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.

7 Errors You Must Notice When Editing

If you are editing typescripts, here are some classic mistakes to look out for. It is absolutely vital you do not leave these errors. They will make you look very careless and for essay proofreading or for dissertation editing, mistakes could lose the writer valuable marks.

Its/it’s – Remember that this is an exception to the possessive apostrophe rules: Its means “belonging to it” and It’s means “it is”.

Editing grammar check: What is Grammar?

In order to use a language and communicate effectively with other users you need an accepted set of rules. This set of rules is the grammar of the language. In any language the grammar can be complex and there will be plenty of exceptions to the rules. “A grammar” can also be used to mean a book that collects the rules of the language together. Often the rules can change depending on what part of the country you are in. It can be perfectly correct for one dialect to use a certain phrase, while in another part of the country language users would think that same phrase is ungrammatical, lazy or just plain wrong.