Alan Sharpe's Proofreading Masterclass

1. About this Class: If you want to learn proof reading, you need just two things, information and perspiration. By information, you must learn what mistakes in manuscripts look like, where they appear in documents, how they happen, and how to fix them. By perspiration, I mean you must practice. You develop skill as a proofreader by proof reading. You develop proofreading expertise through repetition and perspiration. That's why I created this master class to give you both the knowledge and the practice you need to learn. Proofreading. Hi, I'm Alan Sharp, writer and writing trainer. I landed my first proofreading gig way back in 1989. I learned the craft by proofreading annual reports and royal commissions for the federal government. It was dry stuff, but at the age of 29, with no prior proof reading experience, I learned how to spot dangling modifiers, capitalization errors, punctuation mistakes, comma splices, redundancies, errors in tables and charts, and plenty more. I earned a living as a proofreader and editor, learning the craft from scratch. I learned the craft with a few good books and lots of practice. In this master class, I give you the knowledge and the practice you need to start offering your services as a proofreader. On the knowledge side, I teach you how to spot 180 errors that fall under 26 categories. We're talking errors with headings, mistakes with spaces, blunders with grammar, errors with citations, and more. The knowledge side, learning the 180 mistakes to look for. Then I give you the practice part. After every lesson, I give you three quick practice exercises so that you get to put into practice what you've just learned. This is where the perspiration comes in. You are going to work your way through 80 proof reading exercises. Now don't faint be encouraged because each exercise is short, multiple choice, and designed to develop your muscle memory for spotting and fixing mistakes. As a proofreader, I designed this course for anyone who wants to learn how to proofread the modern way that is proofing digital documents. Plenty of courses teach you the old school way of proofreading with a paper, manuscript, a red pen in hand, and using proofreader marks. Well, I teach you that old school method just in case. But the majority of this master class is dedicated to teaching you how to spot and fix mistakes in Microsoft Word Documents, Microsoft Powerpoint presentations, and Adobe Acrobat PDF. In other words, this master class is aimed at students who want to master proofreading the modern way. With digital documents, you learn the errors to look for. You discover how and where to spot them. You learn how to fix these errors using Microsoft and Adobe software applications. And then you learn proof reading by practicing, practicing, and practicing proof reading. That is the only way if you want to become a professional proof reader and if the only things standing in your way are lack of information and lack of perspiration, this master class is for you, Take it now. 2. What Proofreading Is (and Isn't): You are taking this course either because you want to learn how to proof read at work or you want to be a proofreader for pay. Before we go any further, let's agree on what proofreading is and what it isn't. Understand the role of a proofreader. You need to understand the publishing process. Every piece of published content, whether it's a paperback book or a blog post or an annual report, begins life as a type manuscript. This manuscript is most commonly in the form of a Microsoft Word document. The person who creates this manuscript is the writer or author. Once the writer has completed the manuscript, the writer hands over that document to a copy editor. The copy editor checks the manuscript mainly for problems with style, tone, but also looks for grammatical mistakes, punctuation issues, and spelling mistakes. The copy editor either fixes these issues or sends the manuscript back to the writer for revisions. Once the copy editor is happy with the manuscript, the copy editor hands the manuscript to a designer who lays out the manuscript in the form that it will appear when published. For example, the designer chooses the typefaces for headings and body copy. The designer places images, sets, margins, arranges blocks of copy on the page, and so on. Once the designer is finished laying out the manuscript, the manuscript gets handed over to a proofreader to check the finished piece for errors. Typically, the proofreader works for a proof of the finished document. The proofreader doesn't suggest or make major changes to the text. Instead, the proofreader looks for mistakes with spelling, punctuation, capitalization, inconsistencies in formatting and layout. Sometimes you will be handed the document before it goes to layout. You proofread the word document and then hand it to the designer. The designer lays out the document. You then proofread the layout as well. The job of a proofreader is to find and fix mistakes that have crept into the document during the writing, editing, and typesetting process, mistakes that everyone has missed. Until now, the job of the proofreader is to fix mistakes before the piece gets published. Your job as a proofreader isn't to improve the tone or style of a written piece. Your job, strictly speaking, isn't to improve grammar or usage. Your job is to find and fix mistakes. As a proofreader, you are not in the writing or editing business. You are in the embarrassment avoidance business. You're not a writer or an editor or a copy editor, you are a mistake finder and fixer. The main difference between a copy editor and a proofreader is that a copy editor deals with areas of gray, while a proofreader deals in black and white. A copy editor may differ with a writer's choice of word, for example, and suggest an alternative. A copy editor may find fault in the order of a document and ask the writer to move things around. These are all subjective decisions, but a proof reader deals in black and white. A word is either spelled correctly or it isn't. A heading is either capitalized correctly or it isn't. A table is either laid out with the correct formatting or it is not. Your job as a proof reader is to deal in absolute. You are to take every document that you are given and examine it for mistakes that everyone agrees are mistakes. If they had only spotted these mistakes themselves, your job is to make an incorrect document correct. Your job is to make an inaccurate document accurate using a set of standards that everyone agrees to. That's one of the beauties of being a proof reader. You are always right. 3. Set Up Microsoft Word for Success: When you sit down to proof, read a Microsoft Word document, you need to set yourself up for success. Here are the steps you must take to get off to a good start. First, save a copy of the document so that you keep an intact version of the original file. Open the document in Microsoft Word. Go up to the top left hand corner and click File. Scroll down and choose Save As. Now go to the top of the screen and give the document a new name. I suggest simply adding a suffix to the existing file name. Add the word proof if you want, followed by the date, such as Proof 182,000.26 if you like. Add your initials so that readers know who proof read the document. If necessary, save the file to another folder or just leave it where it is and save the new version to the existing folder. Click Save. Next, specify the language you are using. Go to File and go to the bottom of that window. And choose Options. And choose Language under Office, Authoring Language and Proofing. Choose the correct language for this document. As you can see, Microsoft Word typically offers a number of versions of the same language. You can choose between United States English, Canadian English, and United Kingdom English. This is a vital step because the language you choose here affects what Microsoft Word will consider to be an error in this document. Such as whether you are spelling things the American English way or the United Kingdom English way. When you have chosen your language, click Okay. Next, make sure you have spell check and grammar check enabled. Go back to file again. Scroll down all the way to the options and choose Proofing. Uncheck. Ignore words in upper case. Check. Ignore words that contain numbers. Make sure ignore Internet file and addresses is checked. And make sure flag repeated words is checked. Scroll down to where it says When correcting spelling and grammar and word, check all the boxes except show readability statistics. That is, select check spelling as you type, select mark grammar errors as you type and select frequently confused words, and click Okay. Next, find out which style guide you are to follow. The most common style guides are the Associated Press Style Guide, the Modern Language Associations Style Guide, and the Chicago Manual of Style. But also ask if your organization has a company style guide that you are also to follow. Next, turn on track changes. Go up to review, go to track changes, and choose track changes for everyone. Once you have taken these simple but necessary steps, you're ready to start proof reading. 4. Proofreading Best Practices: Proofreading is all about finding inconsistencies. Inconsistencies in spelling, inconsistencies in punctuation, inconsistencies in grammar, and plenty more. The best way to become an accurate proofreader is to find a consistent way to do your job. Here are some best practices you should follow when proofreading digital documents. First up away, track your changes in Microsoft Word. Turn on the track changes feature that you create a visual record of every addition, every deletion, and every correction that you make. This is vital for maintaining quality control, especially when your document goes through multiple sets of revisions or proofs. Best practice number two is to search for global errors, one category of error at a time. When I say global errors, I'm referring to mistakes that you spot by viewing the document from top to bottom in one pass rather than by reading word for word, or by searching the document rather than by reading it. For example, if every item in bulleted lists should have a semicolon at the end. This is a category of error that you should look for once searching the whole document from start to finish and finding every bulleted list and looking for missing semicolons that should be there. And also looking for other types of punctuation that shouldn't be there, such as and periods. Again, every image should have a caption beneath it. This is another category of error you should look for during one search. Go through the document from top to bottom looking for images. Every time you find an image, check to see that it has a caption. The reason to search for global errors one at a time is that proof reading is hard to do if you are looking for every type of error. At the same time as you read some errors you can find only by reading the document word for word. But lots of errors you can find in bulk by searching your document from start to finish. One category of error at a time. Best practice number three is to find, replace all only when you are absolutely positively sure that the change you are making will not create new errors in the process. A simple example is double spaces. Some writers put double spaces between their sentences when they should only put one. You can easily search and replace all in Microsoft Word to find these double spaces and replace them with single spaces, replacing them all at once. But the trouble is some writers also use multiple spaces instead of tabs when they want to align text like this to get a word to a line under the one above. Some writers press space based base, base, base, base space. If you conduct a global search and replace for all double spaces between sentences, you will also replace these multiple spaces with single spaces. Which will suddenly change this center justified paragraph into a left justified paragraph. Which is not what the writer or designer intended only find and replace all when you are absolutely positively sure that the change you are making will not create new errors in the process. Now, best practice number four. Whenever you are unsure about spacing tabs and other hidden elements reveal, then go to the toolbar at the top of your document and click the paragraph icon to show paragraph marks, spaces, tabs, and other hidden formatting symbols whenever needed. For example, if a paragraph looks like it starts with a space, simply click the paragraph icon to reveal hidden spaces. There's the space right there now, hidden in plain sight for you to correct. Best practice number five is to put your questions, observations, recommendations, and remarks only in the margin and never in the document. The only words that belong in the document are the ones that readers are going to see. All editorial comments belong in the margin. Add them by choosing Insert Comment. This keeps your manuscript clean and also makes all of your observations and recommendations easy to find. Best practice number six is to use styles. Styles in Microsoft Word help you establish and maintain a predefined look and feel throughout your document. Styles are easy to update when you make a single change to a style that's been applied throughout your document, that change automatically cascades through to all the text that had that style applied to it. For example, if all the body text in your document is set in normal style and it's set to times Roman, and your boss now prefers Barlow medium. Making that change is as simple as changing the font in the normal style from times Roman to Barlow medium. You don't have to go to every paragraph to make this change manually. When I say that best practice number six is to use styles, I mean that you should assign a style to every element in your document. Every heading needs a style, for example. And every paragraph needs a style. Every numbered list, every bulleted list needs a style. That's it. Follow these six best practices and you will consistently spot inconsistencies. 5. Headings: Once you have prepared your digital file proof reading, you are ready to start proofing your manuscript for mistakes. Let's start with headings. Your first step is to discover what headings are supposed to look like in your document. The main mistake you are looking for with headings is inconsistency. And you can only spot an inconsistency when you have a standard to compare it against. Begin by understanding what each level of heading in your document is supposed to look like. Here, for example, is an annual report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Scroll down to the table of contents and you see that the document has at least two levels of heading. There is a top level heading which we will call heading one, that is the introduction, thematic, priorities, and conclusion. They're all heading one. Notice that they all begin with a Roman numeral. Next down in the hierarchy of headings is what we will call heading two. Notice that these headings all begin with a capital letter. Now let's scroll down some more to see the start of the document. Here is the introduction. This is heading one in the hierarchy. Place your cursor in the heading and then look up at the ribbon and click font. You see that this level of heading has the following characteristics. It is set in a type face of Franklin Gothic, heavy with a font style of Roman, and in the size of 14 point. The font color is automatic, which means black. There is no underlining, there are no effects for our purposes. Heading one in this document will be set in title case and have no period at the end. That's a decision that we make ourselves. Click cancel and keep your cursor in the heading and then click Paragraph. Notice that the alignment for this level of heading is left. There is a hanging indent of 0.79 " Spacing before is 18 point, and spacing after is 12 point. Line spacing is exactly 15 points. Do this exercise for every level of heading in your document, so that you know the kinds of mistakes to look for. Remember to find inconsistencies with headings. You must have a standard to compare against. Once you know your standard, you are ready to start proof reading. Now to be an effective and accurate proofreader, you must be systematic. You must follow a system. I recommend you be systematic in two ways. First, use a proof reading checklist of all the mistakes you are looking to correct. And second, whenever possible, check for one thing at a time. We are proof reading the headings in this document. We are using the first section of my checklist to hunt for around 12 types of mistakes with headings. I've included this checklist at the end of this course so that you have a good start to your proofreading efforts. The first thing we check for is that every heading has a style assigned. This is a Microsoft Word document. We place our cursor in each of the headings and look up at the styles tab ribbon. Notice that as we click in and out of the various headings in this document, the styles in the ribbon never change. This means all of the headings in this document were created by hand. The author set the, the font size, the font style, the spacing, and other criteria manually. The more efficient way is to assign each heading a style heading. One has the heading one style heading, two has the headings, two style, so on. You can create these styles yourself as a proof reader, or you can simply make any corrections manually. But I recommend that you create the heading styles yourself and then assign a style to each heading. This eliminates a lot of manual work of going to every heading individually. It also helps you when you need to make a global change in your headings from bold to bold italic, for example. Next, check to see that every heading begins with a capital letter. Scroll through the document, examining every heading, looking for headings that have a lower case first character by mistake and correcting as you go. Next, return to the start of the document and check that every heading uses the correct case for the style guide you are following in this document. Heading one is in title case, and all other headings are in sentence case. Here on page four, for example, we see that heading one is set in sentence case by mistake. We correct that by capitalizing the word priorities. Next, check that all headings are consistent in their use of font, font size, and font style. Do this one heading style at a time. We start with heading two. As we check each one, we discover that this heading two at the top of page eight has a font style of bold instead of Roman, and so we make it Roman. This brings up a good point. Some fonts are already bold. Franklin Gothic Heavy, for example, is a bold font. But some writers make these bold face fonts bold to give them extra emphasis. But doing so makes these fonts hard to read. Looking at heading one on page four, for example, you see that it's set in Franklin Gothic heavy. But if you add a font style of bold, the heading becomes harder to read. So check for this mistake. When you proof read, make sure that headings that feature a bold face font are not also set with a font style of bold. Next, ensure that words and headings that are set in sentence