Copyediting and Proofreading For Dummies

Suzanne Gilad

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780470121719
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118051313
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Languages

Turn your knack for language into a lucrative career

Must-know techniques and resources for maximizing your accuracy and speed

Interested in becoming a copyeditor or proofreader? Want to know more about what each job entails? This friendly guide helps you position yourself for success. Polish your skills, build a winning résumé and land the job you've always wanted. Books, magazines, Web sites, corporate documents - find out how to improve any type of publication and make yourself indispensable to writers, editors, and your boss.

• Balance between style and rules
• Master the art of the query
• Use proofreader symbols
• Edit and proof electronic documents
• Build a solid freelancing career

Part I

Welcome to the Word World

In this part . . .

I help you get a general sense of what these folks called copyeditors and proofreaders do and where they do it. That way, as you prepare to join their ranks, you can develop a pretty clear picture of what your work life may look like.

You may know a lot more about copyediting and proofreading than you think. Don’t agree? Flip to Chapter 1. I bet you’ll be totally impresed with yourself. Er, make that impressed. In Chapter 2, I explore the world of book publishing, in case that’s the type of job you’re aiming to get. If it isn’t, you may want to jump right to Chapter 3, where I touch on some of the other job opportunities available.

Chapter 1

Reading as a Job? Oh, Yes

In This Chapter

Recognizing your qualifications to proofread and copyedit

Setting aside some outdated images

Discovering some truths about copyediting and proofreading

Considering which career path to pursue

So you picked up this book to discover how to become a copyeditor or proofreader? I’ve got some news: You’re probably already pretty good at it. You’ve been training for this career path since you first picked up A B C blocks in nursery school. Let me guess: You’re the person everyone begs to review their résumés . . . college applications . . . term papers . . . doctoral theses.

Any time you improve upon someone else’s writing, you take on the tasks of a copyeditor or proofreader. If you share your skills, helping people by wordsmithing for them and providing them with a better finished product, you’re already working in this field. The question is, are you getting paid for it? If not, I offer lots of advice in this book for turning your skills into paychecks. But let’s not put the cart before the horse. Here’s a little (true) tale for you.

I was bursting with pride when my friend Kevin called me on my lunch break many years ago. I had just landed my first freelance proofreading job through a temp agency, and my head was awash with the possibilities that lay ahead of me: an extra paycheck, potentially interesting material I could read in my spare time, and a flexible schedule that would allow me to have a social life. I told Kevin all about the job, adding that I had just proofread a piece for a major advertising firm.

“That’s scary,” he said.

I tried to reassure Kevin. “It’s not scary at all. You just have to read a little more slowly than normal and keep in mind . . .”

“Actually,” he interrupted, “I don’t mean scary that way. I mean that, here’s this big agency that feels it’s so important that whatever-it-is-they-sent-you is correct, they don’t trust their own people with it. So they decide it’s worth it to pay an ‘expert’ to proof it for them . . . and then it goes to you, who always misspells my last name. That’s scary.”

Hm. For a moment, I agreed with him.

But what I didn’t know then was that almost all proofreaders start out as I did — with little more than an interest in reading, access to a dictionary, and a few short lessons on style, grammar, and how to make proofer’s marks. See, I didn’t have to be a phenomenal speller; I just had to be able to look up words I was unfamiliar with. If I was unsure about grammar, I just had to know which reference guide to check. (And in all fairness, that guy’s last name was really hard to spell. It had, like, four consonants in a row.)

It soon became clear to me that I was doing just fine. And looking back, I realize that I did so without the kind of guidance I include in this book. So if you take nothing else away from reading this text (which I sincerely hope isn’t the case), know that you are indeed qualified to review the writing of others. And believe me, the more you do it, the better (and faster) you will be.

As for me, knowing that I can impart information to you that will put you way ahead of where I was when I began my proofreading career makes me so proud I could pretty much, well, burst.

Debunking Some Myths

Maybe you’re carrying around some archaic images in your skull about what copyediting and proofreading entail. If you assume that taking this career path means you’ll be wearing nerdy glasses while forever flipping through dusty grammar tomes and making nice white sheets of paper bleed with the markings from your red or blue pencil, think again. The resources you turn to for advice on grammar, spelling, and usage are just as likely to be Web sites as reference books. (See the resource listings in Chapter 14 and Appendix C if you want proof.) And depending on your employer, you may make all your contributions via keyboard instead of red or blue pencil (as I discuss in detail in Chapter 17).

So put your nerdy glasses away (unless you really like them, in which case, who am I to judge?). The world of professional words is full of infectiously cool creative types — writers, editors, designers, and artists. We’re movers and shakers with creative ideas and (almost always) a true love of reading, which means we’re pretty fascinating to talk to at parties.

Here are some other myths to strike:

Copyeditors and proofreaders have to be students of literature and English, classically trained by Ivy League professors. Even if there were a million bucks in it for me, I don’t think I could diagram a sentence. And reciting Shakespeare? Let’s just say my exposure to good ol’ William has more to do with Kenneth Branagh than I care to admit. Really. Or, um, verily.

You don’t need to know every nuance of the English language to be a copyeditor or proofreader. It helps to be an avid reader, but it doesn’t matter if you fall asleep at night reading Norton anthologies or copies of Sports Illustrated.

If you read for money, you’ll never enjoy reading again. The running joke among copyeditors is that if anyone ever buys us a book, there better be some cash tucked into the table of contents or we’re not going to bother reading it.

For me, it’s definitely a bonus that nowadays most of what I read is on someone else’s dime. Still, there’s no better thrill than putting my feet up and settling into a suspense thriller — without having to scour f...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Welcome to the Word World
• Part II : Conquering Copyediting
• Part III : Picking Up a Proofreading Career
• Part IV : Adding to Your Repertoire
• Part V : Turning Your Skills into Paychecks
• Part VI : The Part of Tens
• Part VII : Appendixes
• Further Reading
• End User License Agreement