All About Proofreading Jobs
As indicated in a previous post, i am putting this one up to share a few details about publishing houses and what you can expect as an editor/proofreader. From my experience of working for a prominent publishing house, I can tell you that simply a command over English will not do. Proofreading involves more than spotting spelling and grammatical errors and requires you to be familiar with some technicalities of publishing.
Since the requirement of rectifying spelling and grammar is well known, i will talk more about the aforementioned technicalities. To work in a publishing house, you will need to be familiar with a few symbols and abbreviations that editors use to describe several functions. You can see a list of commonly used symbols and abbreviations here. However, symbols and abbreviations may vary from publisher to publisher and you will have to get the hang of using them pretty fast. While proofreading, you will have to observe the flow of arguments and overall coherance of the piece. If there are illustrations accompanying the text, look closely whether they correspond to what is being said. You need to keep an eye on the colours and make sure there is no spillage. Also check if the font and it’s size is the same throughout the piece. Headings and important points could be of one font (or font size) and the rest different, so observe closely.
Finally,while proofreading a book, you need to check whether the page numbers correspond to those mentioned in the contents page and whether all pages have been numbered. If the book is a textbook and contains exercises then you might have to solve them to see if they work and if the answers given (if any) are correct. You might also be asked to comment on the layout and the cover pages.
Proofreading involves all of this and when it comes to editing a raw manuscript, it is all this and some more. Details of that will follow in another post.