proofreading can be an exceptionally time-consuming job, particularly given the vast number of different aspects of a text that have to be checked and double-checked before a professional proofreader is satisfied with the quality of his work.

Whilst attention to detail and perfectionism are, of course, essential skills for a top proofreader, there are nonetheless some clever methods and handy tricks every proofreader can use to speed up their proofreading without in any way reducing the quality of their work. Check out our top tips for speed proofreading.

Know what you’re looking for. Proofreading a document from start to finish just by going through each sentence individually and considering it on its own merits is an extremely slow and time-consuming method of proofreading. It is much better to take each area of potential error one at a time and quickly to skim through the document focusing only on that single issue. So for example, start by checking all the punctuation throughout the document, then move on to spelling and so on. This may sound like a longer method because it involves more read-throughs but in fact keeping your mind (and grammatical rule book!) open to only one issue at a time can dramatically speed up the process with which you are able to pinpoint and deal with issues as you are looking for one specific thing at a time.

Have a checklist. A great way to speed through your proofreading job is to have a checklist of all the different areas you need to proofread, ticking each one off as you complete it. This way you reduce any margin for error and ensure that speed doesn’t mean sloppiness or forgetting to cover any important areas. Your checklist should include (but is not limited to): spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalisations, images and diagrams, paragraphing, formatting, referencing, cohesion and structure.

Create an initial assessment. Some proofreaders jump straight into a text, but briefly skimming it over first can make a huge difference by helping you to assess the major areas for concern. This prepares you to know exactly where your attention should be focused when proofreading; for example in a text that is riddled with punctuation errors but grammatically sound, preventing you from wasting time on unnecessary scrutiny of the wrong areas.

Split it up. When you are proofreading a long text, you can become bogged down after an hour or so and begin to work more slowly. If you take breaks and work in short, sharp bursts, you will actually find that you get the proofreading done in a much shorter time period overall as you will be fresher and sharper in each session, and therefore able to pick up mistakes more quickly.

Do a final check. If you feel you have sped through a proofreading job you don’t have to worry that you may have missed an important error – you can always take a few minutes to perform a final check-through the finished text as a last safety net for any remaining mistakes.

The job of a proofreader is carefully and meticulously to check through every word of a text, editing out any tiny mistakes in spelling, grammar and punctuation. Many people think that essay editing ends there, but in fact proofreaders are also responsible for countless other tiny adjustments of structure, style and syntax, leading to a dramatic overall improvement in quality.

Why proofread?

proofreading can seem time-consuming and frustrating but it is essential to producing a polished and perfected final document. Whether you use a professional proofreading service or decide to tackle your own copyediting, it is extremely important to make sure you catch those little errors and slips that creep into all first drafts in order for the finished product to reflect the level of professionalism and high-standards you deserve.

Academic proofreading

From weekly essays to dissertations and thesis proofreading, editing your academic work is extremely important. Often in academic essays, a percentage of the marks available are set aside for accurate spelling and grammar. Proofreading ensures that your essay or dissertation scores the high marks it deserves and prevents the frustration of those all-important marks being lost over silly errors that you simply hadn’t noticed. We are all prone to miss mistakes in our own work, even when checking it carefully through, so the fresh pair of eyes a proofreader provides can be invaluable.

Business proofreading

For business writing, from website text to advertising, copyediting is absolutely imperative to present a professional, competent image to customers and prospective clients. No matter what the sphere of the business, clients will always be unimpressed by grammar or spelling mistakes, and are likely to be put off by obvious slips that haven’t been picked up by proofreaders.

Why not use the spell check?

The spelling and grammar checks available on most modern computers are extremely useful, but ironically have actually led to a rise in small errors going unnoticed. As people become more reliant on technology they have tended to be less vigilant about proofreading, leading to a failure to notice the many mistakes the spell check fails to pick up on.

Common examples include the misuse of homonyms (such as there, their and they’re), which don’t register as ‘mistakes’ with the spell check, American spellings going unnoticed by software and missing punctuation marks, which are sometimes not indicated by the grammar check.

In addition, professional proofreading and editing services often include a much more subtle overhaul of the ordering of points or the format, a polishing touch simply not provided by the simple spell check.

