this is known as proofreading blind.

With the first type of proofreading, it is likely that the typesetter has input onto the electronic file (e- file) amendments and additions made by the copy-editor on hard copy. You should therefore keep checking back and forth from original to proof, to make sure that all changes made to the original have been implemented correctly.

With the second type of proofreading you will have nothing to check against. You might be able to do the job in less time because you won’t have to keep comparing the proof with the original but you might be slowed down by having to deal with inconsistencies. And remember to read slowly!

In both types, it is often a good idea to read the proof twice:

• once, looking for ‘typos’ and similar errors as well as errors in layout
• once, reading purely for sense.

The order in which you do these is entirely up to you – decide for yourself which works better. You might even decide that one way is good for some proofs and the other way for others. The main criterion is that it works for you!

How you mark amendments to the proof will depend on the type of proof you are checking:

• a Word document
• a PDF for basic proofreading
• a PDF for a ‘proof-edit’
• hard copy (on paper).

Marking an amendment

Whatever the type of proof, be sure that your amendment is marked as clearly and concisely as possible. The test is to ask yourself ‘Will the person making my amendments know, instantly, what I mean?’

Try not to write short essays that the typesetter will have to read in order to implement the change you want. Even if there isn’t a tight deadline, don’t waste your time – or that of the typesetter – writing unnecessarily detailed notes. The instruction ‘Typesetter: please ensure that Table 4 is inserted here’ would be much better as simply ‘Table 4 here’.

Read what you have written, to make sure that there is no ambiguity. For example, does ‘Put this in italics’ mean that the word ‘this’ or another word is to be made italic? Either with each amendment you make or, better, when you have finished proofreading the entire document, check:

• that you have indicated clearly in the text the relevant word(s) or character(s) (letter, number or punctuation) to be amended
• that your amendment is clear, concise and unambiguous.

We prefer to make these checks as a final task, because this is a good opportunity to make sure that we’ve made all our amendments clearly and consistently. Wording our instructions in a consistent way will help the typesetter to work efficiently.

Using the BSI symbols can help you to mark amendments simply and clearly. Our full Basic Proofreading course covers these in detail.

Checking subsequent proofs

Strictly speaking, when you check subsequent proofs, it should be necessary to check only where amendments were marked in the previous proof.

If, however, there have been lots of amendments, it is a good idea – assuming that there is time – to read through the entire document to make sure that it all makes sense. Sometimes you will spot an error that was missed at the previous proofread.

Developing your skills and knowledge

An obvious prerequisite for any editorial work is an excellent grasp of British English. This includes being familiar with formal writing, informal style and colloquialisms. If you are aiming to work on a wide variety of subjects, you will also need wide general knowledge.

Your supervisor

As we’ve explained earlier in this Introduction, we use the word ‘supervisor’ to indicate any of the people a proofreader may be responsible to or can ask for advice:

• your line manager, who has given you the document to proofread
• someone else in the company, who is responsible for producing the final document and has asked you to check it first
• your client, if you are a freelance

When you are new to proofreading there will be lots of times when you need to ask for advice. Be considerate, though, and don’t ask your (work) supervisor a question as soon as a problem arises. She or he won’t appreciate frequent interruptions. Instead, try to adopt the following system:

• Ask your supervisor to suggest times when you can ask for advice. Flag the item in some way for the time being and compile a list of queries to be dealt with in one advice session. (If you are working on paper, just put a pencil note in the margin.)
• Make your queries clear but concise; time is money!
• Decide what the problem is, see if you can work out why it is a problem and try to decide on a possible solution. You won’t learn very much if you always go to someone else for a quick answer. It will also help your supervisor to see that you are taking an active role in your work and are therefore worthy of extra attention!

This exercise covers the aspects that have been discussed in the three units you have just read. Don’t worry about how to correct the proof: we just want you to find the errors and flag up any problems. You can print the exercise and work on it on paper, or, if you are familiar with some or all of the mark up tools in Adobe, you can use these. Don't worry if marking on screen is completely unfamiliar territory! Our full Essential Proofreading course covers this, as do several of our other courses.

In this exercise, you are checking the proofs of a travel report that will be published in a magazine. It was set from the author’s electronic file so there is no edited copy to check against – it’s a ‘blind’ proofread. The author was sent guidelines on how to prepare the file, which included details of stylistic consistency (one of which is the use of ‘-ize’ spelling). However, as you will see, there is a great deal that is inconsistent!

Correct whatever out-and-out mistakes you find, raise queries for anything that you’re not sure about, and make a list (marking all the instances in the text) of inconsistencies that will need to be resolved.