Often, you must turn your stylus to erase if you hope to write anything worth a second reading.
- Horace, Satires
With over 25 years of proofreading experience, I've had countless clients who, in the rush to publish, decided to skip proofreading — only to have their mistakes pointed out to them by the general public (or, worse, the specific prospect they'd been targeting).
I know that deadlines sometimes make it hard to take advantage of a proofreader's skills, but do you really feel your spell-check program is set up to catch everything? It's not! How many times have you yourself seen spelling mistakes in otherwise high-quality advertisements? Too many! This can absolutely ruin your intended effect.
But what can I actually do for you as a proofreader?
The official definition doesn’t exist, but my interpretation involves checking documents for spelling, grammar, and consistency.
There's actually a slightly higher level of proofreading, and it's called "copyediting" — kind of a mid-point between proofreading and editing. A copyeditor does your typical proofread, but also ensures your writing makes sense — with appropriate wording and sentence structure. For many of my clients, this is what they actually want.
I actually began my professional life as a proofreader/copyeditor, working for Encyclopaedia Britannica (see my credit on the 1998 CD-ROM version of the publication) and Douglas Press (a breakopen lottery ticket manufacturer). Since then, I have been the proofreader for literally hundreds of books and magazines, as well as copyeditor for dozens of clients. So you can trust me to provide eagle-eye service and hawk-swift turnaround.
The world needs more good proofreaders! And it needs them now! Click here for some recent news stories making that fairly obvious — a sort of proofreading blooper reel.
Contact me if you have questions about your project.