case that should be capitalized are capitalized. Remember, sentence case means that the first letter is capitalized and all the other letters are lower case. But some words and phrases in headings must be capitalized even if the case for the heading is sentence case. Here on page five, for instance, we have a level of heading that is supposed to be set in sentence case, and it is, but Human Rights counsel is an official body of the United Nations, so each word in the title should be capitalized. So we make that correction. Now we check for inconsistencies with heading numbering. For example, if headings are supposed to be numbered, we look for numbers that are out of order, numbers that are missing. Or if headings start with a single capital letter, there are no headings where these letters are out of order or missing. We start at the top of the document and we scroll down checking each heading to ensure that numbers and letters follow sequentially and that there are none missing. Next, check to see that the number of headings in the document match the number of tips or ideas or recommendations that are mentioned in the title of the document in a higher level of heading or in a preceding piece of body copy. For example, on page eight, the heading at the top of the page says, The United Nations is enhancing equality and countering discrimination in six ways. When we scroll down and check the headings that follow, we discover only five ways. The author deleted the sixth way, but forgot to adjust the heading. Make this correction yourself, or add a comment in the margin to flag this apparent omission. The next thing to look for is that headings follow a consistent linguistic pattern where required. For example, a group of headings that present recommendations will typically all start the same way with a verb at the very beginning here on pages 8 and 9, for example, we have the five ways that the United Nations is enhancing equality, countering discrimination. Notice that headings two through five all begin with the word discrimination, but the first heading in the series does not to flag this with a comment in the margin. Next, ensure that the headings that use punctuation at the start of the heading are consistent throughout the document. You will notice, for example, that all level three headings in this document are supposed to be followed, are supposed to begin with a numeral followed by a period. But as you scroll through the document checking for this consistency, you find a heading on page nine that is missing the period. You add it. Next, check that the punctuation at the end of all headings is also consistent. The headings in this document are not supposed to have a period at the end of them. Scroll through the document to make sure that none of them do go from the top to the bottom checking all headings. Next, check for consistency in spacing before and after headings above and below. I have customized the ribbon in Microsoft Word to show this spacing. When I click in heading one on page three, I see that the spacing is correct, 18 points before and 12 points after. But when I place my cursor in the heading one on page four, I see that the spacing is incorrect. It is 12 points before and 12 points after I correct that mistake. Now let's talk about alignment. You need to ensure that all headings are aligned consistently based on the style guide you are using. Each heading will be aligned either flush left or center, or flush right. Scroll through the document to catch any headings that are aligned incorrectly and correct them. Finally, last tip, check your headings for orphans. In proof reading, an orphan is a single word at the end of a heading that is wrapped down to the next line. By mistake, it's all on its own. Here on page ten, we see that the word law is all on its own. We go up to the ruler and we adjust the width a tad so that the word returns to where it belongs on the same line with the rest of the heading. That's it for headings. As you develop your skills in your particular workplace, you may discover that the documents you proof read have other mistakes. Their headings, I've covered the most common ones. A good idea is to create a running list of all the mistakes you come across and then turn this list into a checklist that you use. With each manuscript you proof, read that proofreading checklist. Make sure you don't overlook any mistakes. 6. Spaces: Let's talk about pop reading documents to find mistakes with spaces. There are five common mistakes to look for. First on our list is double spaces between sentences. In the olden days, that is to say before computers and word processing software typists always inserted two spaces between sentences to show where one sentence ended and where a new sentence began. Some writers carry this practice over to the world of word processing programs and still insert two spaces between sentences. But the practice nowadays is to put only one space between sentences. Because Microsoft Word and other word processing software adds the extra white space that's needed, automatically search your manuscript for double spaces and replace them with single spaces. The easiest and most thorough way to do this is with search and replace. First position your cursor at the start of your document. Then go to the end of the tool bar in Microsoft Word and click Replace under the Replace tab in the find what field type two spaces and in the replace with field type one space, hit fine. Next. If word finds double spaces between sentences, click click fine. Next, repeat these steps until you reach the end of your document. Avoid clicking and replace all, unless you are certain that the only occurrences of double spacing in your document are double spaces between sentences. Let's look for the second type of mistake, that is spaces at the start of paragraphs. This error creeps into manuscripts when writers create paragraphs by inserting their cursor at the wrong point in a sentence and hitting the Enter key. This adds a space at the front of the new paragraph. This mistake is easy to spot by revealing hidden characters in your document like this. As I toggle the paragraph icon in the toolbar, you see the spaces appear and disappear. This error is easy to correct with a global search and replace. First position your cursor at the start of the document, then go to the end of the tool bar in Microsoft Word and click Replace under the Replace tab In the find what field position your cursor. Click more in the bottom left corner at the bottom and choose Special at the top. Choose paragraph mark. Look back at the find what field. There's the symbol that Microsoft uses for finding paragraphs. Notice that your cursor is flashing. Add a space in the replace with field. Enter the paragraph symbol. Only now click find. Word shows you the first occurrence in your document of a paragraph that begins with a space. Click replace, and then find next. Do this throughout the document, or if you prefer, choose replace all to fix this mistake in one pass. The next mistake to catch is spaces at the end of sentences before the concluding piece of punctuation. This paragraph, for example, has a sentence in it that ends in a period, but it has a space in front of that period. It also has a sentence that ends with a question mark with a space in front of it. Fix these mistakes in the same way using the search and replace tool in the fine field type a space followed by a piece of concluding punctuation, such as a period in the replace field type, just the concluding piece of punctuation, In this case a period. Then click find or click Replace. All run this exercise for every type of concluding punctuation, namely periods, question marks, and exclamation marks. If you even have those in your documents, just remember to exercise caution when using replace all your document, for example, may feature sentences that use ellipses like this. When you search for space period, you will find every sentence that ends with a space followed by a period. But you will also find these ellipses because they consist of a space followed by a period and a space followed by a period three times. If you choose to replace all, you will remove these ellipses or part of them. So be careful. The fourth error to search for is spaces used to indent paragraphs or a line text when you reveal hidden characters. For example, you see that this writer indented every paragraph by typing space space, space. The proper way to indent paragraphs is with a style. In the paragraph section of this style, you specify the size of the indent. The best way to remove these incorrect indentations is to create the indentation in the style and then assign that style to all headings, paragraphs that are indented with spaces, then remove those spaces. You will also see that the writer who created this document doesn't know how to use tabs to align text. There are two columns of text and each one is created by pressing space, space, space based, space, space. This doesn't work because spaces don't align words correctly. You must find all instances of this mistake and replace the multiple spaces with single tabs. Scroll the document so that the section is right below the ruler, beneath the tool bar. Notice where along the ruler the text is supposed to be aligned. And insert a tab there on the ruler. Then replace the multiple spaces with a single tab. Do this for each column. Adjust the placement of the tab if needed to achieve the desired effect. The fifth and final type of error to correct is missing spaces between words. You'll find that these occur most often when teams use track changes to alter a document. Someone will inadvertently delete a word and the space after it and insert a new word with no space after it. This leaves you with a sentence looking like this, where you must insert the missing space. Spell check catches mistakes like this in Microsoft Word and shows them to you by putting a colored line under the offending word, There you have. It might have even been five actually of the most common mistakes you are going to find in Microsoft Word documents and how to fix them. Now next time someone says to you, hey man, give me some space, You'll know what they mean. 7. Words: As a proof reader, you are required to spot mistakes with words that are capitalized incorrectly, words that are punctuated improperly, and words that are spelled incorrectly. But you also face another category of errors that involves words that have nothing to do with capitalization, punctuation, or spelling. Let's look at them so that you know what to look for in documents as a proof reader. Here's the first error of this type. As you can see, it's a hard mistake to spot because it is invisible. Well, it's not invisible to spot exactly. But this type of error involves an invisible word. That is a word that the writer meant to type but omitted to. Let's read the paragraph together. The production rate during November, December, and January must be reduced. So the above overproduction is retired completely by January 31 or the well or wells shut in by the operator and remain shut in. Resumption of production is approved by an authorized commission employee. Now, that didn't sound quite right. Did you spot the missing word? The word until is missing. This part of the sentence should read and remain shut in until resumption of production is approved by an authorized commission employee. Make obvious changes of this kind yourself with track changes turned on, and add a comment in the margin if you need to defend or explain your change. In my experience, the only way to spot mistakes like this is to read slowly and deliberately. Next up is the era of words that are repeated back to back. Look at the top of the document that we were just looking at and read the first sentence. You see the mistake Form must be submitted under the authority of the Oil and Gas Activities Act. That's the two words you have to spot. There should only be one. Of course, the way to spot repeated words like this is to read slowly and deliberately. You can make your job easier by turning on the feature in word that flags repeated words for you. Find it under File Options Proofing. When that box is checked, the second of the repeated words will have a red underline like this to help you spot it. Next up on the list is transposed words. Words are transposed when they change places with each other. An example, look at the summary of production table on the right. Can you spot the trends posed words? Production annual should be annual production. The next category of mistake you must look for is mistakes with homonyms. That is, words that either have the same spelling, different meanings, or that sound the same but have different meanings. One of the most common mistakes of this kind that you are going to come across is there. And there, lots of writers get these mixed up. They all sound the same as you say them, but they change the meaning of a sentence when used incorrectly. There is a place, there is to show possession and there is short for they are. Here's what I mean, I think they're wrong. Should of course read, I think they're wrong. But you will only spot this mistake if you are reading. That is proof reading carefully. The final type of mistake in this category is words that are spelled correctly, just not for your readers. For example, in the UK, Tn is spelled with two Ns and an E. But in North America, Tn is spelled O. N. N goes for organize. Brits spell it with an S, and North American spell it with a Z or a spell check. Won't always catch these mistakes because these words are spelled correctly just depending on the region. One way to catch them is to set the language of your document for your region. Watch the previous lesson on setting up your document to learn how to do this. That's a total of five word mistakes that you must hunt for as you proof read documents. Some of them you can spot using words built in proof reading tools, but others you can only spot with your eyeballs. By the way, I want you to be encouraged because the longer you spend as a proofreader, the easier it gets for you to spot these blunders. 8. Capitalization: One of the most common mistakes that you are going to spot as a proof reader is incorrect capitalization. You're going to find words that are capitalized that shouldn't be, and you are going to find words that are not capitalized. That should be. The first place you need to check for incorrect capitalization is headings and titles. Just as the first word in all sentences must begin with a capital letter to must the first word in all headings and titles. There isn't an automated way to find this error using Microsoft Word. Instead, you must go and find it using your eyeballs. Go through your manuscript from top to bottom, examining each heading and title to make sure that they all begin with a capital letter. Next, examine every heading, subheading and title to make sure they are all capitalized properly. Now, how you capitalize your headings and titles depends on your style guide. If your employer or client does not have a style guide to follow, I recommend that you follow the most popular style guide, which is the Chicago Manual of Style. The rule is simple for headlines and titles, such as newspaper headlines and the titles of books and blog posts, capitalize all of the major words and render all of the unimportant words in lower case. The unimportant words are articles, prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions. Articles include the A positions such as two, in on, at. And coordinating conjunctions include and, butt, and, or for subheads use sentence case that is capitalize the first word only. Now let's move on to capitalization within the body of a document. Again, how you capitalize depends on the style guide you're using. But here are the basic rules you must follow with capitalization. First of all, capitalize the first word of every sentence. Capitalize people's names and proper nouns. A proper noun includes things like cities, countries, nationalities, companies, languages, religions, and political parties capitalize the first word of a when the quote forms a complete sentence. For example, Alan Sharp says, capitalize the first word of when the quote forms a complete sentence, but don't capitalize the first word when the is only a partial. For example, Alan Sharp says, you must capitalize the first word in every but only when the Q, as Alan puts it a complete sentence. Capitalize days, months, and holidays because they are proper nouns. But do not capitalize seasons because they are not proper nouns. January and Christmas are capitalized for example, but spring and summer are not capitalize events and time periods. World War Two is capitalized, for instance. So is the Great Depression. One mistake to look for, especially in writers whose first language is not English, is words that have been capitalized to show their importance. For example, cancer, sometimes referred to as the Big C people sometimes capitalize the word cancer, but it's not a proper noun and therefore does not take an initial capital. Now that I have told you what you should capitalize and what you shouldn't capitalize, remember that there are two things you must hunt for when proofreading a document. You must look for words that are not capitalized, that should be. You must hunt for words that are capitalized, that shouldn't be. These things are easy for writers to overlook. That's why organizations hire you to proof read their manuscripts for them. 9. Punctuation: When it comes to earning your salary as a proofreader. There is perhaps no other area more vital than punctuation. Writers make more mistakes with their punctuation than they do with any other area of their writing. Some writers have poor grammar, other writers can't spell. But a vast majority of writers do not know the rules and conventions of punctuation. Your job as a proofreader, to know all of the rules and all of the conventions, you must know what a colon is for. For example, you must understand how commas are supposed to be used to separate independent clauses in sentences. You must know when to use a coma and when to use a semicolon. In this lesson, I am not going to cover rules of punctuation. You'll be glad to know because there are a way, way, too many punctuation deserves a course all its own. But what I am going to do is show you the punctuation mistakes that creep into manuscripts inadvertently. There are eight. Let's start Punctuation Mistake number one to look out for is smart apostrophes and smart quotes instead of the symbols for feet and inches. Here, for example, is a page from the catalog of a company that makes steel bins for storing grain in the table. You see a bulleted list of product features. Look down at the last bullet, and it says two to 22 inch circular roof fence on 21.24 foot diameters. You see the problem. The writer who created this table didn't realize that Microsoft Word uses smart apostrophes and smart quotation marks. This bullet actually reads, two to 22 circular roof fence on 21 apostrophe and 24 apostrophe diameters. As a proof reader, you must spot this mistake and render the smart apostrophes and smart quotes as symbols for feet and inches. Go up to the toolbar, choose, insert, choose symbol. If the right symbols aren't there, choose