Proofreading - thoughts?

MarkHempshell

Just interested in what everyone does re. proofreading. Do you do it yourself .... or hire a proofreader? Have you taken any proofreading courses .... or are just self taught? Do you not bother too much - after all the publisher will be doing it anyway so why duplicate effort?

Tiny Nell

I have done it with every book - over and over... and over! I've always thought myself capable of spotting mistakes as I have a teaching background and was an English specialist at school.

Then, a reader of mine, who also happens to be a very sharp-eyed proofreader, pointed out a few things - only tiny details, like spacing/hyphens v. en dashes/indents and I realised that I hadn't achieved the perfection I thought I had!

I am currently in the process of using CreateSpace to make paperbacks. Luckily, I now have two proofreaders on board who are providing their services free of charge (family, but experienced).

I have also since learned to use the back-to-front P sign that highlights spacing. I had a habit of accidentally including one space at the beginning of a paragraph when I'd split a chunk. I was also a habitual 'tabber' which I've stopped. I use the 'Find' feature to find words like 'onto' so that I can change it to 'on to' and 'O.K.'/'Okay' to 'OK', for example. Searching for 'ly' helps me eliminate adverbs. When I send my work to my proofreaders now, there is very little left to put right.

I'm sure editors will tidy things up even more, but it shows a writer in a better light if it's done to the best of their ability from the word go.

Edited to add: I've just bought the 'New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors'.

Baggy Books

I'm appalled at my own errors - the brain and eye never seem to cooperate. Fresh eyes are certainly a help and I've read several books that would have benefited from a good edit.

Mrs Bear

I bought a debut novel recently that I am not going to finish. I'm not going to get past Chapter2. It is so obviously unedited and has never seen a proofreader, professional or otherwise, and it is simply unreadable.
I have so far proofread my own work, and I do miss things. It's so hard to see beyond what you thought you'd written, because you read your own work by memory and by the sound of the words in your head. It helps to change format - print it out, put it on Kindle (I find the smaller chunks of text make mistakes more obvious), change colour or font size - any difference will wake you up.
It embarrasses me horribly to find I've missed an error in something I've published. I've just been in conversation with an American author who had a few glaring oddities in her novel, and she was very grateful, and has made changes.
I've got a proofreading guide, but my best tools are a red pen and a green one.

boredrobots

I have also since learned to use the back-to-front P sign that highlights spacing.

Ahh, good old pilcrow

Smaug

I went through my book (poetry collection) line by line four times, then Hubs went through it and pointed out a tweak I'd forgotten to make! I've not had any formal training, but found myself doing lot of proofreading when I worked for an educational publisher, after I pointed out a spine title error (Victirian Britain) on a new delivery that was about to be shipped out to schools all over the country.

I have a couple of guides to English usage and grammar, a reference sheet of proofing symbols, red and green pens and mini post-its for noting editorial tweaks as my short-term memory is borderline goldfish! I always proofread on paper. I need to get into the habit of proofing promotional material to 'book' standard - I'm still cringing about missing the middle 's' out of 'Sainsbury's' on a book signing poster I posted on Facebook!

casey

If you can afford it have it read professionally by a proofreader. If not have at least three independent readers. I had three and they each found mistakes the others missed. Ultimately I re-read it myself as it's my book and therefore my responsibility to get it right. Hope this helps.

Baggy Books

What do you do, Mark? Do you try and check your own words?

MarkHempshell

What do you do, Mark? Do you try and check your own words?

Yes, although I do find it's harder on screen than on good old fashioned paper.

datco2014

I couldn't possibly do this myself _ I always need help it is partly down to stupidity - it is hard to know if something is a mistake if you don't know what a mistake looks like - if that makes sense - I'm pretty literate but some of the nuances of grammar and spelling are just beyond my brain to spot - that's why I use other peeps. Thankfully one of my wife's best friends is a copywriter - she's rubbish at critiques but good for spotting the rubbish that I write at times.