Proofreading and editing

Aside from being a member of my professional association, the BDÜ, and the treasurer of the Bavarian chapter, I am also part of the editorial team of “Bayern Info”, the members magazine published by the BDÜ LV Bayern three times a year.
Right now, the second issue is about to be published and we are in the throes of proofreading everything, several times, in various stages. The fact that we are also completely revamping the entire look makes it even more important to look at everything closely.
Since the team is spread across the entire “Freistaat”, we have to do everything electronically. We are still trying to figure out the best and most efficient way of communicating and passing on changes, corrections etc. We have tried Google Docs and sending around Word files and e-mails, neither of which has proven to be really satisfactory but that could be due to user error, too.
In any case, as we are now in the final stage, we get everything as pdf files. My pdf program has great features for commenting and marking pdf documents, so I’m using that rather than printing it out, marking it by hand and scanning it back in or laboriously counting rows and paragraphs and writing the changes in a separate document.
I also fairly regularly proofread for some of my clients, and since I usually receive a Word document, I can just use the “Track changes” feature. As far as I remember, I have never actually had to manually do any proofreading or editing (in my professional life). But if I ever will, these suggestions may juts come in handy… 😉
There are two different sources for this image: Brian A. Klems, Writer’s Digest and Eve Corbel, Geist magazine
I don’t know how many of you are (regularly) proofreading or editing other people’s work, but if so, how do you do it? I’m curious to hear it! Please share in the comments!

 

This Post Has One Comment

  1. bonnjill

    When I proofread I usually print the text out and do in fact use a lot of the proofreading symbols, which I learned in grad school and during my internship in Bonn. I find I am more aware of the errors that way. If I proofread something on the monitor I am more likely to not notice it.

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