Our Proofreading Christmas List

Here at Knowadays, we’re not tempted by the latest must-have gadgets, but we always get the latest version of Microsoft Word. We don’t crave luxury beauty products, either, but we do want every document we work on to look good. If we could ask Santa for a gift this Christmas, then, it would be something for all the prospective proofreaders out there.

And with that in mind, here is our proofreading-themed letter to Santa…

A Proofreading Christmas List…

Dear Santa,

For Christmas this year, we would like:

1. For proofreaders to pay attention to meaning.

If you ignore the meaning of the words in a sentence, you could drop a clanger. For instance, there are no spelling or grammar errors in the following:

The Hubble Space Telescope was named after Edwin Hubble, a celibate astrologer.

However, the author’s attention was probably waning when they called celebrated astronomer Edwin Hubble a celibate astrologer. As such, a good editor would pick this up.

2. For all proofreaders to adapt their style based on context.

Proofreaders should be able to adapt their editing to suit different contexts. In an academic essay, for instance, contractions such as don’t and they’ve are too informal. But if you are proofreading fiction, removing contractions from dialogue would make it seem stilted.

As such, we want every proofreader to become more flexible this Christmas.

3. For all proofreaders to use the spellchecker after proofreading.

It may seem counterintuitive, but it’s not at all uncommon for errors to be introduced during proofreading. This is especially common in longer documents, where small errors can be easy to miss. Hopefully, you always double check your edits before returning documents to clients already. But a final spellcheck, as well as using the Find and Replace function to eliminate double spaces, offers one last line of defence against introduced errors.

Kind regards,

Knowadays