The Perils of Proofreading

 

I’m not one of life’s natural proofreaders.

There. I've confessed.

This is a realisation that has come to me during this publication process as I have taken to my own work with a fine tooth comb to ensure that it is as mistake-free as possible for the attention of my publishers. Because one thing that undertaking this has really brought home to me is how the human brain works when it is reading – that it doesn’t read every word but gap fills the meaning for you. This, I’m sure you are aware, is a well known phenomenon and it’s one my brain seems particularly adept at – I have no problem with reading those strange sentences that people write in memes when they leave the first and last letter in place in a word and shuffle the inner letters, for example. I have a brain that, in that respect, likes to be helpful and extracts the meaning without taking any great note of the technicalities.

The trouble is that doesn’t really help when one is trying to spot mistakes. My brain has an awful tendency to fill in the word I think I should be seeing rather than the one that is actually there. I can’t seem to register at all if I have used a certain word with great frequency in close proximity. My mind is so busy helpfully scrolling along that none of the things compute and I have a devil of a time trying to pick them up.

But the strange thing is – take me away from my own writing, and spotting out of place things is actually something I’m really good at. I can find mistakes in other places quite adeptly. Indeed, it’s been a major part of my job for a number of years. I can spot a misplaced word in an email or a missing detail or a misspelling with ease in my professional life. But somehow I can’t do it with my own writing.

And the conclusion I have come to is this. If I want to proofread something, I have to stop reading it first.

Because when one is reading a story... the best way I can describe it is that one is somehow inside it. The words don’t seem to matter, they simply exist to generate the images inside one’s head. The technicalities just don’t register strongly when one is within the flow of the story. In an odd way, you could say I’m caught up in The Narrative.

But to proofread a story, in my experience, you can’t start reading it. You have to take a step back and analyse it instead. When I proofread my stories, I have to read them word by word, stepping out of the narrative flow and tracing each individual sentence through with my cursor, mouthing each word to myself to make certain I have used the right one.

This is where I struggle. I get bored. It’s very time-consuming and very tedious and, the perfectionist’s peril, I spend a lot of time cross with myself when I find a stupid thing I’ve mistyped. And, not to sound arrogant but, like The Narrative pouncing, when I weaken, the story keeps dragging me back in. I find I’ve started reading it rather than analysing it again and with a sigh, have to go back and try and find where I strayed from the path of technical reading and into the realm of imagination. I find it really, really hard not to just read the book.

And so, this is a shout out really to those hardly souls who can do these things, not only with ease but also for a living. To the editors and proofreaders of the world, I give a respectful nod. Because I don’t have the foggiest idea how you manage it!