Module 0: Techniques and good practice

In this module, you will be introduced to some of the tasks that you will be required to carry out as a
proofreader. In addition, there are skills that you will need – and these apply to all jobs, no matter
what kind of publication you are working on or client you are working for.
You will need:
• excellent command of spelling, punctuation and grammar (and a shelf of reference books to
help you when you need clarification or amplification, if these are not your strong points)
• good memory, so that you can pick up inconsistencies as you read through a document
• sharp eyes, to spot errors and potential problems
• a clear head!

Whatever sort of proofreading you are doing, and whoever you are working for, there are certain
aspects of the job that are constant and that apply to all documents. In this module we look at how
to develop a good technique and at the methods that constitute good practice. These are
transferable skills, and you will be able to benefit from them in any working situation.
We will discuss the following points:
• close reading
• house style and stylistic consistency
• factual errors
• contradictions
• typographical consistency
• ambiguity
• extra-textual material – illustrations, diagrams, tables, plates, captions, notes
• ‘all present and correct’
• checklists.

Close reading

Probably the most important technique that you will learn on this course is close reading. Normally,
we read by taking in whole chunks of text, recognising words by their shape; however, that’s the
way to miss errors in proofreading. We have to read more slowly, taking in each letter of each word
to make sure that it’s correct. We have to re-train our brain not to interfere. It’s too easy for our
brain to read what it expects to read, or to see what should be there, rather than what is actually
there. Here are some examples:
• duplicated letters: can you see the extra lettters as you asssess this wording? This is especiallly
diffficult with thinnner letters such as ‘t’ (lettters, asssess, especiallly, diffficult, thinnner)
• duplicated words: pay special attention to to short words as it is it very hard to notice when they
are duplicated, particularly over the turn of a line (to to short, as it is it very)
• certain words are easy to mistype, and would not be picked up by a Spellchecker; for example,
‘now’/‘not’ – but these can have a critical difference in meaning, such as the instruction ‘you
must now touch the live wire’!

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• other words are commonly confused and easy to miss, doubtless because we tend to skim over
them in speech. Be on the lookout for words than look or sound like other words, especially if
there is more that one in a line. These mistakes are more common then we would like!
(words than look, more that one, more common then)
• words that have some letters in the wrong order; for example, form/from, causal/casual,
unclear/nuclear
• some letters are often omitted, and the omission is difficult to spot; for some reason, ‘r’ and ‘s’
are particular offenders here, as are narrow letters such as ‘i’. A good proofreader will have a
sytem in place and a number of stategies for dealing with this, in particular a stuctural approach
to the adminstration of their proofreading (sytem, stategies, stuctural, adminstration)
• if the text contains a well-known phrase, your brain is likely to recognise it and move on quickly
without stopping to analyse it for correctness. For example, if you saw the proverb ‘a stitch in in
time saves nine’, you will do well to spot the duplicated ‘in’ because your brain will tell you what
the proverb should say, or what you expect to it to say, rather than it what it actually says (what
you expect to it to say, rather than it what it actually says).
In your own area of work, you might also encounter common errors that crop up with particular
terminology. For example, we know of a barrister’s secretary who frequently has to type emails to
the Bar Council. She is so worried about typing ‘Bra Council’ by mistake that she stops and checks
this phrase every time she types it. That is excellent practice! We would recommend that every
proofreader compile a list of words that they find tricky, or that they often encounter and have
difficulty with – and look twice every time you see one of these words in the text you’re reading.
This really is the best way to work.

House style and stylistic consistency

You might be surprised at how many variants exist in spelling, hyphenation, use of capitals and the
like. Because of this, every company that produces written material has (or should have) a house
style guide, in which their own preferences are established. House style covers a range of aspects,
some examples of which are:
• spellings and word forms: ‘-ise’/‘-ize’ endings, artefact/artifact, toward/towards, while/whilst,
among/amongst, archaeology/archeology (some of these variants reflect differences between
American and British English preferences)
Note: both ‘-ize’ and ‘-ise’ spelling may be used in UK publishing; ‘-ize’ spelling is not, as some
people think, purely American – it’s the preferred spelling for Oxford University Press, among
others. The only difference between the two is that US style does not use the ‘-ise’ variant, other
than with certain exceptions such as ‘advertise’ and ‘supervise’
• hyphenation: postwar/post-war, reenact/re-enact, halfway/half-way, common sense/common-
sense/commonsense, southwest/south-west
• whether to keep accents on words taken from other languages: élite, rôle, régime, façade,
mañana
• numbers: in words from one to nine, or from one to ten, or from one to ninety-nine, and then
figures (except for imprecise numbers, as in ‘millions of years’, ‘hundreds of people’)
• capitalisation: capitals for a person’s title (e.g. Pope Francis, Queen Elizabeth, Professor Laird)
but not for the office in general (popes, queens, professors); whether to use initial capitals for
names of subjects or departments (e.g. studying sociology in the Department of Sociology),
names of committees, working groups, the emergency services