So for flawless, professional text that guarantees an impressive impact, proofreading should always be a key stage in preparing any document.

Editing services – excellent online advice

Nottingham University scores well in many of the league tables produced for assessing universities, both in terms of teaching quality and research.  Nottingham appeared as number 7 in the Research Assessment Exercise 2008, showing that the lecturers at the university are heavily involved in research and publish a great deal of new material.

The quality of teaching at Nottingham was rated by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) which scored Nottingham in 39 subjects, giving the university between 22 and 24 from a total of 24 points.  International ratings also place Nottingham highly, for instance it was ranked 10th best university in the UK by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

With campuses in Malaysia and China, it really is a university with its eyes on the global experience, preparing students to compete in a highly mobile and skilled workforce.  Staff and students are recruited from abroad.  Nottingham University is proud to have been the first foreign university to establish a campus in China (in 2005) and the university was given a Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2001 and a Queen’s Award for Industry  to celebrate its contribution to international trade in 2006.

The university began as a civic college in 1881, moving to its University Park campus in 1928 after a gift of 35 acres from the Boots the chemist heir, Sir Jesse Boot.  It became a university in 1948, but even before that transformation, distinguished visitors such as Gandhi, Einstein and H G Wells came to visit as guest speakers.

Past students at the university have gone on to win Nobel Prizes or excel as Olympic champions.

Today, the university has over 32,000 students at the UK campus, with 61% of these coming from overseas.  The campuses abroad cater for over 3,000 students in Malaysia and over 4,000 in China.

Professional proofreading advice

Could Nottingham University’s website help you with your editing queries?  Take a look at their excellent study skills advice with advice on grammar, punctuation, vocabulary and general writing skills.  All this should be invaluable to you as you improve your editing and proofreading skills.  Although the original reader of this material might be expected to be a university student writing essays, there’s no denying that this material is valuable for  anyone who needs help editing their written work.

Have you found other exciting editing advice?  Please let us know by posting your comments below.

If you want to improve your editing skills you need to work on your grammar, punctuation, vocabulary and spelling.  There are some fun blogs focusing on editing and grammar that can help you sharpen your ability to spot and correct English language mistakes.

Editing services – online enthusiasts

There are several blog authors who focus on grammar, spelling and punctuation.  The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar is one US site that looks at  This US site demonstrates the typical mistakes that people can make with their grammar by displaying and commenting on photographs of errors.  It suggests editing corrections and the authors upload photos of signs and even video footage of the sorts of problems that can occur.

The UK equivalent to the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar is the Grammar Blog.  This is another amusing site where the author displays photographs of the grammar, punctuation and spelling problems they come across in their everyday life.  Pub signs and pub signs make regular appearances on this editing blog.

Another blog is written by The Grammar Vandal who takes her Sharpie pen everywhere, editing signs or any other grammar errors she finds in public.

If you’re looking for an editing blog with a more serious tone, Blue Pencil Editing is a popular blog that discusses grammar in greater depth.

Finally, look at the word of the day website from a top dictionary provider such as Merriam Webster to help with improving your vocabulary.  An editor should always work with a dictionary next to them, but familiarizing yourself with new words on a daily basis is a great way of helping you spot spelling errors.

Editing services – ongoing research

Don’t feel disheartened if it takes you a while to get to grips with good grammar.  No matter how experienced an editor becomes, language is always changing and there are grammar rules to be learnt.

Have you found other great editing resources online?  Please let us know by posting a comment below.

Effective editing is a skill that needs a keen attention to detail and brilliant focus, whether you are copy editing or proofreading.  You need a strong grasp of grammar, punctuation and spelling and you need an interest in language.

Here are some pointers to help you proofread effectively.

