1. Try to proofread when you are fresh: it takes an awful lot of concentration to do it properly.
2. Take breaks to improve your concentration. Aim to stop and relax for at least five minutes every hour.
3. Look out for typing errors; writing form instead of from, for example, is a common mistake when typing and will probably not be picked up by a spell checker.
4. Keep an eye on short words like a, the, of and to; the eye tends to skip over these words and focus on longer ones. Remember that these words are sometimes left out by writers.
5. Check abbreviations: if the abbreviation is not widely known then make sure that it is defined the first time it is used.
5. Check items that come in pairs, for example parentheses and speech marks. Make sure that the second item hasn’t been missed out and that it is in the right place.
6. Check text that deviates from standard type: has it returned from italics or bold to normal at the right point?
7. Skim through numbered items; do this before reading the text in detail to check that the numbers used are in the right sequence.
8. Watch out for homophones: words that sound the same but have different meanings are commonly confused and may be used incorrectly. Examples of these are discreet/discrete and affect/effect.
9. Check apostrophes: do they appear where they should? Always check its/it’s to ensure that the correct form has been used (its is the possessive form; it’s is a contraction of it is).
10. Familiarise yourself with commonly misspelled words and make sure you know their correct spellings. Whenever you come across one of these words it should act as a red flag, prompting you to check that it is spelled correctly. Examples of commonly misspelled words are necessary, separate and skilful.
The Proofreading Agency’s Links page for proofreaders is a great starting point for finding further resources to help you improve your proofreading.
Wednesday 23 December 2009
Friday 11 December 2009
English Spelling II
Let’s take a closer look at the origin of some of the confusing English spellings which are a proofreader’s bread and butter!
In my last entry I mentioned the impact of the Norman Conquest on our spelling system. Well, in addition to the French scribes’ insistence on the use of five letters only for vowel sounds, they also introduced several new spelling conventions. These included the following replacements:
• qu for cw in words like quick
• gh for g in enough
• ch for c in church
• ou for u in house
It was also the French scribes who began to use the letter c in cell and city, and who replaced the letter u with o in words like come, love and one. This was done in an attempt to make the words easier to read, as at the time it was difficult to distinguish between u and v, i, n and m, due to the very similar way in which all these letters were written.
In the sixteenth century there were a number of scholars who felt very strongly that the spelling of a word should reflect its history. They introduced a number of changes, such as the addition of the letter b to the words debt and doubt to indicate their Latin roots in the words debitum and dubitare. The letter g was also added to reign to show that it had come from regno.
The very strange use of s in the word island was due to a mistaken assumption that the word had come from the Latin insula – in fact the word is not Latinate at all, but has origins in Old English.
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries there was an explosion of foreign loan words into English, which coincided with a period of worldwide exploration in which many new concepts and inventions were entering Europe. Our new words came from languages such as French, Greek, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese and brought with them a host of alien spellings:
• Brusque
• Cocoa
• Idiosyncrasy
• Pneumonia
• Epitome
I guess you could say that the years of spelling-drilling at school is a small price to pay for such a beautifully rich and colourful language!
If words like pneumonia and nuance don’t phase you then maybe you’re a natural-born proofreader. Find out how to set yourself up as a freelancer on The Proofreading Agency’s links page.
In my last entry I mentioned the impact of the Norman Conquest on our spelling system. Well, in addition to the French scribes’ insistence on the use of five letters only for vowel sounds, they also introduced several new spelling conventions. These included the following replacements:
• qu for cw in words like quick
• gh for g in enough
• ch for c in church
• ou for u in house
It was also the French scribes who began to use the letter c in cell and city, and who replaced the letter u with o in words like come, love and one. This was done in an attempt to make the words easier to read, as at the time it was difficult to distinguish between u and v, i, n and m, due to the very similar way in which all these letters were written.
In the sixteenth century there were a number of scholars who felt very strongly that the spelling of a word should reflect its history. They introduced a number of changes, such as the addition of the letter b to the words debt and doubt to indicate their Latin roots in the words debitum and dubitare. The letter g was also added to reign to show that it had come from regno.
The very strange use of s in the word island was due to a mistaken assumption that the word had come from the Latin insula – in fact the word is not Latinate at all, but has origins in Old English.
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries there was an explosion of foreign loan words into English, which coincided with a period of worldwide exploration in which many new concepts and inventions were entering Europe. Our new words came from languages such as French, Greek, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese and brought with them a host of alien spellings:
• Brusque
• Cocoa
• Idiosyncrasy
• Pneumonia
• Epitome
I guess you could say that the years of spelling-drilling at school is a small price to pay for such a beautifully rich and colourful language!
If words like pneumonia and nuance don’t phase you then maybe you’re a natural-born proofreader. Find out how to set yourself up as a freelancer on The Proofreading Agency’s links page.
Friday 4 December 2009
English Spelling: "absolutely, unspeakably awful"?
We all know that English spelling is difficult to master. The fact that English spelling is tricky, or even, in some people’s opinion “absolutely, unspeakably awful” (Masha Bell, Literacy Researcher) has at least one benefit – it means that there’s plenty of work out there for proofreaders and copy-editors to do!
