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I am an english student, so if you are teaching, you already far outmatch me in ability, however, these are my thoughts. Sometimes, although is sounds a little bit insane, it is possible to create someone in your mind to critically analyse your work. Try this. Imagine a sarcastic, witty imp, sitting on your favourite shoulder. He knows nothing but the ...

Proof-reading and editing (or copy editing) are actually different though overlapping activities, arguably requiring opposed skills. A good editor is creative and imaginative; a good proof-reader adheres consistently and strictly to style guidelines. Assuming you have neither person at hand, here are four tips that might be of use: Show your work to ...

Something I have done with considerable success is to read the finished product in a much larger font. When you are reading along in your normal font, it is easier for your mind to anticipate and gloss over words, even when they are obviously incorrect. By increasing the font size, an error tends to stand out more clearly, making it more difficult to gloss ...

I use a Mac. I use the built-in Text-to-Speech feature to read back aloud the words I have written. It is by far superior to reading yourself because the brain sometimes skips things right in front of your eyes! And the more tired your eyes, the ears usually hear better! You can achieve similar results if you use a PC.

Nobody is perfect, not even proofreaders. But first, let's get some terminology straight: Copyediting is a catch-all term for editors who revise, make changes and suggestions, and so on. Of course, as editors go along, we mark up any typos they find on the proofreading level. But it's not the focus of this pass. We'll catch as many errors as we can, but at ...

I don't know whether you do this or not, but one of the best ways of proofreading I've found is to print out the document and read it through in the paper format, rather than trying to proofread writing on screen. Mark up your corrections on the paper in a particular coloured ink and correct them on-screen. Now take a break and do something else before ...

I've done this for brochures and other literature, and it's a bit of extra work compared to marking up a PDF with circles and arrows. But some publications have had problems with people using different PDF readers and these marks appearing in the wrong locations, so there may be a reason for this. "Describe the action" means you should let the proofreaders ...

Generally speaking, this is a perfect job for a proofreader, so there's not much point in you trying to "double up" with a professional. There might be some minor cost difference if they charge by hour, but I would guess it to be negligible - the effort is less in fixing errors once found, and more in carefully going over the entire text, to find the errors. ...

Some errors will always remain, no matter how many proofreaders go through the manuscript. I've yet to see an error-free book. Some readers will always be critical. If it's not the proofreading, it's the editing. If it's not that, it's the fact-checking, and so on. Just steel yourself for the critics, and hope they find happier ways to amuse themselves, ...

This is a difficult question to answer because an awful lot depends on your own personal expectations of what you expect a proofreader to achieve. Having said that, a good proofreader should find all mistakes in a proofed draft, no mistakes should be acceptable; otherwise, what are you paying them for? On the other hand, in my experience (and in my ...

You're working with a human so you'll usually be disappointed if you expect perfection. But as the author you are right to have high standards. There are proofreading techniques, such as breaking up chapters and long paragraphs so errors stand out. Perhaps your proofreader is early in their career, perhaps not. Instinctively I'd suggest a few rounds of ...

In my opinion as a computer technician, this is impossible at least outside the strictly technical language... And, even so, I don't think it's something you can expect to be error free. Google translator is far from accurate, at least from what I see when interacting with people that depends on it to speak in English. It can translate something in an ...

Perfection is a very difficult standard to achieve. I think the more practical standards are: At what point does the number of errors in the text become distracting to the reader? Ten typos or grammar errors in a 66,000 word novel doesn't sound to me like something that would be really annoying. What is typical in the industry? What's the average number ...