Even back in the day when I was still doing some bookkeeping
and payroll work, the work had to be double-checked - that is a variation of
proofreading.
In the latter half of my working life, I worked for some
government contractors. That, of course, required quite a bit of proofreading.
These days, I do, on a volunteer basis, our senior mobile
home community's monthly newsletter. I've been its editor and publisher for
over 12 years. Even though this is a rather casual newsletter for a casual
readership, and I do not sweat small grammar errors, I do sweat factual errors.
So, I have 3 proofreaders. We have over 400 homes in our
community and they depend on the accuracy of what they read each month.
Ok - so here's the deal. Over the years, yea, decades, of
proofreading, I have learned the hard way that no matter how many proofreaders
you have, there will still be an error or two that escapes everyone's scrutiny.
It happens. All the time.
Now, I just printed all 400+ copies of the September issue,
6 pages (3, double-sided). I have this awful feeling of dread. All my
proofreaders said "clean copy," "good copy," "nothing
wrong."
That makes me very nervous.
Last year, the one time that happened, all the copies got
into all the hands of the eager residents. only to find out that I had reported
that our park management was in the process of "renovating the poor
area."
You can imagine how shocked my neighbors were to find out we
had a poor area in our community.
True, we have lots of senior on fixed income - but not poor. You guessed it - it was supposed to read the "pool" area.
So, I'm crossing my fingers, toes and eyes, and saying a wee
prayer, that this issue really is clean copy.
So, my personal Proofreader's Theorem: Any work that passes the inspection of more than one proofreader will contain a blatant error evident to the first layperson who views that work.
2 comments:
That's funny Evie. So understandable since it does fit in the sentence. Good luck with this copy.
Cindy
Thanks, Cindy - crossing my fingers (lol)
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