Unlike in many other languages, the relationship between the way an English word is pronounced and the letters used to represent is not always straightforward. The irregularity of our spelling system can be a real headache, as every British schoolchild knows; however, the ordeal of spelling lists and tests is a phenomenon that’s virtually unknown in many other countries. As a Spanish friend once told me, “until I started to learn English, I’d never had a spelling test in my life!”
So how did this situation come about? It’s largely to do with our very colourful linguistic history. Before the French invasion we were well on the way to developing a phonetic system with a symbol for each of our nineteen vowel sounds; but when the Normans arrived, they insisted that only the letters AEIOU should be used to represent these sounds. The situation now is that there’s no one way of writing any given vowel sound: the word ‘sheep’, for example, could plausibly be written ‘sheep’, ‘sheap’, or ‘shepe’.
Before the event of the printing press there was a lot of variation in the way that people spelled words, but the arrival of this revolutionary invention prompted the beginning of a series of decisions that over time led to the standardisation of written forms. Some of these decisions were fairly arbitrary – as when printers added or removed the final ‘e’ simply to make a row of words end neatly in the right-hand margin.
Many of the early printers were Dutch immigrants and they brought with them the influence of their native writing systems.
There will be more on English spelling to follow…
If you think you’ve got a great eye for spelling, why not have a go at The Proofreading Agency’s Online Test?
Unlike in many other languages, the relationship between the way an English word is pronounced and the letters used to represent is not always straightforward. The irregularity of our spelling system can be a real headache, as every British schoolchild knows; however, the ordeal of spelling lists and tests is a phenomenon that’s virtually unknown in many other countries. As a Spanish friend once told me, “until I started to learn English, I’d never had a spelling test in my life!”
So how did this situation come about? It’s largely to do with our very colourful linguistic history. Before the French invasion we were well on the way to developing a phonetic system with a symbol for each of our nineteen vowel sounds; but when the Normans arrived, they insisted that only the letters AEIOU should be used to represent these sounds. The situation now is that there’s no one way of writing any given vowel sound: the word ‘sheep’, for example, could plausibly be written ‘sheep’, ‘sheap’, or ‘shepe’.
Before the event of the printing press there was a lot of variation in the way that people spelled words, but the arrival of this revolutionary invention prompted the beginning of a series of decisions that over time led to the standardisation of written forms. Some of these decisions were fairly arbitrary – as when printers added or removed the final ‘e’ simply to make a row of words end neatly in the right-hand margin.
Many of the early printers were Dutch immigrants and they brought with them the influence of their native writing systems.
There will be more on English spelling to follow…
If you think you’ve got a great eye for spelling, why not have a go at The Proofreading Agency’s Online Test?
Thursday 19 November 2009
The dictionary: an essential proofreading tool
Let’s start by taking a look at that most essential of a proofreader’s tools (apart from the red pen, of course) – the dictionary!
The dictionary that we use at the Proofreading Agency – and the one I always recommend to proofreaders – is the Oxford Dictionary of English. This handy, single-volume dictionary is full of brand-new words and is written to reflect the way that English is actually used: it aims to be descriptive, rather than purely prescriptive!
Did you know that the first major dictionary of the English language was compiled by Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century? This remained the definitive dictionary of English until the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published. The first OED dictionary was commissioned in 1879, but not published until almost 50 years later!
Here are some interesting facts about the OED:
The OED is a labour of love: at no point in its history has it made a profit.
So whether you’re an editor, proofreader, or writer of any kind, next time you reach for your dictionary spare a thought for the hard work of the lexicographers who’ve laboured throughout the past two hundred years to bring you a truly indispensable reference guide.
For more information and resources for proofreaders, visit the Proofreading Agency’s website.
The dictionary that we use at the Proofreading Agency – and the one I always recommend to proofreaders – is the Oxford Dictionary of English. This handy, single-volume dictionary is full of brand-new words and is written to reflect the way that English is actually used: it aims to be descriptive, rather than purely prescriptive!
Did you know that the first major dictionary of the English language was compiled by Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century? This remained the definitive dictionary of English until the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published. The first OED dictionary was commissioned in 1879, but not published until almost 50 years later!
Here are some interesting facts about the OED:
- Members of the public contributed to the first edition by sending in words and definitions on ‘slips’ – these were compiled into the first ‘corpus’ or wordbank of English
- The dictionary’s editor had 11 children, who slaved away on the dictionary for the first five years – but weren’t paid anything for their efforts
- JRR Tolkien worked on the second edition of the OED – editing the Ws from ‘Waggle’ to ‘Warlock’
The OED is a labour of love: at no point in its history has it made a profit.
So whether you’re an editor, proofreader, or writer of any kind, next time you reach for your dictionary spare a thought for the hard work of the lexicographers who’ve laboured throughout the past two hundred years to bring you a truly indispensable reference guide.
For more information and resources for proofreaders, visit the Proofreading Agency’s website.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)