Yesterday I completed the second half of the practical exercises in topic 2, which I wrote about on Tuesday. This morning I did two more topics, so now I’m back on track.
Below are the notes from the theory side of the two topics:
3: Standard Proofreading
Standard proofreading uses margin marks (as does comparative proofreading). If there are only a small number of corrections all marks are placed in the right-hand margin. However, if there are a lot of corrections then both the left-hand and right-hand margins are used.
The standard proofreading technique is to imagine a line down the centre of the page. All errors on the left-hand side of that imaginary line would be marked up in the left-hand margin. All errors on the right-hand side would have their marks placed in the right-hand margin. However, never split the marks for a single word between both margins, always keep them together. So if a word in the middle of the page needs two or more corrections, group the mark ups together in one margin (it doesn’t matter which margin is used).
A proofreader always works from left to right and the person correcting the work should look at the mark ups in the same way. In other words, the margin marks will correspond to the text marks when read left to right, despite which margin is used.
4: Comparative Proofreading
Comparative proofreading is usually done when the copy has already been edited by a copyeditor or proofreader and has been returned to the typesetter who will make the changes required. When the live copy comes back it will be checked against the dead copy (original version).
The proofreader does not look for new corrections. The idea of comparative proofreading is to check to make sure all corrected errors have been changed by the proofreader. This is the proof and it is usually done in one of the last stages prior to going to print.
What if an unmarked error is spotted by the proofreader? The proofreader marks it up as usual but must bring the error to the attention of the copyeditor, as the error may be intentional. It will be up to the copyeditor to say if the error is corrected or not.
Most publishers cannot afford to have a document/manuscript proofread two or three times, so errors will be found in the printed work unless extra care is taken in the initial proofread.