Proofing your work I find that proofing my work is one of the most monstrous tasks that there is. What follows is a short description of how I do it. I would like to hear from the others on the board how they do it, I am sure between us we can come up with a wealth of proofing knowledge.
My first draught is always rough. Sometimes, I cannot think of the right word, then I simply use a lesser strong word, but I put that word in brackets so that I am reminded to change this at (checking) time. See my example above? I know I want to change the word ‘checking’, maybe it will become ‘editing’ or ‘proofing’. Because I don’t trust electronics very much, I always print my work and keep a hardcopy of my story in a file. I take this file everywhere, and I do my second write with pen in this file, usually sitting somewhere in the garden. I use a red pen to make sure I can see every change when I get back to the computer. This is the stage that I replace those words in brackets, scratch out whole paragraphs and write new ones. I then put the work away for a few weeks. After about three weeks the manuscript can come out of the drawer and be read. It is during this read that I notice if there is anything missing in the story. Was there something I meant to say that I didn’t? Have I told the whole story? Did I waffle a lot and need to kill some pages? When the story is done, I print out the whole thing again, and now the editing becomes serious. Out with the red pen again, and this time I read each page three times. Yes, three times. The first time I am mostly just reminded of what I have written. The second time I start checking words, sentences and paragraphs. Words that can easily be confused, such as ‘their’ and ‘they’re’, grammar, spelling etc gets checked. I find that I have to read each page three times to get this right. After that, the work goes to my proof reader (read ‘long suffering girlfriend’). She is English, (I am Afrikaans, so my tenses etc suck). She points out more mistakes, fixes my funny English to be real English and also criticizes me. Only once I have done all the changes she suggested do I see the work as being complete and ready to be published.
I find that proofing my work is one of the most monstrous tasks that there is.
What follows is a short description of how I do it. I would like to hear from the others on the board how they do it, I am sure between us we can come up with a wealth of proofing knowledge.
My first draught is always rough. Sometimes, I cannot think of the right word, then I simply use a lesser strong word, but I put that word in brackets so that I am reminded to change this at (checking) time.
See my example above? I know I want to change the word ‘checking’, maybe it will become ‘editing’ or ‘proofing’.
Because I don’t trust electronics very much, I always print my work and keep a hardcopy of my story in a file. I take this file everywhere, and I do my second write with pen in this file, usually sitting somewhere in the garden. I use a red pen to make sure I can see every change when I get back to the computer. This is the stage that I replace those words in brackets, scratch out whole paragraphs and write new ones.
I then put the work away for a few weeks. After about three weeks the manuscript can come out of the drawer and be read. It is during this read that I notice if there is anything missing in the story. Was there something I meant to say that I didn’t? Have I told the whole story? Did I waffle a lot and need to kill some pages?
When the story is done, I print out the whole thing again, and now the editing becomes serious. Out with the red pen again, and this time I read each page three times. Yes, three times. The first time I am mostly just reminded of what I have written. The second time I start checking words, sentences and paragraphs. Words that can easily be confused, such as ‘their’ and ‘they’re’, grammar, spelling etc gets checked. I find that I have to read each page three times to get this right.
After that, the work goes to my proof reader (read ‘long suffering girlfriend’). She is English, (I am Afrikaans, so my tenses etc suck). She points out more mistakes, fixes my funny English to be real English and also criticizes me.
Only once I have done all the changes she suggested do I see the work as being complete and ready to be published.