more symbols. Scroll through the symbols until you find the straight symbol for feet. Click, insert, click, close. Use this same symbol for inches, once to denote feet and twice to denote inches. The second punctuation blunder to keep an eye out for is possessive apostrophes facing the wrong way. Check out this paragraph from an annual report. Notice that the possessive apostrophe at the start of the paragraph is facing the wrong way. This mistake happens when a writer spells out the word and accidentally hits the space bar before inserting the apostrophe, and then goes back and deletes the space. You fix this error by simply back spacing over the incorrect apostrophe and typing another one in its place there, fixed. Now let's look at error number three hyphens instead of as you can see in this paragraph. The last sentence features a parenthetical remark that set off from the rest of the sentence with what are, what are supposed to be mashes. But the writer has used an old typewriter convention of space hyphen hyphen space to indicate these. You fix this mistake with the symbol position. Your cursor where you want the symbol to appear. Go to Insert more symbols and choose the Special characters tab. Then select from the top of the menu. You'll see that there is also a shortcut for inserting this symbol. Click Insert and then click close. Then remove any spaces on either side of the M. Copy the M and paste it on the other side of the parenthetical remark. If your style guide specifies that you must have white space around your M, then insert them. The convention with Mh is to have them with no spaces. Number four is another mistake with hyphens that you must recognize compound nouns and compound modifiers that lack hyphens. Here, for instance, is a paragraph from a travel guide dealing with what you are allowed to carry on to an aircraft with you. This type of luggage is called carry on. Notice that the writer fails to hyphenate the compound noun, carry on. Carry on should be hyphenated like this. This same rule applies to compound modifiers, which is mistake number five. Here is a paragraph from the annual report of IBM. Let's read the first sentence. Ibm Consulting is co creating with Discover, developing solutions for migrating its systems and applications to an open and flexible hybrid cloud architecture With Red Hat, Openshift. Notice the modifier hybrid cloud, that modifies the noun architecture. This compound modifier needs a hyphen like this. After all, the architecture isn't hybrid. And cloud, two things, it's hybrid. Cloud, one thing. Now let's turn our attention to quotation marks. The first error of the spot is mistake number six, straight quotes instead of smart quotes. Here is another paragraph from that same annual report from IBM. It features a quote from the company president. Notice the straight quotes at each end of the. This error most often happens when writers copy and paste between documents, such as between an Adobe PDF and a Word document or between a webpage and a Word document. You fix this error by typing over the straight quotes with smart quotes. This is a step you can do as a global find and replace search for all quotation marks and replace them with quotation marks. You just replace them with the same thing. If your Word document is set up to auto correct straight quotes, it will render all straight quotes as smart quotes. You do the same step for straight apostrophes while you're at it, which is actually mistake number seven while we're on the topic of quotation marks. Also be on the lookout for mistake number eight, which is punctuation that belongs inside quotations. Notice that our writer puts the concluding period after the quotation mark. It belongs inside like this. The same goes for commas at the end of quotations like this. These commas belong inside the quotation mark like this. There are plenty of other mistakes that writers make with punctuation, but these are the top eight, most common ones. Keep your eyes peeled for these blunders and you'll prove yourself to be the awesome proof reader that you are. 10. Lists: Proofreading involves a lot of lists, lists of grammar mistakes, to catch lists of formatting errors, to correct lists of grammar rules to follow. But proofreading is also about proof reading lists, that is, those numbered lists and bulleted lists that you find in so many business documents. You don't have to be a proofreader for long before discovering that lists are problematic. Lists come with a set of errors all their own, and you are expected to spot every one of them before you start looking for mistakes in numbered and bulleted lists, you need a standard to go by. Proof reading after all is all about spotting and correcting inconsistencies. And you need to know what your lists are supposed to look like. For example, your organization may stipulate in its style guide that bulleted and numbered lists must look like this. Every item begins with a lower case letter and every item ends with no punctuation. Or your organization may stipulate that items in bulleted and numbered lists must begin with a capital and end with a semicolon. Except for the second last item, which must end with a semicolon, the word. And none of this matters as long as your document is consistent. No one style of formatting lists is any better than another. You simply have to know the style you are to follow and then you must look through your document from top to bottom to ensure that all lists follow that standard. Let's start with capitalization. This document is supposed to have lists feature a capital letter at the beginning. As you scroll through the document, look at the first word in every item in every list to see if those words are all capitalized. Here we are a list that doesn't follow this convention. We correct that mistake and continue looking. Once we get to the bottom of the document, we return to the top and start looking for the next common error, and that is incorrect punctuation at the end of list items. This document is supposed to have no punctuation at the end of list items. That is, no periods, no semi colons, nothing. We start scrolling again, this time looking at the ends of each item in our lists. And here we spot a list that has a period at the end of each item. This error likely crept into the document from a second contributor to the manuscript, someone who didn't know the convention to follow. We remove all of those periods and then we continue looking until we reach the bottom of the document. As you can gather, the best way to spot errors in lists is to look for one error at a time from the start of the document until the end. Here are the other mistakes you must hunt for. We've looked at two. Here is number three, inconsistent openings. Look at this list for example, you see that the writer has set up the list with a phrase that indicates that each item in the list is going to start with a verb. Sendex is asking prospective consultants to develop an EMP that provides strategies for achieving the following goals. There's the set up following goals. Colon. The first goal is to upgrade emergency independent power systems. That item starts with a verb. Second goal is to increase use of renewable, sustainable energy sources. Item four in the list likewise, starts with a verb increase. And item five does as well with develop. But look at number three in the list. It doesn't start with a verb. Instead, it describes the goal of an overall 25% or higher reduction in energy consumption. Since every item in the list must start with a goal, we will rephrase that goal to put the verb at the beginning. Since this goal is about achieving a reduction in energy consumption, we will take that phrase and turn it into the verb we need. We will rewrite it to say, our goal is to reduce energy consumption by 25% or higher in 2018 versus 2008 baseline consumption. If you have any trepidation or fear about making changes like this, always track your changes. And if needed, insert a comment in the margin explaining your revision. The next blender to look out for is unique list setups that are either not internally consistent or that are not consistent throughout. Document. Here's what I mean in this same document. The writer has created a bulleted list. Each item in the list features a word in bold followed by a colon, then a space, and then the list item. But look down the list and you see that one of the items in the list has a hyphen instead of a colon. This list is not internally consistent. We fix that error by turning the hyphen into a colon. Then we check that every other list in the document that follows this convention is consistent with this list. The first word is bold followed by a colon, followed by a space next u items in lists that are not items, sometimes writers in a hurry hit the Enter key and insert a paragraph break in the middle of a list. By mistake, this then turns one item into two items. You see what I mean with this list on page two of our document. Read it carefully and you see that item ten in the list really belongs with item nine. There's a paragraph break separating these two items by mistake. You notice this partly because item ten begins with a lower case letter and not a capital letter, and also because when you read item ten, it doesn't make sense. We fix this error by removing the hard return at the end of item nine. The second to last error is numbered lists that are out of order. This never happens when writers create numbered lists in word automatically. Because word numbers and renumbers each item as required automatically. But it does happen with numbered lists that writers create manually. As you can see from this numbered list, it was created by hand. Click your cursor into any item on the list. Look up at the toolbar and you see that the number list icon is unchecked. You also see that one of the numbers in the list is incorrect. The best way to prevent this error, and to prevent it from happening again in this document, is to turn manual lists into automatic lists. The final mistake to look for where lists are concerned is references to them in the body of the document that don't match what is in the list. This happens most often with numbered lists of tips and recommendations. For example, the heading of the document will say that the document contains ten tips, but the document, once you actually check it and read it, you discover contains 11 tips. The writer added a tip but forgot to change the heading, or just as commonly, the writer in setting up the list writes in the preceding paragraph above the list here are ten tips and then writes those ten tips as numbered lists. But later, while revising the document, the writer adds another tip to the list number 11, but forgets to go to the paragraph above it and change that ten in twin and 11, that's it. A list of tips on mistakes to spot with lists. 11. Acronyms, Initialisms, Abbreviations: Let's look at the errors you have to fix when it comes to acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations. An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word. Self contained underwater breathing apparatus, for example, features five initial letters and is pronounced as one word scuba. An initialism, on the other hand, is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words where each letter is pronounced separately. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, for example, features three initial letters, but is spoken by sounding out each letter F B. And an abbreviation, of course, is a shortened form of a word or phrase. G, for example, is an abbreviation of the word gymnasium. As a proof reader, you are going to come across various ways that writers use acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations incorrectly. First up, let's look at acronyms and initialisms together because writers make the same mistakes with each. One mistake you have to catch is writers using an acronym or initialism for the first time without giving its full definition. Consider this paragraph, for example, it begins by mentioning an acronym, the RSS IS, the res is expected to be running shortly. Resus stands for regional hydro ecologic simulation system. Some readers might not know this. So the writer in using this acronym for the first time should have spelled it out like this, and then put the acronym in brackets afterwards, like this and then inserted and then used the acronym freely in the document from this point onwards. In the past, proof readers would underline this mistake and write SP in the margin, telling the writer to spell out the acronym. In the digital age, the burden falls on you to discover what the acronym stands for and to spell it out yourself. Another mistake to look for is redundant words before or after an acronym or initialism. Check out this article about NATO, for example. Read the opening line. The principle of collective defense is at the very heart of the NATO organization's founding Treaty. NATO, of course, stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. So it is redundant to refer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization organizations founding Treaty. The word organization should be removed. Another example is ATM machine. ATM stands for automated teller machine. A writer is being redundant by writing automated teller machine Machine. Another mistake to hunt for is acronyms and initialisms that have more than one meaning. PC, for example, stands for personal computer, but it also stands for police constable and politically correct. Pay special attention to the context of all acronyms and initialisms. If the context makes the meaning of the acronym or initialism clear, leave it alone. But if a reader might get confused over which meaning to ascribe to an acronym or initialism, spell it out. Another mistake you'll come across in your proof reading adventures is writers punctuating acronyms and initialisms. They will refer to the better business Bureau as the b dot b dot B with a period after each letter, or they will refer to the American Psychological Association as the at A, again, with a period after each letter. This is a mistake. Acronyms and initialisms feature capital letters and no punctuation. Here's another mistake to look for. Writers will make acronyms and initialisms plural by adding an apostrophe. They will write there are five RNs on a typical shift, putting an apostrophe after RN. But this makes RN possessive, not plural. To make an acronym or initialism plural, simply add an S. There are five RNs on a typical shift. Another mistake you'll come across in your travels is writers defining an acronym or initialism in a short document when that acronym or initialism never appears again? Good rule to follow is to only use acronyms and initialisms when they appear more than three times in a document. Otherwise, just spell them out. Here's another blunder. Acronyms and initialisms in titles. Unless your reader is guaranteed to know what the acronym or initialism means, don't leave it in the headline. Spell it out. Some acronyms and initialisms are common and unambiguous. So leave them alone. But if in doubt, spell it out. The final thing to look for is the incorrect case in abbreviations. For example, is it 23 feet, all caps or 23 feet, all lower case. Does the motor run on DC current, all caps or DC current all lower case? The answer depends on your style guide. Find out which case to use and stick to it throughout your document. That's it. TTF N. That's an initialism for T for now, but then you knew that, right? 12. Grammar: One of the greatest services you perform as a proof reader is catching and correcting grammatical mistakes. Naturally, spelling mistakes are bad and formatting mistakes are not helpful and mistakes with punctuation and capitalization are likewise not terrific. But grammatical mistakes are in a class of their own because they make the writer and the organization the writer works for look unprofessional and incometent. Grammatical mistakes hinder clarity. They hurt your brand reputation, and they increase misunderstandings. That's not good. You'll agree. Now, this course is all about proof reading, not grammar. You and I don't have time to learn every rule of grammar. But we do have time to review the top grammatical mistakes that writers make These are the top 15 grammatical mistakes you will come across in your day to day work as a proof reader. I will name the error, describe what it is, and how it happens, and then tell you how to fix it. Let's go. Tense shifts. Tense shifts occur when a writer changes tense within a single piece of writing. For example, the team completes the project successfully, they celebrated with a party. The shift from present tense completes to past tense celebrated confuses readers. Fix this error by maintaining a consistent tense. The team completed the project successfully, they celebrated with a party. Faulty parallelism. This happens when elements of a sentence that are similar in meaning are not grammatically similar in form, or to put it another way, it happens when writers fail to maintain a parallel structure in a series. For example, Our business strategy is innovative, exciting, and focusing on customers. This sentence mixes adjectives innovative and exciting with a verb phrase focusing on customers. A parallel structure would be our business strategy is innovative, exciting, and customer focused. Unclear pronoun reference. This occurs when it's not clear what noun a pronoun refers to, for example, when the manager spoke to the employee, he was upset. It's unclear whether it's unclear whether he refers to the manager or the employee. Who was upset. A clear sentence would be the manager was upset. When he that's the manager spoke to the employee. Misplaced modifier. A misplaced modifier is a word, a phrase or a clause that is improperly separated from the word it modifies or describes. Because of this separation, Sentences with this error often sound awkward or confusing. Even worse, they can be unintentionally humorous. For example, I wore my favorite trousers to the job interview, which accidentally picked up road salt from the side of my car. The job interview didn't pick up road salt from my car, my pants did. So fix this error by moving the noun and the modifier closer together. For the job interview, I wore my favorite trousers, which sorry, which accidentally picked up road salt from the side of my car. Subject verb agreement. Subject verb agreement means the subject and verb in a sentence both must be either singular or plural. In other words, the subject and verb must agree with each other in number. For example, should you write the list of items is on the desk or the list of items are on the desk. Since we know that list is the subject in this sentence and not the items. And because we know that list is singular, then we must write the list of items is on the desk. Run on sentence. A run on sentence occurs when a writer takes two or more independent clauses, that is complete sentences and connects them improperly. For example, our training was successful, we won our first game. Here, there are two independent clauses. Our training was successful, and we won our first game. These clauses are incorrectly joined without proper punctuation or a conjunction. To fix a run on sentence, you either divide the