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Every professional editor is a business owner, and that role requires us to track the health of our businesses from one year to the next. Managing and analysing all that data can be a burden, especially if you’re more interested in words than numbers!
Fellow editor and Excel authority Maya Berger has created a tool that will make life easy. It’s called The Editor's Affairs (TEA). 
All the data in one place
When it comes to keeping an eye on the health of my business, simple has always been my goal. I’m an editor, not an accountant. Essentially, I want as much as possible in one place:
And when it’s time to submit a tax return to (in my case) HMRC and evaluate how things are going, I don’t want to be faffing around with several different apps and spreadsheets. Instead, I want to see the core data at a glance … data that will tell me the following: On a project basis:
On a business-health basis:
I don’t want to spend ages collecting and collating this data so it’s easy to access. I want summaries that give me a number – automatically generated by the data I’ve inputted throughout the financial year. Then, when it’s time to review my business and submit my return to the tax authorities, the numbers are ready and waiting for me. I’ve been tracking my data for years, and while I’m fairly proficient with Excel, I’ve been aware that there’s more I could do to fine-tune my process. However, like many editors, I have neither the time nor the will. So when Maya asked me to take a look at TEA, I jumped at the chance. 
The Editor's Affairs (TEA)
So what is TEA? It’s a one-stop-shop Excel spreadsheet with lots of built-in jiggery-pokery that does all the tricky formula work for you. All you need to do is input the project (and expenses) data as it comes in. Below are examples of some of the project data an editor can input, and the received data from TEA. Examples of data the editor can input
Examples of received data from TEA
5 reasons why TEA is worth it
So why is it worth investing in TEA? I identified 5 standout features that I believe make this a must-have tool. NOTE: The numbers and client information below are for the purposes of illustration only. I made them up because my business affairs are of no concern to anyone but me! 1. Making informed decisions when quoting TEA allows you to see the impact of the data you’re inputting on your business, and make informed decisions about how you should quote. Let’s take an example: John Smith asks me to line edit a 100K-word novel. I estimate I can edit at a speed of 1,750 words per hour, so I input that information along with the word count.
I decide I want to earn £40 per hour. I add that data to the row.
Now I can build my quote. I type 57 into the hours-worked cell.
For argument’s sake, let’s say I know that my client’s budget is £2,000. I can temporarily add this to the amount-received cell.
If I’m happy to work for £35.09 rather than £40 per hour, I’m good to go. If I don’t, I can negotiate with the client. The point is, I can play with the data I’m inputting and see the impact. And that means there are no surprises. I’m making informed decisions. 2. Collecting data for the future Less experienced editors might not yet have enough older data to know how long a particular type of editing will take, or whether Client A’s work tends to be speedier to complete than Client B’s. TEA helps us build that knowledge via accrued data that we can use later on. Another example … In April 2019, Jackie Jones asks me to proofread her 30,000-word novella. I have no clue how long it will take so I estimate a speed of 5,000 words an hour. I’m grateful for the opportunity because my business is new. I decide I’ll be happy earning anything over £20 per hour. TEA tells me my rate per 1,000 words will be £4 and it’ll take 6 hours, so I bill for £120. I get the gig and do the work. In fact, it takes me 10 hours. I input the new data.