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• dates: 3 May, 3rd May, the 3rd of May, May 3, May 3rd; the 4th/fourth century
• punctuation: using single or double quotation marks (inverted commas), en rule or em rule for
parenthetical dashes (we will cover these in detail later), serial comma (the comma before
‘and/or’ at the end of a list)
• abbreviations: whether to use full stops in abbreviations such as Prof., i.e. and e.g., in
contractions such as Dr and St, or in acronyms such as NATO, USA, BBC (the difference between
an abbreviation and a contraction: an abbreviation is a word that is cut off, such as ‘Prof.’,
whereas a contraction keeps the beginning and end but cuts out the middle, such as ‘Dr’)
• personal pronouns: we should avoid the sexist reference to all people as ‘he’, but there are
different ways of doing this – some publishers use ‘he or she’/‘she or he’ throughout; others
might use ‘he’ in some chapters but ‘she’ in others; still others prefer the gender-neutral plural
form ‘they’. This apparent inconsistency is often a feature of multi-author works, where
different people have written the various chapters. You might even find instances of it in this
course!
In addition to the style guide in which all these preferences are laid out, the copy-editor – the person
who revised the text before it came to you – may well have recorded on a style sheet any decisions
they made during the course of this aspect of their work. As a house style guide cannot cover every
possibility, it is often up to the copy-editor to make decisions concerning particular items they
encounter while editing. Always ask if there is a style sheet you may have when you start a job, as it
will save you having to make those decisions yourself if you notice discrepancies or departures from
the house style guide.

Factual errors

Sometimes you will be proofreading a text and find yourself thinking ‘that’s not right’: for example, if
the dates of the First World War are given as 1939–45, or the capital of Scotland is given as Glasgow.
Even if it isn’t your job to check all the facts in a piece (and you should clarify that at the start of a
job, to make sure you know what’s expected of you), if you find something that you know is wrong,
you must correct it if you know it for certain, or flag it up for attention if you are unsure.
If you find many such errors, that indicates a major problem with the content of the document: you
must get in touch with your supervisor or in-house contact immediately and let them know. We
discuss what to query and when, and how to raise queries clearly, throughout this course.

Contradictions

When you are proofreading, it is advisable to carry out the necessary tasks in sequence rather than
all at once – this is something that we will emphasise throughout this course. You cannot expect to
pick up problems with the sense of the words if you’re distracted by checking layout at the same
time, so do those tasks separately. You will need to give your full attention to the meaning of the
words if you are to pick up instances where authors contradict themselves or each other. Here are
some examples:
• the author claims that the figures in a table prove economic growth, but in fact the figures
suggest a contraction rather than growth

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• the author examines historical evidence, and in one chapter claims that it proves who was guilty
of a crime, but in the next chapter says that the person’s guilt is impossible to prove beyond
doubt
• in a report written by members of a committee, the statistics are given different interpretations
by different authors: this means that a definitive conclusion cannot be arrived at, despite the
report claiming to do just that.

In an ideal world, the document would have been edited first in order to find and resolve problems
like these – but we do not live in an ideal world! When you start a proofreading job, find out how
much editing has been done beforehand: if the answer is ‘none’ or ‘very little’, you have a heavy
responsibility! We call this ‘proof-editing’, and will cover it in Module 1.

Typographical consistency

In addition to reading the words, you will also be checking the appearance of the piece. The term
‘proofreading’ should ideally apply to the process of examining the document in its final form, with
all items in place and the layout finalised. To ensure that you do the best job you can, do this
separately from the reading process so that you are not distracted and lose concentration.
Look carefully at the document, checking that every instance of the same type of item looks the
same as all the others; for example:
• chapter titles
• authors’ names at the start of chapters or articles
• headings, subheadings (and perhaps sub-subheadings) dividing a chapter
• running headlines (across the top of pages) or running footers (across the foot of pages)
• quoted material/extracts
• table headings and illustration captions
• paragraph indents
• text boxes
• use of colour to distinguish parts of the text, if any.
Headings will be examined in greater detail later in the course, as there is a great deal to understand
about them.

