What does proofreading really mean?

I was looking forward to Joy Burrough-Boenisch’s talk at METM25. Proofreading is something that language professionals do every day, yet we rarely talk about this skill in its own right. There was some beautiful vocabulary to be savoured as Joy swept us through the history of proofreading. In the “hot metal era” from the late 19th to the late 20th century, she reminded us, the expensive recasting of hot metal type meant that proofreading had to be limited to what was strictly necessary. The texts sent to the compositor had to be marked up and error-free – but there was no place for the “nice-to-haves”. Was every change really needed?

On bright supporting slides that made good use of the vast screen in the Casa de la Convalescència’s Aula Magna, Joy invited us to enjoy the aesthetically pleasing copy marks and marginal marks used in different countries in more recent times. We were further rewarded with a long list of evocative proof types, some of which we might have come across before, some unfamiliar: foul, collated, scatter, voucher. A flurry of fine words to savour – and save for later procrasti-browsing and rabbit-holing! Hooray!

These were images and texts to digress and daydream over. But our proofreading expert moved us swiftly on with a whistle-stop tour of changes in the industry in recent decades and what she called the “democratisation” of proofreading: when the task expanded beyond the publishing industry and with the advent of the personal computer.

Cue the problems! Joy explained that in the 1990s, universities in the UK and beyond began offering dubiously named “proofreading” services that engendered ethical issues that could only be combated with guidelines – again well illustrated by Joy’s excellent slides. The boundaries between proofreading, copy-editing and editing have been blurred. Where does proofreading end and light editing, or even heavy editing, begin? Again, we were touching on the core issue in proofreading from the first moveable type to today: what not to change. Reflecting on the arc of my own education in proofreading, Joy was indeed echoing a lament common among proofreading training providers: “proofreading is often mistakenly equated with copy-editing”.¹ And Joy was not short of tips on how to differentiate these tasks, emphasizing the high degree of detachment required for proofreading. Editing required more engagement with meaning and empathy with the author. Proofreaders, meanwhile, were simply not normal readers.

At the end of the talk, I did feel that one question remained as to whether today’s on-screen changes were really as quick and easy, trackable and costless as Joy suggested. In word-processing applications, perhaps. In “pure” final-stage proofreading we may have swapped beautiful but cumbersome hot metal for frigid PDFs, but we continue to hesitate before requesting preferential changes at the last moment. Traditional compositors had given way to today’s layout professionals, working not in noble metals but in humble red adobe – oops – Adobe! But we are all as hard-pressed as ever – at least in terms of timing.

Faced with changing tech and tough wordface choices, Joy’s ever-welcome firm advice was: “Always tell your clients what your proofreading entails” and “be careful with your changes”, guidance that we all happily tucked under our arms for Thomas O’Boyle’s interactive proofreading session up next, ready for some practical applications of what we’d just learned.

 

¹ Weeks, Lee Ann & Bless, Ann. The Elements of English Editing: A Guideline to Clear Writing.  Bergen: Scientific Editing Service 2013, p. 59.

This METM25 presentation was chronicled by Kate Major Patience.

Featured photo by METM25 photographer Julian Mayers. Slide reproduced with presenter’s permission.