• If you are editing a Word document, changing the text into a different font onscreen can help you notice errors that you missed before.
• Always get a good night’s sleep before you edit. Copy editing and proofreading may seem like relaxing reading, but the nature of the work is deceptive.
• Read the material through at least twice. Ideally a proofreader will read once at ‘normal’ reading speed in order to catch grammatical errors, and then a second time much more slowly, comparing the material against the original proof (i.e. before the material was typeset).
• Some proofreaders find that it helps them to read out loud.
• Check spellings against a dictionary and keep a good grammar book to hand.  Even the best editors need reference books.  Your memory can’t hold onto every grammar rule.
• Use a ruler or cover the text you haven’t read yet with a sheet of paper.  Even the professionals need this to make sure their eyes don’t slip to a lower line on the page.
• If necessary, read through looking for just one type of error on each ‘pass’, e.g. one time you might look for typology problems, another time you will simply look at spelling, or capital letters or grammar.
• You might find it useful to keep a magnifying glass in your desk or nearby, so that you can check the smallest text (e.g. 9pts or smaller).
• If you are proofreading a book, remember to check all the page numbers at the end, proofread the index.  Do the page numbers in the index agree with the appearance of the words in the text?  Proofread the Contents page – again checking that the page numbers for each entry are correct.
• Read guides to correct English and grammar books. If you’re not interested in the rules of correct written communication then you’re not going to excel as an editor.

These are just a few handy hints to help you edit effectively.  Are there any other issues you have been concerned about?  Have you been given any useful tips that you find useful for editing?  If so, please share you experiences using the comments boxes below.

Confusables are a common problem that editors find in texts.  These are words that may sound (or almost sound) the same, but they are spelt differently and mean different things.  They could be words like: Site/cite/sight, their/there/they’re, to/too/two, passed/past, effect/affect.

There are also confusing words that have meanings that are very close, but they need to be used with care.  These words may have a similar root, but they do have different meanings.  They can need careful thought: Disinterested/uninterested, ensure/assure, comprise/compose, infer/imply.

These words cause problems for native speakers and foreign learners alike.  They tend to slip through into published text because the spell check on the computer won’t pick them up – if you wrote ‘weather’ when you meant ‘whether’, you’ve spelt a word correctly and the computer isn’t clever enough to pick out that you’ve used the wrong word.

Why bother?

Why should you care?  Won’t the reader of the text understand the meaning by looking at the context?  Will they even notice that there is a mistake when the words are so similar?  Plenty of organizations and companies make it clear that using correct English is essential to them.  On their website the BBC points out that if journalists use the wrong word (in writing or verbally) it reflects badly on the BBC and it jeopardises their good reputation.  The Plain English Campaign claims that around £500 million pounds of the British Government’s money has  been saved by the work of the Campaign over the last 2 decades.  Poor communication wastes time and therefore money!

There are no short cuts for dealing with confusables.  Taking some time to focus on them and learn their uses is the only way to avoid embarrassing errors.  However, there are some great websites to point you towards the most commonly mistaken words:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_20.htm

http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficulties/difficulties.html

For further help, Fowler’s Modern English Usage gives a detailed description of the correct way to use many confusing English words as well as flagging up grammar and punctuation problems.  The book was originally published in 1926, but remains a popular reference book for editors to this day.

You can test your knowledge of confusables by trying a test here:-

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_72.htm#confusex1

Are there other parts of the English language that are causing you confusion?  If you have particular editing problems please post a comment below.

Production is the process whereby your typescript (perhaps in a rather dishevelled state) is transformed into the finished product.  It covers everything from editing, through design, to printing.

In a professional publishing environment, there is a fairly rigid process that the typescript goes through.  At the start of this process, the text should be sent to a copy editor.  In a publishing house, for journal or magazine publishing, this editor may have a different job title, but the work they do to prepare the text for typesetting is the same.

Making corrections to grammar, spelling and punctuation, is only part of their job.  They also make a set of notes, ready for the handover of the text to the typesetter.  These notes will explain how the text ought to be set out on the page, which is vital for reader understanding of the material as well as enjoyment of the product.

Contents

The professional copy editor’s notes include instructions, such as:-

Headings – The editor looks at the headings and works out which should be chapter headings and which are just subject headings.  If they are very long, the titles may be split at a particular point, so that a single word doesn’t trail onto a new line all by itself.

Illustrations and other visual material – Are any illustrations too big to be printed portrait?  Should the page be turned so that they can be reproduced in landscape?  If there are captions, how should these be displayed?  Will each illustration be numbered?

