Nothing is more embarrassing to your organization—or more easily avoided—than an obvious, simple mistake:
…because she was afraid of loosing.
But the only way to avoid such mistakes is to expect that they will be there, and plan accordingly.
- Build in time for proofreading as a separate step, before a document goes to layout—and make sure it’s enough time, including time for breaks. When we have missed things, it is often because we underestimated the time we’d need to spend on earlier phases of a publication, and as a result someone ended up having to proofread too many pages when he or she was fatigued. Corrections only get more expensive as the process moves along, so these lapses can (and have) cost us money.
- If proofreading does need to be done in a hurry, split it among multiple readers. It even makes sense to have multiple readers checking the same pages. Two weeks ago, for example, another reader and I were simultaneously reviewing the same pages for a rush job and we found significantly different errors, any of which would have embarrassed the client.
- In any case, the proofreader should be a fresh pair of eyes. Do not allow the writer or primary editor to be the sole proofreader.
- Encourage proofreaders to work “outside in,” that is, to check graphs and image captions first, then titles and subtitles, then end- or footnotes, and finally the text itself.