clauses into two sentences, or you insert a semi colon between the two clauses, or you insert a coma and a conjunction like this. Our training was successful. We won our first game. Our training was successful, we won our first game. Our training was successful. So we won our first game. Sentence fragment. A sentence fragment occurs when a sentence is incomplete because it's missing one or more of the necessary components, a subject, a verb, and a complete thought. For example, consider this sentence fragment because of the market downturn. This group of words is not a complete sentence because it doesn't form a complete thought. It leaves you wondering what happened because of the market downturn. You don't know. To fix a sentence fragment, you can add the missing components or attach the fragment to an existing sentence. For instance, you could complete the sentence by adding a subject and a verb, such as the company lost revenue because of the market downturn. You could also connect the fragment to a related sentence to make it complete. For example, Our profits decreased period because of the market downturn period can be revised to our profits decreased because of the market downturn. Splice. A comma splice occurs when two independent clauses are joined by a com without a coordinating conjunction. An independent clause you'll remember is a group of words that contain a subject and a verb and express a complete thought. For example, consider this common splice in a business document. Sorry. Our company is expanding, we are hiring new employees. Here, there are two independent clauses. Our company is expanding and we are hiring new employees. These clauses are incorrectly joined with just a comma. That's a splice. To fix a comma splice, you can use a period to separate the clauses into two sentences. For example, our company is expanding, period, we are hiring new employees period. You can use a semicolon instead of a coma. For example, our company is expanding semicolon, we are hiring new employees, or, which I prefer, you can use a coma followed by a coordinating conjunction. Our company is expanding, so we are hiring new employees. Dangling modifier. A dangling modifier is a word or phrase that modifies a word not clearly stated in the sentence. A modifier, of course, is a word or phrase that describes or clarifies or gives more detail about a concept. Having a dangling modifier in a sentence is incorrect because the modifier does not have anything to modify. For example, consider this dangling modifier. After reading the employee manual, the rule seemed overwhelming. Here, the modifier, after reading the employee manual is left dangling because it's not clear who did the reading. The sentence implies that the rules read the employee manual, which obviously doesn't make any sense. To fix a dangling modifier, you leave the modifier as it is, and you rewrite the main clause so that it begins with the subject being modified. For example, after reading the employee manual, the employee thought the rules seemed overwhelming. Or you change the phrase that dangles into a complete introductory clause by naming the doer of the action in that clause. For example, rewrite without knowing his name, it was difficult to introduce him to read because Maria did not know his name. It was difficult for her to introduce him. Or you combine the phrase and main clause into one. For example, to improve his results, the experiment was done again, you revise that to, he improved his results by doing the experiment again. Double negative. Double negative occurs when two forms of negation are used in the same sentence. Using two negatives usually turns the thought or sentence into a positive one. For example, I didn't do nothing. These two negatives cancel each other out, making the sentence positive and implying that you did do something. Incorrect pronoun usage. Incorrect pronoun usage happens when pronouns don't agree in number or gender. For example, each employee should submit their report by Friday. This should read each employee should submit his or her report by Friday. Incomplete comparison. These occur when a writer makes a comparison without clarifying what is being compared. For example, our product is better, faster and cheaper, but better, faster and cheaper than what. Unless the context makes the comparison clear, always state what is being compared with what. Referring to a brand as they, brands should be referred to as it and not the. For example, Apple released their new product is incorrect. That should read Apple released its new product. Passive voice. Passive voice is a grammatical construction where the subject of a sentence is not the doer of the action, but is acted upon by some other agent. The subject is the recipient of the action. They are passive rather than the active performer. For example, consider this passive voice sentence in a business memo. The report was prepared by John. Here, the subject, the report is not doing the action, but is being acted upon by John. To fix passive voice, change the sentence to active voice. This involves making the subject of the sentence the doer of the action. For example, change the report was prepared by John to John prepared the report. Just remember, while passive voice is not grammatically incorrect, it's generally better to use active voice in business writing as it's more direct, clear and concise. That's it for grammatical mistakes. I don't know about you, but after reading all those mistakes, I think I need to lay down and rest for a little bit. 13. Dates and Times: Here are some of the most common mistakes that business writers make when writing out and formatting dates and times. We'll start with dates, mixing date formats. Mixing up US and UK date formats is a common mistake. In American English, the date format is month day year. While in British English, it's day month year. For example, four one, 2024 refers to April 1 in American English. But January 4 in British English. To fix this, consider the language of your reader and write dates out in words for clarity if needed. Incorrect use of coma in dates. In American English, you should add a com between the day and the year to separate the two sets of numerals. For instance, our first independence day was on July 4, 17 77. This isn't necessary in British English. To correct this, follow the appropriate convention based on the form of English you are using. Apostrophes in decades. Some people add an apostrophe before the S at the end of a decade, but this is incorrect because the S indicates a plural not possession. For example, I've been proof reading since the 1980s. That's incorrect. The correct way is I've been proofreading since the 1980s. Hyphening centuries. The rule to follow with this error is to hyphenate centuries only when they're used as an adjective. In other words, when a century describes the age of a noun. For instance, a 20th century novel with a hyphen, not a 20th century novel. Incorrect spelling of dates. Writers sometimes misspell months of the year. February and September are often misspelled. Writers omit the r in February and the P in September. Now let's look at times. Here are some of the most common mistakes that business writers make when writing out and formatting times. Mixing time formats. Writers, particularly writers of long documents, sometimes mix 12 hour and 24 hour time formats. For example, the meeting is at 1,500 pm. This is incorrect because 1,500 is a 24 hour time format and doesn't require AM or PM. Incorrect use of AM and PM. Am stands for anti medium before noon and PM stands for post medium afternoon. For example, the meeting is at 12:00 A.M. Noon. This is incorrect because 12:00 A.M. Is midnight, not noon. Inconsistent punctuation in times. When writing the time is numerals, writers occasionally use a period instead of a colon between the hour and the minute. For example, the meeting is at two period 30 pm. This is incorrect because a colon should separate hours and minutes, not a period like this. Incorrect use of O'clock. The term o'clock is used to show that a number refers to a time. However, you should only use O'clock with exact hours. For example, the meeting is at 2:30 o'clock is incorrect because O'clock should not be used with minutes. To fix this, make sure that the writer only uses O'clock with times that are on the hour, such as 2:00, 7:00, 12:00. Redundancy with times. The last most common mistake you are going to come across is writers adding redundant modifiers to times. A writer, for example, we write the board meeting was held at 3:00 P.M. In the afternoon. 3:00 P.M. By definition, is in the afternoon, remove the redundant modifier. So the sentence simply says the board meeting was held at 3:00 P.M. Effect. Speaking of time. That's it for today discussing dates and times. 14. Words Commonly Confused: As a proof reader of digital documents. You know that spell check is your friend. Microsoft Word and other word processing programs typically highlight spelling mistakes, letting you see at a glance that a word in a document is spelled incorrectly. But this utility goes only so far because there are more than a dozen words in the English language that writers frequently confused. They use the correctly spelled word, just the wrong word. Spell check doesn't always catch these blunders, but you must, Here are the top words that writers commonly confuse. Let's versus lets lets with an apostrophe is a contract while let's means to allow or permit. For example, let's discuss the business proposal versus the contract lets us extend the deadline. Its versus its. It is a possessive pronoun, while with an apostrophe is a contraction of it is. This is what that difference looks like. Every business has its challenges versus it's a profitable business, versus your is a possessive pronoun while your with an apostrophe is a contraction of you are. For example, your presentation was impressive versus your going to lead the next project. Affect versus effect. Affect is a verb, meaning to influence, while effect is a noun, meaning the result. The market trends will affect our sales versus the effect of the new strategy was positive. Two versus 22 with two O's means also or excessively. While two with just one is a preposition used before a noun or a verb. In other words, we were too optimistic about the sales versus we need to revise the business plan. There versus there versus there. There refers to a place. There is a possessive pronoun and there is a contraction of they are there is a meeting tomorrow. Their proposal was accepted, they're going to present next. Loose versus loose. Loose means not tight or free, while lose means to misplace or not win. For example, the terms of the contract are too loose versus we cannot afford to lose this client Peak versus peak. Peak means to look quickly, while peak means the highest point. Take a peek at the financial report versus sales reached their peak in December. Versus me is an object pronoun, while I is a subject pronoun. For example, the boss wants to speak with you and me, not you and I. The easiest way to remember this rule is to break up the sentence into its logical parts. The boss wants to speak with you and the boss wants to speak with me. Therefore, the boss wants to speak with you and me then. Versus an then refers to time while than is used for comparisons. For instance, we will review the report, then make a decision. Versus our profits are higher than last year versus have of should not be used in place of have. For example, we should have reviewed the contract more carefully reviewed the contract more carefully. Fewer versus less. The rule for using fewer and less is that you use fewer when a noun can be counted. And you use less when a noun cannot be counted. Lots of writers and public speakers get this one wrong. Let's have a quick refresher use fewer with countable nouns, that is, individual items or units that can be counted. For example, I have fewer sales than you do. Sales is accountable noun because you can count the number of sales. Use less with uncountable nouns. That is, nouns that are amounts or quantities. Not individual items. For example, I learned less revenue than you did here. Revenue is an uncountable noun because you can't count revenue by itself. You can count five nickels in your hand, but you can't count five revenue. Revenue is an amount or a quantity, not a unit of something. Just remember that there are exceptions to this rule. For instance, people often use less for time, money, distance, and weight because these things are thought of as amounts rather than numbers. For example, he makes less than 1,000 a month from his business. The distance from here to the head office is 100 miles, or maybe a bit less. The next confusion is that versus which, that is used to introduce a restrictive clause, which is essential to the meaning of the sentence. For example, in the sentence, the report that John prepared was excellent. The clause that John prepared is essential to understand which report we're talking about. If we remove it, sentence becomes the report was excellent and we lose the information about who prepared the report. Which is used to introduce a nonrestrictive clause, which provides additional but not essential information. For example, in the sentence, the report which John prepared was excellent. The clause which John prepared can be removed without changing the essential meaning of the sentence. This sentence would still make sense as the report was excellent. Incorrect usage often occurs when writers use which in place of that for a restrictive clause, or vice versa. The difference between that and which is a big deal, it can derail a contract and lead to lawsuits and penalties. If a writer uses the wrong word in a contract, that's why one of your jobs as a proof reader is to go and which hunting. Consider this example. X, Y company will not introduce a preferred pronoun policy that is discriminatory. What does discriminatory refer to the policy, but what happens when you switch which and that X, Y company will not introduce a preferred pronoun policy which is discriminatory. What does discriminatory refer to? The actions of the company. The company won't introduce a preferred pronoun policy and that action or rather that lack of action is discriminatory. Big difference. That's it for commonly confused words. See you in the next lesson. 15. Redundancies: One of the great enemies of clear writing is redundancy. Redundancy means repetition or superfluity of information. Redundancy is wrong because it makes writing wordy and difficult to read, often silly sounding. Some writers, particularly those employed by the government and those who work in academia, feel compelled to pad their sentences adding redundant words that dilute their message. For example, in order to achieve success, team needs to work together collaboratively. Notice the redundancy to collaborate means to work together. Writing work together collaboratively is redundant. A better way to phrase this is to write, the team needs to collaborate for success. Another common redundancy is the word completely and synonyms some writers use completely to modify nouns that already communicate completeness. Look at this example. The fire completely destroyed the house. If a house is destroyed, is the destruction complete? Yes. Does the writer need to say that the destruction is complete? No. Simply let the word do its job and remove the redundancy. Here's another example. The boat was fully submerged. If every bit of a boat is underwater, the boat is submerged. Does the writer help your readers by describing the level of submersion as full? No, the redundancy. The rule to follow here is to never let a writer modify a noun to make it mean what it already means. Only let them modify a noun to make it mean less than what it already means. The house was partially destroyed, the boat was partly submerged. Another redundant word that many writers love is different when used to modify nouns that by definition are different. I'm talking different colors, different countries, different individuals. Colors plural by definition are different. If your company makes a product that is available in six colors, then those colors by definition are different, right? They have to be. That's why they are called colors with an S plural. Countries, plural by definition must be different. Individuals by definition must be different. Anytime you catch a writer sticking different in front of nouns that already communicate uniqueness and difference, strike out that redundant word. Your job as a proof reader is to hunt down these silly unnecessary modifiers and remove them. Another redundancy is verbs with crutches. Way too many writers are petrified of the word. Could, for example, journalists in particular seem mortified in its presence. Scared of letting could do its job unaided. These writers try to help it along by modifying it with an adjective. They write such nonsense as China, US ties at a crossroads but could possibly stabilize Z tells Kissinger three stocks that could possibly turn 10,000 into 50,000 by 2025. Jury selection could possibly be complete by Thursday in former alderman Ed Burke trial silly. Right? After all, when you strike, possibly from these sentences, they retain their meaning while losing their redundancy. How? Because writing could possibly, or might possibly, or possibly is redundant. What does could mean? After all, it means possibly. Have faith in verbs can stand on their own. The final redundancy to hunt for is the word first when used to modify a verb that by definition already implies first when we first started the company, for example, is redundant. You only started the company once, and that was by definition, at the start. You don't have to say when we first started the company, Simply right, when we started the company. That's it for redundancies. I am now completely finished. 