The Funny Grammar Guide to Common Proofreading Slips

This week, the Funny Grammar Guide shows you all the slips to avoid making when proofreading your own work. We look at the most commonly missed errors and show you how to proofread so that you pick them up every time.

The Funny Grammar Guide to Proofreading

This week the Funny Grammar Guide tackles human error - the common slips that need to be picked up by proofreading before your text goes to the printers. We identify the most frequently made mistakes to show you what to look out for when proofreading your own work.

Top proofreading tips: proofreading tables, diagrams and design materials within a text.

Tables may look complex and the first instinct when considering a proofreading job with tables may be to ignore them and simply focus on the text. However it is in fact much easier than you might think to proofread them quickly and effectively for a more complete and thorough edit. For a proofreader or copy editor, coming up against tables and mathematical or design objects within a text for the first time can be a challenge. Follow our top tips for a great proofread of these aspects of a text.

Why Proofread? What’s the Point?

The function of a proofreader - 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.

Professional proofreading: the “house style”

By now, you probably realize that proofreading should correct any spelling, grammar or punctuation mistakes in a text. But what other tasks should a proofreader undertake? The "house style" is something all editors need to be aware of, wherever they work. Here are a few points to keep in mind.

Proofreading should be used to make sure that a text conforms to house style. “House style” is an agreed set of rules that a college, publisher or company has decided upon so that all their texts conform to an approved pattern. For a college or university these instructions could be used for essay proofreading, dissertaton proofreading or other assignments in the approved style. A publisher’s house style will be applied to any books or journals that their authors’ produce. Often, the house style will be set out in a style guide or manual.