Ambiguity

When you are reading a document, do you ever find yourself thinking: ‘I’m not quite sure what that
means – it could be one thing, but it could be another!’ As mentioned above, a well-prepared
document will have been edited to ensure that its content is clear and unambiguous, but you might
still find passages that are neither of those things. This is where the proofreader is a vital link in the
publication chain: if it doesn’t make sense to you, it probably won’t make sense to the eventual
reader!
Here are some examples of ambiguous sentences: see if you can reword them to each of the
possible meanings.

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• He told me that he had fixed the car after he got home. (What did he do after he got home: fix
the car, or tell me that he had done so?)
• The prisoner was remanded in custody by magistrates accused of stealing £3 million in gold bars.
(Was it the prisoner or the magistrates who had carried out this extraordinary theft?)
• I always carry a picture of my dog in my pocket. (What is in my pocket: the picture of my dog, or
the dog itself?)

Extra-textual material – illustrations, diagrams, tables, plates, captions,

notes
When you are checking a document that contains any illustrative material or notes, you have a
number of tasks to carry out. Here is a useful list:
• if any items are numbered in sequence, is that sequence correct with the numbers neither
skipped nor repeated?
• in the case of notes, are all the in-text note indicators numbered in sequence, neither
skipped nor repeated, as well as the notes themselves?
• does each note indicator refer to the correct note – that is, does the content of the note tally
with what the text is talking about?
• do all illustrations have a place in the text where the reader’s attention is drawn to them?
• does each text mention of an illustration refer to the correct item?
• are the illustrations all positioned in the most appropriate place?
• in the case of pictures (drawings, photographs, diagrams, reproductions of works of art), are
they the right way up?
• are all the table headings identical in format and appearance (e.g. use of capitals, italic, bold;
use of punctuation)?
• are all the illustration captions identical in format and appearance (e.g. use of capitals, italic,
bold; use of punctuation)?
• do table headings and illustration captions need to contain information about the source of
the material, or any credit for reproducing them, and is that information present?

‘All present and correct’

When you receive a job, there is a very important task that you should carry out before you even
think about reading it: is everything there? It sounds too obvious to mention, but it’s surprising how
often an item is missing. Go about checking in the following way:
• if you receive paper proofs, count all the page numbers – are they all there, and in the correct
sequence? If the pages are not numbered, number them right away before you drop them on
the floor and have to put them back in order!
• if you receive electronic files, are they all present and in the right order?
• if any pages or files are missing, is this intentional? – for example, have you been told that there
is material still to come? And when you can expect it?
• if there appear to be items that you are not expecting, have these been sent in error from
another job?

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• has any accompanying documentation been included? – for example, copy-editor’s style sheet,
list of illustration captions, copies of the author’s replies to the copy-editor’s queries, a previous
publication in the series for you to check that the layout has been followed accurately.
If you find a problem with any of these, get in touch immediately with the person who sent you the
job. They might be going frantic at the other end because they can’t find the items you don’t need!
Or they aren’t aware that they should have included other material; the sooner you alert them to
this problem, the easier it will be for them to track it down.

Checklists

No matter how intelligent you might be, your brain could still use a little help! Instead of committing
all the steps of a proofread to memory, compile checklists for yourself and tick off the items one by
one as you work through them. This really helps to free up your brain for the more difficult tasks of
counting, assessing consistency, and so on. You will find some sample checklists on the following
pages:
• a proofreader’s own list that they use to guide them through the particular aspects of a job that
they do regularly
• a typical brief that a publisher might send to a proofreader with all the instructions they will
need to follow
• a checklist for a complex textbook.

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Sample proofreading checklists
(1) This is a checklist used by a proofreader who works on monthly clinical updates written for
paramedics. Each issue follows a strictly prescribed format, which ensures continuity of branding.
Notice the structure of the list: it itemises the various elements found in these booklets, and notes
all the features of the elements that must be checked. (Don’t worry about terms such as ‘word
break’ and ‘unjustified’; we’ll define them all later.)