16. Inconsistencies: One of the nice things about being a proof reader is that you're always right when there are grammatical rules to follow and spelling conventions to adhere to and punctuation rules to obey. You are always right to spot them and correct them with a style guide on your desk and a list of rules to follow in your head. You are always in the right when you spot words, phrases, and sentences that contravene these rules. But one of your challenges as a proof reader is that some of your writers will be right only some of the time. They'll use a term correctly, 15 even ten times in a document. And then they'll throw you by using it incorrectly. In other words, they will be inconsistent in obeying your style guide. Let's look at some areas of documents where writers tend to be inconsistent, so that you know where to look and what you should look for first on our list is items that are capitalized inconsistently throughout the document. Consider this report on inventory management at a major utilities company. On page 12, the writer introduces an organization called the Mechanical Inventory Group. Notice the capitalization, uppercase M, upper case, I, lower case. But now look further down in the document on page 21, there is the organization. Again, only this time it's uppercase M, lower case I. This mistake is hard to spot because the correct usage appears on page 12 and the incorrect usage appears nine pages later. The best way to spot this mistake is with the search function in Microsoft Word. The first time you come across an organizational name, notice how it is spelled, capitalized and punctuated. Then search the document to ensure that all other occurrences of the word are consistent. You do this by checking the match case box under search options as you search and replace. The second inconsistency to look for is how things are named. You are going to discover that some writers refer to the same role in multiple ways. In the first instance, they call Samantha Stewart, the VP sales. A few paragraphs or pages later, they call her the vice president of sales. Even further down, they call her VP sales. With a comma, Writers make this mistake with all manner of other titles, terms, and designations you have. The United States of America, for example, all spelled out. Then the US abbreviated, then the US with periods added, but also the truncated United States. That's four ways to name the same country. And all of them are okay, but all of them are inconsistent if used in the same document. Let's run quickly through some other common offenders hyphenated phrases. The phrase decision making carries a hyphen in one location, but is written as decision making with no hyphen elsewhere. Numbers in sentences, the numbers one to nine are spelled out in one location but then written as numerals elsewhere the Oxford. Some writers use the Oxford only when it helps to prevent confusion. Other writers use it consistently. Discover if the Oxford comma is required or optional for all the documents that you proofread, then make sure those documents use it properly and consistently. Table and figure labels proof Reading through a manuscript, you'll find a figure called graphic one, while later on in the document it is referred to as image one or it would be image two in the sequence spelling. If your document was written by a team with some of the authors based in the UK or mainland Europe or Asia, other authors based in North America, you will come across inconsistent spelling of the same word. You will find the word color in one location with the U and color without a U elsewhere. Your job is to catch these inconsistent spellings, spot these inconsistencies consistently, and you will consistently amaze the people you report to. 17. Mistakes with Facts: What's wrong with this picture? It depicts a happy Harry Truman after the presidential election of 1948. Can you see the mistake? Truman won the election, not Dewey, but the Chicago Daily Tribune result the other way around, this headline is considered the winner of the award for biggest blunder in proofreading. Why? Because as a proofreader, you are also a fact checker. You not only hunt for mistakes with spelling, punctuation, capitalization, formatting, and more. You are also responsible for checking facts. In fact, this is one of your most important tasks as a proofreader, especially if what you are proofreading is going to make its way into print as an annual report or book. Let's examine the facts that you need to check as you proof read the document. Remember, we are not talking about punctuation errors and mistakes in grammar. We are talking about errors in facts. First up in the list is incorrect dates. The writer, for example, writes that the annual meeting was held on a Thursday, but you check your calendar. This fact is wrong because the meeting was actually held on a Wednesday. Or you proof read the latest version of the About Us page, the company website, and notice that it still says your company has been in business for 32 years. That figure is out of date because you have been in business for 35 years. The way to prevent mistakes like this getting published online or in print is to fact check every date. Next up is incorrect. Place names. The country of Turkey, for example, changed the spelling of the country in 2021, from Turkey spelled this way to Turkey spelled this way. Spelling it the old way is an error, in fact, that you as a proofreader must catch and correct. The same goes for the United Kingdom. Some writers refer to the UK as England also incorrect you as a talented proofreader will spot these mistakes. In fact, the same goes for addresses. Anytime you come across an address in a document, fact check it. Fact check the street number, the name of the street, the city, the state, and especially the Zip code or the postal code. Next on the list of errors with facts to hunt for are incorrect names of people, titles, companies, products and services. Here's what I mean. Let's take Apple as an example. Here is a table that lists the company's top leadership and top products. But this table is wrong. Tim Cook is Apple CEO, not the President. Dq is the Senior Vice President of services, not the vice president. The Macbook Pro does not have an M two chip, the Macbook Air does. The company's financing offering is not called Apple Financing, called Apple Financial Services. At first glance, these names, titles, and product names appear correct, but that's the problem. Appearances deceive Your job as a proof reader is to check every name, every title, and every brand name and product name to make your job easier. As a fact checker, follow two best practices. Number one, check every fact for accuracy. I mean every fact. Second, always rely on primary sources, not secondary sources for your facts. For example, if you are proof reading your annual report before publication. If in that report the president of the company cites a Gardner statistics that was reported by Forbes. Don't trust Forbes. Go to the original source, go to Gardner and fact check that statistic from the primary source. Now, there are dozens of facts that you must check for accuracy. Let me just give you a list of a few of the major ones that you need to look for because these are often factually incorrect. First is math. Look for numbers, percentages, ratios, and calculations in sentences, charts and tables that don't add up. Do the math yourself to be sure. Measurements, double check, length, width, formulas, analytics, statistics, prices and sales figures that are either out of date or just plain wrong language that's out of date. We don't write committed suicide anymore. The current way to describe a death of this sort is to write died by suicide. See the language has changed. You need to be up to date. Ages are also a problem. Anytime you see someone's age in writing, check it for accuracy. Next up, historical facts. We're talking about the place where World War One started, the year your company was founded, the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, the month that Covid 19 was declared a pandemic and so on. Then there are superlatives, such as only first and most, you tend to find these in marketing materials where writers like to boast of products being the best in class or the only ones of their kind. Fact check to make sure they are. Next is intellectual property and patents. Should that product name be followed by a superscript TM for trademark or a superscript R for registered trademark? Check and find out that's it for checking mistakes with facts. 18. Citations: Let's delve into the exciting world of citations. As a proof reader, your keen eye for detail plays a crucial role in ensuring accuracy. Let's explore some common citation errors and how to address them in a business context, incorrect in text citation style. First up, be vigilant for instances of incorrect citation styles. Within the text, authors may inadvertently choose the wrong style or use a mix of styles. For example, look at these two citations for the same work. The citation on the left is following the style guide published by the American Psychological Association, while the citation on the right is using the style guide published by the Modern Language Association. The APA cites author, last name, publication year, and page number. While the MLA cites author last name, and page number, they're different. Your task is to meticulously cross reference your document with the designated style guide, ensuring the writer adheres to the prescribed citation style, incorrect citation style, at the end of the document. This same rule applies to the end of the document where authors cite all their sources in full, expect each style guide to stipulate a different format. For example, as you can see, the APA style guide requires that each entry in the reference list include the author's last name, the publication date, the title of the work, and the source. For example, Smith J. 2020, title of the book publisher. The MLA style, on the other hand, requires that each entry include the author's last name, the title of the work, the source, and the publication date. For example, Smith John, title of the book publisher year. Missing information in citations. Keep an eye out for incomplete citations where essential details such as author name, publication year, or page number are missing. Your role as a proofreader involves thorough verification against the style guide, rectifying any omissions, and ensuring the completeness of each citation. Inconsistent formatting consistency is paramount in business documents. This extends to citation formatting. Inconsistencies arrive when writers deviate from the prescribed style. Your task is to meticulously review the entire document, ensuring uniformity in citation formatting as per the established guidelines. Incorrect page numbers precision is crucial in business documents, and inaccuracies in page numbers undermine credibility. You must verify page numbers meticulously consulting the original source to rectify any discrepancies, and maintaining precision in your citations. Improper use of ellipses, misuse of ellipses in quotations lifted from cited sources introduces unintended changes in meaning. As a proof reader, it is imperative that you assess the appropriateness of ellipses in citations. Ensure that they accurately represent the source material, aligning with the original context through careful comparison and correction over reliance on secondary sources. In business, reliance on accurate information is paramount. You have got to scrutinize citations for overreliance on secondary sources where necessary. Encourage authors to consult primary sources so that you emphasize transparency and citations. And avoid undue dependence on secondary references which are sometimes inaccurate, incomplete, or incorrect. Url's. Urls are integral to citations. As the proof reader, you must examine URLs for completeness and accuracy. Correct any omissions or errors, ensuring that the provided links lead directly to the reference material, thereby upholding the documents integrity. Lastly, pay attention to digital object identifiers and international standard book numbers. Verify if these identifiers are required and if they are, ensure their presence in the citations contributing to the documents. Thoroughness and professionalism, your precision and attention to detail are instrumental in maintaining the integrity of citations. Consistency, accuracy, and adherence to prescribe styles are your guiding principles. 19. Number Formats: You don't have to be a proof reader for very long before you discover that one of the most common errors in finished manuscripts and typeset pages is numbers and how they are formatted. I am talking not about draft documents and draft manuscripts, but manuscripts that have been laid out and designed and formatted in Microsoft Word or PDF as finished publications. When you sit down to proof read these documents, especially when they contain dozens of pages, you discover that they present all manner of creative possibilities for writers and designers to misuse and misspell and misformat numbers. Here are the top mistakes you must look for and correct. As a professional proofreader, the most common mistake is spelling out numbers that should be numerals and vice versa. The rule of thumb in business writing is to spell out all numbers, up to and including the number nine, and to render every other number after nine as a numeral like this. Which means you must look out for writers who don't follow this rule as this writer has. Some writers like to spell out all of their numbers. Others like to render all numbers as numerals. And still other writers like to mix things up in a document. You must catch these number formatting mistakes, correct them. Next up is the incorrect use of hyphens in numbers. Sometimes a number larger than nine needs to be spelled out. The rule to follow is that all numbers 21-99 carry a hyphen. It is 21, for example, with a hyphen not 21, it is 76 with a hyphen 76 all on its lonesome. Speaking of hyphens, the next error to fix is compound adjectives that lack a hyphen. The rule is to use a hyphen when the number is used as an adjective before a noun. For example, a five year plan needs a hyphen between the number and the noun that the number modifies, namely the word plan. A pole that is 15 feet long is not a 15 foot pole, it is a 15 foot pole. Many writers are unaware of this rule. You are likely to come across it often in your proof reading travels. Hyphens also belong in fractions that are spelled out as words. One third, for example, is one third hyphen, three fifths is three fifths with a hyphen. Next up is number ranges. The correct way to separate two numbers. That former range is with an n, looks like a hyphen, but is longer. For example, the range of years 2015-2020 is rendered like this. 2015 2020. Look for number ranges that are separated with hyphens and replace the hyphens with hes. Look also for number ranges that are separated with dashes, with spaces on either side, and remove the spaces. Speaking of spaces, the next number formatting error is lack of spaces between numerals and units. For instance, you will come across a sentence like this. We added 10 milliliters of the sample to the reaction mixture, that we added ten space milliliters of the sample to the reaction mixture. Or you will come across a sentence like this. In the last quarter, we experienced an increase in sales of ten space percent. In this case, there should not be a space between the number and the symbol. This should read. In the last quarter, we experienced an increase in sales of 10% Next up is paragraphs and sentences that start with a numeral like this. The rule is to avoid starting sentences with a number, but if it is necessary to start a sentence with a number, that number must be spelled out. For example, instead of writing 25 operators attended the seminar, you should write 25 operators attended the seminar. Next up is number abbreviations. Your goal is to maintain consistency throughout your document. Some writers like to write 10,000 while other writers prefer to write ten k. If your style guide allows latitude in this area, that's fine. Just make sure your documents don't use a mix of numerals and abbreviations like this writer does in this paragraph. Pick one way to format numbers in the thousands, millions, billions and more. And make all numbers in your document conform to that rule. The final mistake to hunt for redundancies in numbers. Some writers, for example, like to write $20 dollars. Seeming to forget that a number with $1 symbol in front of it is by definition $1 figure. Obviously, there is no need to write dollars after the dollar figure. There you have it. A short course in mistakes in number formats. Catch and fix these blunders, and your documents will look and read a lot better. 20. Page Numbers: Let's focus on a topic that, while seemingly small, can make a significant difference in the professionalism and readability of your business documents. I'm talking about page numbering as you've likely experienced as a proofreader, errors in page numbering can cause confusion and disrupt the flow of a document. Let's dive into some common mistakes you should watch for as a professional proofreader. Let's talk about how they happen and how to fix them. First up, let's talk about inconsistent number formats. This error occurs when the format of the page numbers changes throughout the document. For example, you might see the first ten pages numbered using Roman numerals like this. Then the rest of the using Arabic numerals like this. This inconsistency often happens when different sections of a document are drafted separately. Or when templates with different numbering styles get merged together, confuses readers. Making them wonder if part of the document is missing or incorrectly ordered, that is numbered with the number, the page numbers. To fix this, decide on a single numbering format and apply it consistently throughout the document. In business documents, Arabic numerals like this are usually preferred for their clarity. Next, let's discuss the placement of page numbers. Sometimes you're going to find as you proof read a document, you're going to see them jumping all around. Sometimes the page numbers are on the right side of one page, then they're in the middle. On another page, numbers should be consistently placed in the same location on every page, whether it's the top or bottom, the left, the right, or the center, it doesn't really matter as long as it's consistent. Incorrect placement of page numbers often happens during the editing process, especially when adding or removing sections which can shift the page layout. To ensure consistency, check the page number placement throughout the document. I recommend you do this in one pass. Go from top to bottom and adjust as needed so that all the page numbers appear in the same spot on each page. Another error when it comes to page numbers is pages out of sequence. Imagine that your prospect, your reader is reading a report and after page 15, suddenly they're on page 17 missing crucial information. This error is not just confusing, it renders a document ineffective if there's a whole page missing, especially if it's an important page out of sequence. Pages usually occur due to human error in manually typing page numbers or when sections get moved around, germ revisions without updating the numbering. It can also happen when merging documents. To fix this error, again, go through the document from top to bottom, page by page and count the page numbers to ensure that the sequence is correct. Since you are using a word processor, likely Microsoft Word, use the automatic page numbering feature to avoid manual errors. In fact, if your document has manual page numbers, replace them with automatic page numbering. Error number four is missing page numbers. Sometimes you might find that a page number is just missing. It's like a puzzle with a piece missing. Very frustrating. This usually happens due to a formatting mistake, such as a page break that accidentally removes the page number. Or when headers and footers don't get applied consistently throughout the document. Sometimes it'll take a page number and just have it vanish off the page. Ensure that your documents header and footer settings are correctly applied to each page. And check that no page breaks are causing numbers to vanish from your document. Again, we're not talking about a missing page here, we're just talking about a number that's missing. Our final common error is when a document doesn't start with the number one. This can be particularly confusing in business