CHECK CHECK CHECK
Proofreading is a necessary part of the life of a published writer. Avoid typos and proofing glitches with the help of eagle-eyed Margaret James
Margaret James
I’ve never read a published novel, including those I’ve written myself, that didn’t contain at least one typo or glitch. It’s so easy for these to sidle past even the most vigilant author, editor and proofreader. There’s something about checking through a long work of fiction that seems to induce a fugue state in most of us. Whenever I’m proofreading I find myself yawning, too.
It’s tempting to fast-forward through any proofreading – should that be proofreading, proof-reading or proof reading? It depends who you ask – in order to get this most boring of literary jobs out of the way. Publishers themselves usually want this final stage of the process to be done as quickly as possible, so we novelists frequently find ourselves working under pressure, sometimes while we’re trying to do half a dozen other things too, such as finishing a different novel for which the submission deadline was yesterday.