Displays – If there are sections of poetry or long quotes, how should these be displayed?  Should lists be bulleted or numbered?

Special text – Unusual figures (like maths symbols, scientific measurements, or Greek letters or those from other non-roman alphabets) are called ‘special sorts’.  If there are any of these they are flagged up in the editor’s notes.  This is particularly important in medical publishing, where inserting the wrong symbol could lead to someone possibly receiving the wrong dosage of a medicine.

References - They will make notes about how references should be displayed – as footnotes or endnotes?

This level of editing is far beyond most companies’ requirements.  Many firmswant to produce promotional or instructional material for clients or staff, but they decide many of the above matters in house.  Their text then needs proofread rather than copy edited.

This blog will take you through – step by step – how editors do their work, what they are looking for and why.  The information given here is based on how professional editors are trained to work in publishing houses.

How does an editor show that there is a mistake?

To show that there is an error in the text the proofreader marks this on the text using proofreading symbols.  To get an idea of the sorts of symbols that might appear, have a look at this:-

http://www.designerstoolbox.com/designresources/proofing/

The proofreader marks that there is a mistake and a typesetter or designer makes the changes. The proofreader checks the images, tables and any other visual material as well as the main body of the text.  Corrections may be needed in a graph or diagram, just as much as in the body of the text.  In some cases a typesetter might even put the wrong image with the wrong caption.  This could cause total confusion for the reader.

The proofreader marks the correction in the text as well as in the margin of the page.  For example, they might cross out a letter in the text and put a deletion symbol in the nearest margin.  Imagine that there is an imaginary line down the centre of the page; if the correction happens to the left hand side of that line then the proofreader marks the correction on that side.  The reason for putting a symbol in the margin is to make it easier to spot that there are corrections.  At a glance a typesetter can see whether there are any corrections on a page by having a quick look at the margins.

Corrections are marked in different colours.

• Red is used if the mistake was made by the typesetter.
• Blue corrections are made for other corrections, for example, if you are proofreading a book, the author may decide that they want new alterations.  These would be marked in blue.

The reason for the different colour marks is often to do with pricing.  Imagine that the typesetter is working on a book.  The typesetter will correct text for free if they have made the errors themselves.  If, however, it is the publisher or the author who is requesting changes, then those are not the typesetters’ fault and so they charge for these corrections.

Some professional writers may feel their language skills are exemplary and they don’t need someone else to check their work.  When you have all this material at your fingertips you may wonder why you would need a professional editing service to check over your work.

Why edit?

If you are preparing material for publication (whether it is for a leaflet or for a book) you need to be aware of the reasons editing takes place. An editor does three things:

• Makes sure that the author hasn’t made any errors.  These may be completely unintentional (such as typing mistakes made when the author is preparing the work under pressure).
• Makes sure that the reader can understand.  The author may be quite brilliant, but imagine if you have a professor writing a text book for GCSE students.  The author knows their subject well, but if they use text that is too complicated for the reader than the work becomes unusable.  The editor keeps the reader in mind.
• Makes sure that instructions for the designers and typesetters are clear.  Material needs to be prepared by designers and typesetters before final files are ready for the printer.  If the work is produced in a tiny font or the pages are badly laid out, this makes it harder for the reader to understand.  The comprehension process is influenced by the look of the page.

The different editors and their roles

In book and journal publishing there are basically two types of editor working directly on the text: the copy editor and the proofreader.

The copy editor sees the work first.  They check it for:-

• Consistency – They check that language is consistent throughout, e.g. if a word is hyphenated or capitalized then it is each time it appears, if the text uses ‘ise’ or ‘ize’ spelling this appears throughout,
• Mark up – They use editing code to explain to the printers which titles should appear as chapter headings or section headings, which font should be used, indentation  and so on.

When the text has been laid out as it will be printed a draft (or ‘proof’) is sent to the proofreader.  They will check:-

• Spelling.
• Grammar.
• They also check that all the copy editor’s instructions have been followed by the typesetter and designer.

Professional text editing makes a real difference to the accuracy and the reader’s enjoyment of the printed product.