documents where the executive summary or the introduction should be on page one. You don't want to be starting on page three or page eight. This error often occurs when a designer or a writer takes sections and adds them to the beginning of a document without renumbering the subsequent pages. They add a preface, or an introduction, or a table of contents, and they don't update the rest. It can also happen if a document template with preset page numbers is used incorrectly. To correct this error, make sure the first page of your main content is numbered as page one. Understanding these common page numbering errors, knowing how to fix them, elevates the quality of your proof reading. Making the documents that you proof clearer and more professional. Remember attention to detail in page numbering reflects the overall quality of your work. Always double check page numbers in your final proof reading pass. 21. Hyperlinks: As an aspiring proof reader or even a current proofreader, I know that you care a lot about hyperlinks. Hyperlinks play a vital role in modern business documents. In documents like Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF, hyperlinks are a convenient way to give readers additional information and resources without having to put it in the document. That is why errors in hyperlinks significantly impact a document's effectiveness and credibility. Let's look at some common hyperlink mistakes that you're going to encounter as a proof reader. Let's talk about what causes them and learn how to fix them first, Missing hyperlinks. This error occurs when a text references a link, but the link itself is not hyperlinked. For example, a sentence says, click here for more information, But when you click here, there's nothing clickable. There's no hyperlink missing. This often happens when documents get converted from one format to another, or when hyperlinks get overlooked during the drafting and editing process. A writer intends to insert the hyperlink there, but forgets to To correct this, go through your document and ensure that all references to additional information are correctly hyperlinked. It's a good practice to make sure that the hyperlink text clearly indicates where the link goes. Click on every link to make sure that every link works. Next up, Broken links. This is when a hyperlink leads to an error page or a nonexistent web page. Broken links are frustrating for readers and undermine the documents credibility. Broken links often occur due to changes that someone else makes on a linked webpage. For example, they move it or they delete it, your link is now out of date. Broken links also happen if the link was incorrectly copied and pasted into the document. I'm sure you've done that yourself. You've copied the link, you've pasted it into your browser and realize you didn't copy the whole link. To fix this error, manually click on and check all hyperlinks in your document to ensure that they lead to the place where they're supposed to go. There are tools available that automate this process, especially for larger documents. Another common error is hyperlinks that lead to the wrong source. The link works, it goes somewhere just the wrong place. This happens when the text indicates one source, but the link directs to somewhere else unrelated or even closely related, but not the proper source. This usually happens with copy and paste errors. When a writer updates a document without thoroughly checking all hyperlinks. Your job as a proof reader is to carefully review each hyperlink to ensure it matches the source that it claims to lead to remember accuracy. Your hyperlinks is crucial for maintaining the trust of your readers. Inconsistent link formatting is another issue to look for in a professional document. Hyperlinks should have a consistent appearance. Usually that means that the font is set in blue and underlined. Inconsistencies such as some links in blue and others in black or different styles, makes a document look unprofessional. This inconsistent formatting often occurs when multiple people work on a document or when multiple authors copy texts from various sources. Standardize your hyperlink formatting throughout the document for a more polished look. In word processors like Microsoft Word, you can easily adjust the style of all hyperlinks once you create a style. This just for hyperlinks. Remember, hyperlinks are a powerful tool in electronic documents, but they need to be used correctly as a proofreader. Your role is crucial in ensuring that these links are functional. That is, they work, they're accurate, they go where they're supposed to go and they enhance the documents value. Paying attention to these details in hyperlinks significantly improves the quality and reliability of the business documents that you proof read. 22. Line Spacing: We are going to discuss an aspect of document formatting that often gets overlooked, but that is crucial for readability and professionalism. Line spacing, I'm talking about the spaces before paragraphs. The spaces between lines within a paragraph and spaces after paragraphs. Let's dive into some common line spacing errors. Understand how they occur, and learn how to correct them. First out of the gate, let's talk about inconsistent spacing before paragraphs. The space before each paragraph should be uniform throughout your document. However, you might find some paragraphs starting immediately after the previous one, with no gap. You're also likely to find other paragraphs that start after the preceding paragraph, but with a noticeable gap. This inconsistency usually happens during editing, when writers and editors move paragraphs around or delete them, or when they add them when content is copied from multiple sources with varying spacing settings. To correct this, standardize the space before each paragraph in Microsoft Word. You set this spacing in the paragraph formatting option for that paragraph style. Go to the toolbar, hover over the style you want to edit and choose Modify. In the bottom left corner, click Format, and then choose Paragraph from the drop down menu. Then adjust the spacing before and the spacing after. Next up in our catalog of line spacing errors is irregular line spacing within paragraphs. This is when the spacing between lines in one paragraph is different from the spacing in other paragraphs of the same kind. In one paragraph, for example, the spacing is tight, but in another paragraph, the spacing is loose again. I'm sure you're not surprised to hear this. This error often occurs when different sections of a document get edited separately. Or when a writer or designer imports texts from various sources for you as a proof reader. To fix this error, ensure that the line spacing is consistent within each paragraph. Most business documents use single or 1.15 line spacing for a clean, professional look in every paragraph where the spacing is inconsistent. Click your cursor anywhere in the paragraph and then look up and choose the style for that paragraph. In Microsoft Word documents, the style for text in the body of a document is typically called normal style. Here, for example, you see that as I click in the paragraph that is formatted incorrectly and choose the normal style, transform the line spacing to make it consistent with the rest of the document. If this step doesn't work, highlight the entire paragraph. Hold down the control key and hit the space bar. This action removes formatting that is inconsistent with the style you are using, and returns every word in the paragraph to the default style. Be careful when using control space bar because doing so also removes bold, italic, and underlining. And it makes hyperlinks invisible by removing their formatting. But it does return your line spacing to the default. Another common issue is excessive or insufficient space after paragraphs. Proper spacing after a paragraph separates it from the next paragraph, and that aids in readability. However, too much or too little space disrupts the documents flow, makes it look clumsy and poorly designed. Now you're going to find that there will be paragraphs with excessive space after them. Someone hits the Enter key multiple times after a paragraph by mistake. To maintain consistency, set a standard amount of space after each paragraph. In your style formatting settings, this keeps the document looking organized and professional. Last of all, pay attention to spacing around lists and block quotes. These elements often require different spacing compared with regular paragraphs. Inconsistencies here make the document appear, you guessed it, Unprofessional. Incorrect spacing around lists and block quotes usually happens when writers don't adjust the default settings in their word processor or when they copy and paste content without reformatting it. Make sure that lists and block quotes and other design elements have appropriate spacing before and after them to maintain a uniform look throughout the document. As a proof reader, you should remember that while line spacing might seem like a minor detail, it plays a significant role in the overall finished look and presentation of your document. When you are consistent and use appropriate spacing in your documents, you make them more readable and more professional. And that makes you look more professional too. 23. Alignment: The focus of this lesson is alignment, a key aspect of document design that contributes significantly to the clarity and professionalism of a business document. Proper alignment of text, images, and other elements is essential for a polished and cohesive document. Let's explore some common alignment errors. Let's look at what causes them, then let's find out how to address them in the documents that we proof read. Error number one is inconsistent alignment of bulleted and numbered lists. The convention for lists is to indent them a quarter of an inch from the left margin paragraphs are aligned left, but lists are typically indented a quarter of an inch. Now you're going to find as a proofreader that you will commonly find lists where bullets or numbers don't line up with the text or where the spacing between items is irregular. This misalignment happens when writers or designers change spont sizes. They use tabs incorrectly when list formatting settings aren't applied consistently being the professional proofreader that you are, you're going to ensure that all list items aligned correctly with their bullets or numbers. You're going to use the list formatting tools in Microsoft Word for consistency. This makes all lists look orderly and easy to read. Misaligned headers and footers are another common issue with alignment in a professional document. Headers and footers should be consistently placed across all pages. However, you might find them at varying distances from the page edges or not aligned with the main text. Again, this is no surprise, this problem most often occurs due to incorrect margin settings. When different sections of a document have varying headers and footer formats. Because multiple people worked on the document from multiple places, check the alignment and positioning of your headers and footers on each page. I recommend you go to the top of the document and just go look at all the headers. Scroll down and do the same with the footers. They should be uniformly positioned and aligned with your main text margins for a cohesive look. Now let's talk about image alignment. Images that are not aligned with the text or other page elements make a document look unprofessional. They should be strategically placed to complement the text and the overall layout. No surprise here. Again, misalignment of images often results when a writer or designer drags and drops images without adjusting their position. Also, when those very same people do not consider the overall layout when placing their images, your job as a proofreader is to align each image with the relevant text or page element using the settings in the ruler. Use the alignment tools in the ruler to ensure that images are centered or aligned left or right so as to match the documents design or to follow your company style guide. Finally, when it comes to alignment, be aware of uneven margins and indentations. The margins in your document should be consistent on all sides of a document. Indentations should be uniform for all paragraphs. Uneven margins, whether that's the top or the bottom, the left or the right. Uneven indentations occur when changing document formats, copying text from different sources, and manually adjusting margins and indents. Regularly check and adjust the margins and paragraph indentations in your document. Consistency in these areas contributes to a balanced and professional appearance. Remember, alignment is not just about aesthetics, how something looks to the eye. It's about creating a document that is easy to navigate and pleasant to read as a proofreader. Your keen eye for alignment ensures that your business documents, the ones you proof read, convey quality and attention to detail. 24. Justification: Let's look at a key aspect of document formatting that significantly impacts readability and aesthetics. I'm talking about text justification. Justification is all about how text is aligned on a page. Justification includes flush left, flush right centered, and fully justified. Let me show you what I mean. This paragraph is left justified, also known as ragged, right. Now the paragraph is center justified. It is now ragged, left and right, but it's centered now it is right justified, and ragged on the left margin. Now it is fully justified. Text is aligned vertically with both the left and right margins. Now, since we're proofreaders, let's explore some common errors that writers and designers make with text justification. Let's figure out why they happen and discover what it is that we have to do as proofreaders to fix these blunders. Error. Numero uno is inconsistent justification. This occurs when different parts of a document use multiple justification styles without a clear purpose or pattern. You might see some paragraphs that are flush left, others that are centered, and some are fully justified. But for the life of you, you cannot find any rationale for this change in formatting. This inconsistency with justification happens when documents get edited by multiple people. It also happens when writers copy and paste sections from multiple sources and paste them into their document, Not realizing that each of those sources has their own distinct style of justification. For you to ensure a professional look, decide on a standard justification style for the main text. Flush left is the preferred justification in business documents. It's clean and it's easy to read. Use other styles like centered or fully justified for specific purposes such as titles or quotes. Next, let's look at the improper use of fully justified text. While this style aligns text evenly along both the left and right margins, it sometimes creates uneven spacing between words and letters known as rivers, making the text difficult to read. This usually happens when the line lengths are too short for the amount of text. Or when a designer does not apply enough hyphenation to balance the spacing. To correct this, condense the spacing between characters. First select the entire paragraph, then go up to font in the toolbar at the top of the window. Click the advanced tab under Spacing. Click the drop down menu and choose Condensed. Then to the right, click the down arrow to selective value. Start with 0.1 then click Okay, and see if that fixes the issue. If it doesn't, repeat these steps and click the down arrow again to select 0.2 then see if that works. Incorrect. Centering is another common mistake, especially with headings and titles. When text that should be centered is slightly off center, it draws attention to itself, draws attention to that error and detracts from the overall presentation of the pages and the document as a whole. This often happens when a writer uses multiple spaces. They hit the space bar, or when they use multiple tabs to center an item. Instead of using the center alignment feature in the paragraph section of the tool bar. Always use the center alignment feature for text that needs to be centered. This ensures perfect centering relative to the margins. Remove all of those multiple spaces and multiple tabs and simply align the text using that center justification tool. Last of all, consider readability when choosing your justification style. For example, fully justified text can be harder to read for some people as it sometimes creates those uneven spaces between words that we just talked about. This issue arises when writers think how a document looks is more important than how easy it is to read. When selecting a justification style, consider your audience and the readability of the document. Flush left justification is often the best choice for readability, especially longer documents. Fully justified is the preferred form of justification for books and academic and scientific papers. Remember, justification is not just about aesthetics or how something looks on a page. It's about creating a document that is both visually appealing and easy to read. As a professional proofreader, your attention to justification details greatly enhances quality and professionalism of your business documents. 