Advanced Proofreading

At the end of this course you should be able to:

• plan a book-length proofread and carry it out thoroughly
• decide what to change and what to leave alone
  
• determine what to look for when proofreading texts set from electronic files
• employ strategies for checking and cross-checking (as opposed to reading)
• deal with the author at the proof stage.

This course contributes to PUB 20 of the Book & Journal Publishing National Occupational Standards.

Editors, proofreaders and editorial project managers who have some proofreading experience and want to know how to get the most out of the proof stage of a project while still staying within budget and schedule.

• Reading proofs set from electronic files
  • The proofreader’s responsibilities
• Planning the proofread
  • Balancing the needs of the material with the budget and schedule
• Typical errors and how to deal with them
  • Corruption of text
  • Missing material
  • Typography and layout
  • Position of figures and directionals
  • Running heads
• Editing on proof and its knock-on effects
  • Fact-checking
  • Improving poor grammar and writing
  • Post-hoc standardisation of editorial style
• Collating the author’s corrections
• The index
• Checking and cross-checking
  • Design consistency
  • Contents vs chapter openings vs running heads
  • List of figures vs captions on the page
  • Cross-reference pointers vs targets
  • Author–date references vs bibliographical list
  • Number sequences
  • Capitalisation of headings
  • Line-end hyphenation.