Item Format 
Page layout • Front: illustration at top, with Vol. / No. top right
• Title centred, bold, initial capital on first word only
(and on proper names, e.g. of syndromes)
• Author name beneath, centred, roman, including “by”
• Text two-column, unjustified (no word breaks)
• Paragraphs blocked with line space between
Headings • A: bold roman initial capital on first word only, ranged
left, no space following
• B: bold italic, initial capital on first word only, ranged
left, no space following
• C: italic, initial capital on first word only, no space
following
“What Next?” • Outlined in green, choices in bold (NB. wording must
boxes match the following A headings)
Running heads • (not on opening and closing pages):
• Left: Paramedic Update: Vol. [no.] No. [no.], ranged
left into margin
• Right: Title, ranged right into margin
Running footer • Both sides: page number, centred (not on opening and
closing pages)
Assessment • Question number arabic, with full point; text of
questions question follows on the same line
• Multiple choices: lower-case letter with full point;
ranged to align with first word of question
• Line space between questions
Lists • Numbered lists: arabic numeral with full point
• Numbered and bullet lists: ranged full out left, line
space above and below but not within; hanging
indent, initial capital, no closing punctuation except
full point at end of list (unless the bullet points are
themselves complete sentences, or are questions)
Notes • Note cues: follow punctuation
• Notes numbered with arabic numeral and full point,
no indent, line space between
Illustrations/Tables • Single-numbered, colon; headings initial capital and
lower case without closing punctuation
• Table headings above table, illustration captions below
figure
• Illustration labelling: initial capital on first word only

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(2) Sample proofreading brief/checklist from a publisher. Tasks that are not, strictly, part of a
proofreader’s job are so indicated by a note in italic.
Author(s): .....................................................................................................................................................
Title: .............................................................................................................................................................
Copy-editor: ........................................................................................................... [not always specified]ed]

 Copy-editor’s style sheet herewith

 Design spec herewith

Proofread against copy/blind, on paper/on screen (delete as appropriate)

Date handed over: .......................................................................................................................................

Date to be returned: ......................................................................................................................................
Estimated hours: ...........................................................................................................................................

Market and level: …………………………………………………………………………………………………

As well as proofreading the text (and captions, tables, etc.), do the following:
 check page numbers
 check running headlines
 fill in page numbers in Contents, etc.
 fill in page cross-references where obvious
 where not feasible to fill in page cross-references, put pencil X in the margin
 prevent short last line of para. at top of page
 prevent only one word/part of word as last line of para.
 prevent word break across facing pages/across recto–verso/across any pages

Footnotes:
 check positioned correctly
 check there is a footnote for every note indicator, and vice versa

Illustrations:
 check that they are in best possible position
 check figure captions against figure [not generally part of the proofreader’s job]
 check figure labels [not necessarily part of the proofreader’s job]

Tables:
 check that they are in best possible position
 spot-check/check all arithmetic [not generally part of the proofreader’s job]

Headings:
 if they begin with a number and/or letter, check the sequence [strictly, the copy-editor’s job]

References:
 check citations in text against References [this is really the copy-editor’s job]
 check order and completeness of content [this is really the copy-editor’s job]

You will/will not do the proof collation (delete as appropriate)

Additional notes

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(3) Sample proofreading checklist for an academic textbook. The proofreader has noted all the
elements contained in the text, and will go through the book several times, checking all the
instances of each item (e.g. headings) right through the book before moving on to the next. This is
the best way to maintain focus and spot errors and discrepancies.

ch. 1 2 3 4 [etc.]…
pages
numbered  1–24
ch. number 
heading 
new page 
running head 
Author name cf. TOC?
A headings 
B headings 
X headings 
lists:
bullet 
numbered 
extracts 
display 
notes: no. indicator 2?
heading 
style 
fig no. 
callout 
caption 
credit to come?
page depth 
word breaks 

In this list, some problems were discovered in chapter 1:

• the author’s name was spelt differently in the Table of Contents (TOC), so this needs to be
checked – which is the correct version?
• the indicator for note 2 was missing
• there was no credit for the figure, so a query needs to be raised.

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 Exercise: Proofreading for Editorial Consistency

Now it is time for your first exercise! You will find a brief, detailing what we want you to do,
then a proof to read. This is followed by the model answer and a commentary – we will follow
this procedure throughout the course.

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