25. Tabs: Now let's talk about a subject that I know is on your mind. Tabs are a fundamental component in document formatting, but writers and designers often misunderstand them. That leads to errors that affect the professionalism of finished documents. In this lesson, let's explore some common related errors, understand their causes, and learn how to fix them. Let's start with a frequent problem, Multiple tabs used to create space. This occurs when a writer repeatedly hits the tab key to move text to a desired location instead of setting a single tab stop in the ruler. This challenging way of doing things leads to uneven spacing and alignment issues. Especially if the document gets opened on a different computer or gets edited by someone else. This error often happens because writers don't understand how to set tab stops, or it happens out of simple habit from writers who are just more accustomed to using Tab Tab. Tab or Space. Space. Space. To align things. To fix this error, use the Tab Stop feature in your word processor. Set a single tab Stop at the point where you want the text to align. This ensures consistency and a professional look in the document layout. Then go back and replace the multiple tabs with just one tab. Another common mistake is writers that use tabs to indent the first line of a paragraph. While this might seem like a quick solution, it creates inconsistencies, especially when multiple people edit the document or when the tab settings change. Again, this issue arises when writers are simply unaware of the paragraph formatting features that are available in Microsoft Word. Instead of using tabs, set the first line indent using the paragraph formatting options for the paragraph style. This creates a uniform indent across all paragraphs that use that style. Maintains consistency even if the document gets edited on different systems. Using tabs to create tables or columns is another mistake you're going to come across. Tabs might seem like an easy way to get data to align, but they often lead to misalignment and formatting issues, especially when the content varies in length. This most often happens because tabs are not designed for managing complex data structures like tables. The solution that you should use as a proof reader, it's a little bit cumbersome, but it's to replace those tabs with tables, Simply insert your cursor above the data, insert a table and then copy and paste the data from the body of the text into the various fields of the table. Then delete the tabs. Tables provide more control over alignment, and they ensure that data stays neatly organized regardless of the content length. Now let's look at inconsistent tab settings. Inconsistency in tab settings across the document. A frequent oversight. For example, you might find that the tab spacing changes from one section of the document to another. On one page it's like this, the tab is set at 1 ", but on another page, the tab is set at 1.4 inch. That's not consistent. This inconsistency makes the document look unprofessional and disorganized. Your job as a proof reader is to spot that inconsistency and correct it. How does this happen? This issue typically occurs in documents that have been edited or written by multiple people, or where sections of the document have been copied and pasted from many sources that had different tab settings for you to maintain a consistent look in your document. Examine the document from start to finish, then standardize the tab settings throughout the document. Check each section to ensure that the tabs aligned correctly and then adjust as needed. Simply click your cursor into any paragraph, then look up at the ruler to see where the tabs are set. You can also do this in the style, the paragraph style. You can set tabs right there so that they're consistent throughout the document. Finally, a common error is the presence of unnecessary tabs, often found in random places within the text. These extra tabs can disrupt the layout and spacing of your document. Unnecessary tabs usually occur from habit. Writers are in the habit of just using the tab key multiple times or when formatting. Changes are made without removing existing tabs, review documents and remove any tabs that are not serving purpose. This cleanup enhances the overall neatness and readability of your manuscript. One thing to bear in mind when it comes to tabs is that mastering the use of tabs, if I may put it like that, is essential for creating a well formatted, professional looking document. As you become more familiar with your word processors and formatting features, you'll find that correcting tab errors becomes actually a lot easier and more intuitive. 26. Widows and Orphans: Welcome back to another focus lesson on a nuanced but vital aspect of proof reading, and that is widows and orphans. First, let's define what we mean by widows and orphans. A widow is the last line of a paragraph at the bottom of one page left by itself at the top of the next page. An orphan is the first line of a paragraph left by itself at the bottom of a page. Widows and orphans occur because of automatic page breaks in word processing software. When you're typing a document, the software automatically moves text to the next page when there's no more room. Sometimes this results in just one line of a paragraph being separated from the rest, either at the top or the bottom of a page. When you encounter a widow in a document, you are proof reading. You have a couple of options. First of all, you can adjust the page margins slightly to give more room for text. Notice that as I increase the size of the right margin, the widow disappears as the last few words in the paragraph wrap around to the lines above. Next, you can reduce the character spacing, also known as kerning. For this sentence or paragraph, highlight the paragraph, go to font, click the advanced tab, Choose to condense the spacing and set the value that makes the widow disappear. Third, you can reduce the line spacing for this paragraph. Go to paragraph and reduce the spacing by a tad to see if that eliminates the widow. Finally, you can manually insert a page break earlier in the paragraph so that the paragraph continues at the top of the next page with more than just a few words or just one line. Be mindful as you make these changes because your goal is to keep your changes minimal and unnoticeable. You're intending to preserve the overall layout and readability of the document. Now let's tackle orphans. Similar strategies apply here. Adjusting the margins or the character spacing can pull the orphan line back to the previous page. Remember, any changes should be subtle and they should maintain the documents consistency and flow. Also, remember that most modern word processors come with built in tools to manage widows and orphans in Microsoft Word. For example, select the paragraphs that you want to control on the toolbar. Click Paragraph, and then click the line and page, Break tab. And select the Widow Orphan Control check box. If you want to eliminate all widows and orphans in your document. Make this change for all styles where widows and orphans are likely to occur. Go to the toolbar. Hover over the style. Right click, choose modify, choose format, choose paragraph, Choose the line and page breaks tab, and select the Widow Orphan Control checkbox. One thing to remember about widows and orphans is that they not only happen between pages, they also happen between paragraphs in columns. Look through your document and you may find lonely widows and orphans at the end of columns and at the start of columns. Fix these by adjusting the column width or reducing the character spacing. That's it. As you proof read, always pay attention to how paragraphs break across pages and columns. Widows and orphans are easy to miss if you aren't hunting for them. But they can have a significant impact on the look and professionalism of a document. Develop the habit of checking the end of each page and the start of the next page, the end of each column and the start of the next column to catch widows and orphans. 27. Typography: Proofreading is all about paying attention to detail and sometimes those details are tiny. I'm talking about typography and the various conventions and rules that govern how characters appear on a page or on a screen. To be a successful proofreader, you must know the most common typographic mistakes. First up, let's talk about trademark symbols. The most common ones are the T, M for trademark, and R for registered trademark. You will often come across these in documents you proof read, but they will appear like this and look like they are part of the word, which they are not. Trademark symbols must be set in superscript. Anytime you find one, select it. Go to the toolbar, select font, and check the superscript box. Now let's look at subscript characters. The symbol for carbon dioxide is two, but the two is supposed to be subscript. Again, you will often find that writers submit manuscripts that feature the symbol looking like this. Fix this the same way. Go to the toolbar, select font, and check the subscript box. There are plenty of other places in documents where you will find letters, numbers, and symbols that need to be set in either superscript or subscript. The symbol for degrees, for example, is set in superscript. The symbol for water, H2o, has a two that is set in subscript. Another common typographical error involves Latin words and phrases that are set in Roman not in italics. This error typically happens either because writers don't know about this convention or because they simply forgot to italicize the word. Or because the italics disappeared while a writer was copying from one document and pasting into another. To correct this, simply go through the document and italicize any Latin words or phrases. This helps to maintain the professional and academic tone of the document. Next up in typographical mistakes is inadequate or incorrect fonts. If your organization publishes a style guide, it will tell you the fonts to use for titles, headings, subheadings, body copy, and so on. One of your first jobs as a proofreader is ensuring that the document you are proofreading uses those designated fonts. That's it. Perhaps the shortest lesson in this course, but one that deals with small changes that make a massive difference to the readers of the documents that you proofread. 28. Images: Some of the most vital errors that you look for as a proofreader have nothing to do with spelling, grammar, or punctuation. As a proofreader, you must understand not just textual mistakes, but also visual mistakes because images contribute to the overall effectiveness of a document. Let's look at common image related errors that you're likely to encounter in your journeys as a proofreader. First on our list of offenders is the wrong image. This error happens when an image doesn't match the content it's supposed to illustrate, or when the photo or image is irrelevant to the documents subject. This error typically occurs due to mix ups during the drafting process, especially in documents where multiple images are being used or where images are sourced from multiple contributors. To fix this, review each image carefully to ensure that it corresponds accurately with the accompanying text and the documents overall theme. Replace any mismatched images with more appropriate ones or flag this mistake in the margin with a comment. Now let's talk about low resolution images. Photographs and images that are blurry or pixelated significantly reduce the professionalism of a document. Low res images are often the result of a writer enlarging a smaller image or using an image thumbnail instead of the image to correct this. Ensure that the document uses high resolution images that maintain their clarity when scaled to the desired size. If an image looks blurry or pixilated request that the writer or designer replace it with a higher resolution image. Another common issue with images is poor text wrapping around images. When text does not flow smoothly around the edge of an image, it disrupts the document's readability. This problem often arises from incorrect text wrapping settings, or from a designer or writer not adjusting the text to accommodate the image size and placement. To correct this, use Microsoft Words text wrapping feature to ensure a sameless flow of text around images. Experiment with different wrapping styles to find the one that best suits the layout and readability of the document that you're proofing. Next up, images covering text. Sometimes you'll find images laid over text by mistake, making the covered portion of text readable. This usually happens when images are improperly aligned or sized within the document. It also happens when text wrap settings are incorrect. As you can see, Microsoft Word gives you the option of having an image lie in front of text by which they mean on top of the text as far as the reader is concerned. To fix this error, re, size, and reposition images to ensure they don't overlap with any text. Or adjust the text wrap setting so that text appears around the image and not underneath it. Another error, and one that is sometimes hard to spot is inconsistent image sizing and styles. Inconsistencies in image sizing and style make a document look amateurish and sloppy inconsistencies often occur when images are sourced from multiple places or when there's a lack of a clear visual guideline for the document to fix the error of inconsistencies. Standardize the size style of images throughout your document. In Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, simply double click on the image, go to the toolbar and either adjust the height or width of the image to make it consistent with other images of that kind. If needed, crop the image to achieve the same effect. Another error you'll come across with images is improper image alignment. Images should align with relevant text or other design elements to create a cohesive look. This error often happens when images get inserted without considering the overall layout of the document. The remedy for misalignment is to align images correctly with the text or with other elements on the page using the alignment, margin, and other settings in the ruler. Remember that as a proof reader, your role extends beyond text. To include the visual elements of a document. By identifying and correcting these common image related errors, you'll greatly enhance the professionalism and effectiveness of the documents you work on. 29. Tables and Charts: In business, government, academic, and scientific documents. Tables and charts play a vital role in presenting data in a clear and concise way. Mistakes in tables and charts significantly undermine a document's credibility. Let's explore common errors that you're going to find with tables and charts. First, let's talk about one of the most common errors, and that is math in a table or chart that doesn't add up. For example, you find a table like this, you add the numbers in the column, and you discover that they don't add up to the number that's there in the total. Or you go across a row like this and discover that the percentage change recorded in this cell is incorrect. The difference between the two cells to the left is not this percentage. There are plenty of other mistakes that writers make in their calculations, but these are the two most common columns and rows that don't add up and percentages that don't add up, either. This issue occurs either due to mistakes in calculations or incorrect data entry. To fix them, you need to carefully check the math in tables and charts, ensure that all numbers, totals, and percentages are accurate and that all calculations are correct. Using a calculator or spreadsheet helps you catch mistakes. Another common mistake is inconsistencies between the text and table references. This occurs when the text refers to the wrong table or provides information that doesn't match the data in the table. This error typically arises from changes in the document that are not reflected in the text, such as when tables are moved or renumbered. To address this, thoroughly check all references to tables in your text. Ensure that each reference points to the correct table and that the information mentioned in the reference matches the data in the table. For example, as you are reading, whenever you come across a phrase like this, as you can see in the table below, check to make sure there is a table below. Anytime you come across a reference to a chart such as figure nine, presents our annual revenue check to make sure the figure on the page that follows this reference is figure nine and that it presents the annual revenue figures. Next up, misaligned columns and rows. Misaligned columns and rows and tables make data difficult to read and understand. Misalignment often occurs due to improper formatting or when writers adjust a table size without paying attention to alignment. Correct this error by adjusting the formatting of tables to ensure that all columns and all rows align properly. Use the table formatting tools, the toolbar to keep data organized, aligned, and easy to navigate. Incorrect or missing labels in charts is another common problem. Labels are crucial for understanding what a chart represents. Any errors here lead to misinterpretation of the data. This problem usually happens due to oversight during chart creation or when updates to the chart are not reflected in the labels. Check each label to make sure it accurately reflects the data in the chart. Check that all necessary labels are present and that they correctly describe the charts contents. Next, poor formatting of tables and charts. Poor formatting of tables and charts, such as inconsistent font sizes, colors, and styles, makes documents look unprofessional and confusing. Two things that we want to avoid. This usually results from using different styles or formats within a unified approach. Or from copying elements from various sources and putting them into one document. Your job as a proofreader is to standardize the formatting of all tables and charts in your document. Use consistent fonts, sizes, and colors to ensure a cohesive and professional appearance. Remember that your role as a proofreader includes ensuring that tables and charts effectively communicate their intended message by identifying and correcting these common errors. You enhance each document's accuracy and professionalism. 30. Table of Contents: One of the last things you should check as a proof reader is the Table of contents. The table of contents is a crucial part of many documents, guiding readers through the material. But it's also prone to multiple errors that mislead or confuse readers. Let's look at the most common mistakes that you're going to encounter in tables of contents. One of the most common errors is mismatched page numbers. This happens when the page numbers in the table of contents don't correspond with the pages in the document. This typically occurs during editing, especially when sections get added to the document or moved or removed. The writer or designer fails to update the contents of the table of contents. To fix this, update the table of contents after making any changes to the document. In most word processors, you do this automatically by refreshing or updating the table of contents feature. Next up, inconsistent formatting. Inconsistent formatting in the table of contents, such as varying fonts and sizes and styles for headings, makes a document look unprofessional. This often happens when multiple parts of a document are formatted separately or when manual changes get made to the table of contents. To correct this error, ensure uniform formatting throughout the table of contents. Use the same font, the same size, the same style for all similar elements. Table consistency here is key to a professional appearance. Incorrect titling or labeling, such as typos in chapter titles or incorrect section names is another frequent issue. This error typically comes up from manual typing errors or when changes in the section titles within the document are not mirrored in the table of contents. Carefully review each title and label in the table of contents to ensure they match the corresponding sections the document correct any typos or discrepancies you find. A table of contents might also have missing or extra sections. This happens when sections get added to or removed from the document without somebody updating the table of contents accordingly. This also happens from oversight during the editing process or when using a pre existing template to correct this error, compare the table of contents with the contents of the document, add any missing sections, and remove any that no longer exist in the document. Indentation and alignment are also places where errors creep in. Improper indentation and alignment in the table of contents confuses readers about the documents structure. This error typically occurs when using automatic formatting. Without reviewing or adjusting the default settings, review and adjust the indentations and alignment to accurately reflect the hierarchy and the structure of the document. Each level the document hierarchy should be clearly distinguishable from the others through consistent indentation. Now onto inaccurate hyper linking in Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Adobe PDF, and other digital documents. An issue you will encounter is inaccurate hyperlinks in the table of contents where links lead to incorrect sections. This typically happens during editing, especially in really long documents where sections get moved around or renumbered. Fix this. Click on each hyperlink in the table of contents to make sure it directs the reader to the correct section and page number, update any links that lead to the wrong place. This is crucial for digital documents to enhance navigability. Lastly, an over complicated table of contents with too much detail or too many sub levels can overwhelm readers. This often happens when inexperienced or over zealous writers include every minor section or subsection, the table of contents, and that clutters the whole table of contents. Simplify the table of contents by including only the main sections and subsections. Keep it concise and easy to navigate. Remember as a proof reader, your keen attention to detail in the table of contents reflects the overall quality of the document. By identifying and correcting these common errors, you greatly enhance the documents professional appearance and usability. 31. Proofreading Best Practices for Microsoft Word: As a professional proofreader, you're going to spend the majority of your time at a computer proofing digital documents. Those digital documents will be mainly Microsoft Word Docs, Microsoft Powerpoint Presentations, and Adobe Acrobat PDF. Now this course is all about proofreading and not about how to use these particular software applications. But here are some pointers on how to get the most productivity out of each app. Let's start with Microsoft Word. One of the first things to do with Word to customize the ribbon in the Quick Access toolbar at the top of the screen. The ribbon sits on top of the tool bar, out of the box. It simply has an auto save toggle button and a save button. But when you click the dropdown arrow to the right, you see that there are multiple ways to customize your ribbon. Go down to more commands and then in the drop down menu, choose all commands, scroll down. There are easily more than 100 commands that you can add to your ribbon. For instance, I have customized my ribbon with a drop down menu that lets me toggle the case of any word or sentence. This customization saves me the hassle of manually making words lowercase or uppercase or a mix of both. Then you'll see that I have added two little windows that show me how much space there is before a sentence or paragraph and how much space there is after. These simple customizations save me a whole lot of time when I'm proofing a document another time saver and word is split screen whenever you want to ensure that all parts of your document follow a particular style or format, split your screen in two, Go up to view, choose Split, And then in the top portion of the split, show the standard you want to follow. Then in the bottom part of the split, scroll down through the document comparing each section below with the standard that you're trying to follow at the top. Then you can resize the split to give yourself more room to read. Another productivity booster in Microsoft Word is the editor. Go up to review, go over to the left and click Editor. Sidebar appears on the right of your screen. It shows you all manner of helpful ways to improve your document. The most important two items are at the top, spelling and grammar. Notice that word gives you a count of each class of error by scrolling to the top of your document, inserting your cursor at the beginning, and clicking spelling in the editor on the right word takes you to the first spelling mistake in the document and suggests the correct spelling. You either accept it or reject it and move on to the next flagged entry. Word does the same for grammar mistakes. It takes you to every part of the document that word thinks is a grammatical mistake and suggests a remedy for each one. Some of these suggested remedies will be correct. Some will be recommendations that you will ignore because you know better. But having this editor side bar, which is also a proofreader sidebar, is valuable, especially when you are proofing long documents. That's it, for best practices for proofing with Microsoft Word. Next on the list is Microsoft Powerpoint. 32. Proofreading Best Practices for PowerPoint: Now let's look at best practices for proof reading Microsoft Powerpoint presentations. The first thing you're going to notice is that Powerpoint doesn't give you a way to track changes, additions, deletions, or corrections you make to slides in a deck will be invisible to the author or designer. They won't see that you've changed anything unless they compare your proofed version with their version. There are a couple of ways around this. One of them is to add a comment anytime you make a noteworthy change. By noteworthy, I mean, don't bother flagging spelling mistakes you've corrected, or faulty punctuation that you've fixed. Only flag important things like words that you've added or deleted or replaced. The other work around is to save a copy of the original document, make your changes to that copy, and then use the compare tool to highlight those changes. First, open your proofed version and then under review, choose Compare. And in the Windows finder that appears, scroll down and select the original file. Powerpoint then shows you a sidebar on the right that lists and describes each change. As you can see, as you click on each yellow comment icon in a slide, a little pop up tells you what was changed. As you can also see, this is not as intuitive or as helpful the track changes feature in Microsoft Word, but it's something, another thing that's lacking in Powerpoint is styles. Powerpoint doesn't have a style section in the toolbar that lets you choose heading one or heading two or normal style the way that you do in Microsoft Word. But Powerpoint does have styles, they are just hidden. You find these styles by going to View. Finding the slide master button, and clicking Powerpoint displays all of the layouts in the deck. Each layout features a unique design. Notice that text boxes, whether they are for headings or body copy, have a distinct style. They feature a typeface, for example, in a particular size and with a particular treatment such as bold. Also notice that there are levels and that each level can have its own unique typeface treatment. This is where you make changes to how type appears in the presentation. You don't apply styles to text on a slide. The way you apply styles to text in Microsoft Word. Instead, you specify what headings and body copy should look like using the slide master. Just one thing to note, when an author or designer copies text from another document and pastes it into a Powerpoint slide, it rarely shows up on the slide with the required formatting. For example, headings on this slide layout should look like this. But when I delete the existing text and paste text from a Word document, text keeps its formatting from Word and does not adopt the default formatting for headings. In this layout, the remedy is to highlight the text and to then press control and the space bar. This transforms the text to the default style that's specified in the slide master. You'll find yourself doing this a lot as you proof read Powerpoint slides. Another drawback is that Powerpoint doesn't have an editor of the kind that you find in Microsoft Word, but it does have an elementary proofing tool. You find it in the tool bar under view, over on the left in the proofing section, click Spelling, And Powerpoint brings up a sidebar that shows you all of the words that it thinks are misspelled. In the presentation, you accept or reject each recommendation as you please. That's it for best practices for proofing with Microsoft Powerpoint. Next up, Adobe Acrobat. 33. Proofreading Best Practices for Adobe Acrobat: Finally, let's look at proofreading Adobe Acrobat PDF. Depending on your role within an organization and depending on the types of documents you proof read, you will either spend a lot or a little of your time proofing Adobe Acrobat PDF. The main difference between proofing PDFs and proofing Word docs or Powerpoint presentations is that you don't make changes to the text yourself in the PDF. You don't delete any words or correct any typos, add any words to the text. Instead, you flag deletions and corrections and additions by inserting comments in the margin. I'm speaking here of Adobe Acrobat and not Adobe Acrobat Pro, which does let you make changes in the text with Adobe Acrobat. Any corrections you make when proofing a document belong in the margin as comments. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind when creating these comments. First, make sure your name is clear as the author of each comment. If needed, click on the three dots. Choose Properties. Click the general tab and change the author name to whatever best identifies you as the proofreader. To make deletions, corrections, and additions, simply highlight the area, whether it's words or images. Create a comment and then start typing. A best practice to follow is to begin every comment with who you're writing it for. For example, write designer colon, followed by your comment. Or write author colon, followed by your comment. Then whenever possible, make the first word of your comment a verb. For example, author. Delete this redundant word or designer. Move this image left to align it with the text above. There are lots of verbs to choose from. Use the one that best communicates your meaning, such as delete the add word. Move up, Align, right. Insert trademark, symbol. Check spelling. Whenever you need to tell a designer or author to make a particular change, use a two fold format. Change this to this or replace this with this. Put the offending item on one line and put your recommended change on the line beneath. Another best practice with PDFs is to place all global changes at the start of the PDF as the first comment. For example, if you need the designer to remove all double spaces between words, put this into a comment at the start of the PDF. Preface the change with global change. This saves you from having to flag every instance error that a writer or designer needs to make globally. That's it for best practices with proofing with Adobe Acrobat. 34. Proofreading with Proofreader Marks: As a proofreader, you are going to spend the majority of your time working at a computer, proofreading digital documents such as Microsoft Word reports, Powerpoint presentations, and Adobe PDF. But you may, on occasion, be asked to proof read a printed document. Typically, this will be a document that has already been type set. That is, it has already been designed and formatted and laid out ready for the printer. It is now ready to go to press. You will be asked to give it a final once over to make sure it has no errors in it. Since the document is already in paper form, you must proofread it the old school way with a pen. This is how I got started as a proofreader back in 1989, before the Internet. In those days, all proofreading was done, sitting at a desk, read pen in hand, going through documents line by line, looking for mistakes for you to proof read a document the old way, you need to know how to mark up the document. After all, when you proof read a document digitally, you make any needed changes and corrections yourself or you flag them in the margins. But with the paper document, someone else will make those corrections. Typically the designer, your job is to tell the designer what to correct in the document. And where you do this with proofreaders marks. Proofreaders marks, also called proof reading marks, are symbols and notations for correcting typeset or designed pages. As the proofreader, place these marks in the text and in the margins to show a designer what to correct in a typeset document. Some proofreader marks you make directly in the text to indicate that a word needs to be removed. For example, you run your pen through the word and then give it a curl at the end. That's the proofreader mark for delete. This is the main reason that you use a red pen, by the way, so that your proofreader marks stand out, they don't get missed. Other times you're going to place a marker in the text and write an explanation in the margin. For example, if you need the designer to spell out an acronym or turn a numeral into a word, by spelling it out, you circle the abbreviation or the numeral in the text. Then in the margin, you write P and draw a circle around it. Sp is a proof reader mark. That means spell out the circle in the text around the acronym or the numeral tells the designer what to spell out to be successful. A proofreader doing things the old school way, All you need is a red pen, a good eye, and a knowledge of proofreaders marks. I've got my document and I've got my red pen. So let's get started. The first thing you need to learn to do is show where letters, words, and other things need to be deleted. You do this by drawing a line through the offending item and then making a flourish at the end. If you are deleting a word or phrase, you draw the line horizontally. If you are striking out a single character, such as a comma, you draw a oval or circle around the offending character and then add that swirly line to that circle. This is the best method to use when the character is particularly small, such as a comma that needs to be removed. Another type of deletion is space between letters or words that don't belong. If you want the designer to merely reduce the size of the gap, you put a semicircle under part of the gap. But if you want the designer to close the gap entirely, you put a semicircle above the gap and another one beneath it. This is the proofreader symbol for close the gap. If you need to delete a character and close the gap, you draw the delete symbol through the character and then add the symbol for close the gap. Now let's look at how you indicate that things need to be added. If you are adding something small, like a, a letter or a small word, draw a carrot symbol underneath the place of insertion. And then write what needs to be inserted. For example, draw the carrot symbol and then a comma or draw a carrot symbol and a missing letter. Or draw the carrot symbol and add a missing word. If you need to add a larger item such as a few words, draw this symbol above the insertion point. It looks like a set of wings with the bird's beak pointing at where the insertion needs to go. Then between the wings, write out what needs to be inserted. Another way to indicate additions is to use this insertion mark. It is essentially the carrot symbol combined with a forward slash. Put this symbol where the insertion must be placed. Then in the margin, draw a forward slash followed by the required insertion. One convention for punctuation is to put it in the margin with a circle around it. For example, if a sentence needs a colon, you indicate the insertion point. Then in the margin, draw a colon with a circle around it. The same goes for semicolons and so on. I recommend you use this convention whenever there is not enough space in a document to indicate the addition needed or where it belongs. When space is tight, use the margin for your comments. When space is plentiful, simply use the carrot symbol with the punctuation beneath it for periods. Another convention is to simply add the period in the text, and to draw a circle around it, so that the designer sees this addition. A piece of punctuation on its own is hard to spot, but put a circle around it, and it stands out for apostrophes and quotation marks which appear above words, you use an upside down carrot symbol, otherwise known as the letter V. You put the needed punctuation inside the V. When you need to indicate that a space is needed, use either the carrot symbol and the proofreader mark for space, or the insertion symbol and a notation in the margin, followed by the proofreader mark for space. The pound sign is the proof read mark for space. Now let's look at capitalization. If you need a word to be capitalized, you draw three horizontal lines under the lower case letter. This is the symbol for capitalize. You can also write C AP in the margin to be extra clear. If you need a letter that is capitalized to be lower case, you draw a diagonal line through the character to be clear, you can write LC in the margin, in lower case as well, and draw a circle around it. This is the proofreader symbol for set in lower case. Now let's look at italic and Roman type faces. If a word should be italicized, draw a horizontal line under it, write all in the margin. If a word is in italic but needs to be set in Roman, draw a horizontal line under it and write the abbreviation for Roman in the margin. If a word or phrase needs to be set in bold, draw a squiggly line under it and write B in the margin with a circle around it. F for bold face. Now sometimes you're going to make a correction with proofreaders marks, and then you're going to change your mind when this happens. Draw a series of horizontal dots under your correction and then write stet. Stet is Latin for let it stand. In other words, leave it as it is and ignore my change. If you come across two words that are transposed, that is they are in their reverse order, or two letters that are in the wrong order, Mark the place like this. Draw a line up, over, down, over and up again. This is the proofreader mark for transpose. If you want, you can write R in the margin transpose. If you find a paragraph with an indented first line that shouldn't be indented, draw this symbol, which means move left. Then if you find a paragraph with a first sentence that is not indented but should be, draw this symbol. A simple square box. This box is the proof reader mark. That means indent one M. Speaking of paragraphs, when you find a paragraph that needs to be divided into two, show where the new paragraph should start by either drawing the paragraph symbol in the text like this, or by drawing an insertion mark where the new paragraph should start and then adding the paragraph mark in the margin. If you find two paragraphs that really belong together as a single paragraph like this, draw a line from the end of one paragraph to the start of the other one. This is the proof reader mark for remove the paragraph break and join these two sentences together. When you come across a heading or paragraph that is crooked or misaligned, draw two vertical lines on either side of the offending item. These are the proof read marks for straighten or a line. Whenever you come across a character or word set in the wrong font, draw a circle around it and write in the margin for wrong font. That you will be glad to know is the major proof marks you need to know. There are a few other ones that you will need to know if you prove scientific papers. Such as how to indicate that letters and numerals in equations need to be set in superscript or subscript. Marks that you've just learned in this lesson are the essential marks you need to know. You will find these marks in the handout for this lesson. By the way, you don't have to remember them all just from today. Use that handout as you get started practicing proof reading paper proofs properly.