But I’ve learned something. And when Jackie comes back to me three months later with another job with the same word count, this time I can input more accurate data, meaning I’ll earn my desired rate of £20 per 1,000 words. 3. Saving time and protecting the data At no time am I messing around with a calculator. All I do is input the raw data and review what TEA’s analysis cells tell me. That saves me time because TEA’s doing the maths for me. Plus, I can’t break the spreadsheet! TEA’s analysis cells are locked so I won’t inadvertently alter the complex formulae within. 4. Client analysis Some editors work for repeat clients – an agency or publisher, for example. In those cases, we’re not always in control of the price, and yet those clients can still be valuable because of the amount of repeat work they send us and the percentage of our overall income their business accounts for. Knowing who our most valuable clients are is essential if we’re to avoid knee-jerk reactions to rates of pay. If Publisher A pays me an hourly rate half that of Agency A but gives me five times as much work, I’ll want to think very carefully before canning that client because I don’t like their pricing structure. TEA’s Client Summaries Table does what is says on the tin. It’s here that we can see a list of our clients, the percentage their business contributes to our overall income, the number of hours’ work we’ve done for them and the total income received. Time for another example … Let’s say I’m scowling at the row on the Income sheet because I’ve yet to crack £15 per hour from Romance Fiction Press. Just above is an entry for John Smith, the indie author from whom I earned £40 per hour. Terrible rates, I think. Exploitative, disrespectful, unfair. I’m about to head off to a Facebook group with 10,000 editor members and have a bit of a rant. Then I’m going to tell that press where to stick it. But hang on a mo! What does TEA have to say? I nip onto the Summaries sheet and take a look at the Client Summaries Table.
Yes, John Smith is a more valuable client on a project-by-project basis but he’s not giving me anywhere near the same volume of work as Romance Fiction Press. Instead of ranting on Facebook, I need to use that time to plan a strategy that will bring in more John Smiths or better-paying publishers and agencies. Once done, I can phase out Romance Fiction Press. That might take a couple of years of intensive marketing. Until then, the press will stay. Perhaps I can negotiate a raise with them. Maybe there are efficiency tools I can introduce to increase my speed when I’m editing for them. And they pay on time, are pleasant to work with, and have given me loads of fodder for my portfolio that I can leverage on my website and in future marketing. The work is regular, too, and lands on my lap without my having to promote myself to get it. And that time saved is worth something. 5. Making tracking and tax less taxing There are two additional and extremely useful summary tables in TEA:
The totals are the figures you’ll report to the tax office. They’re right there in front of you – no hunting around in different apps and other spreadsheets. All the data filters through from easy-to-fill-in Income and Expenses sheets accessible via TEA’s tabs. 
How do I find out more about TEA?
Isn’t the name adorable? Using TEA is like having a cuppa! And it’s all about the editor’s affairs – our business affairs. The data the editor has to input is basic stuff that all of us have access to or can estimate with every new job or expense that comes in. The data TEA gives takes the stress out of scheduling, accounting and analysis. Every editor needs to understand the health of their business so that they can make informed decisions about who they work with, how much they charge and where the value lies. When accessing that data becomes burdensome, the temptation is to wing it. TEA means you don’t have to. Maya will be making TEA available for purchase in May 2020. For introductory rates or to learn more about customized versions for more complex accounting and analysis, check out whatimeantosay.com/tea. *** NOTE: I have no commercial stake in TEA, though I was given a free copy to experiment with in return for feeding back my experience of using it.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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Writing or editing in Microsoft Word on a PC? Save yourself time by learning these 27 keyboard shortcuts.
If you don’t want to learn 27, learn just the first one: Save!
CLICK ON IMAGE TO DOWNLOAD A PDF
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk about 10 editing macros that will save you time and improve the quality of your writing.
Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 5
Summary
Listen to find out more about:
Editing bites
Music credit ‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk with Daniel Heuman, founder of Intelligent Editing and developer of PerfectIt – consistency-checking and style-enforcing software for editors and writers.
Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 3
Summary
Listen to find out more about:
Music credit ‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Are you spending too much time on your novel’s text design? Here’s how to use the Styles function in Microsoft Word to ensure the various elements are formatted consistently.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the following:
What is the Styles tool? The Styles tool allows you to apply design consistency to the various text elements in your book. In a novel, you might want to create different styles for the following:
Microsoft Word has a handy suite of on-board styles, though it’s unlikely they’ll match your specific requirements. Modifying these is still a little quicker than creating fresh styles so take a look at the properties and work out what you’ll retain and what you’ll change. What properties can you influence? You can influence every property of your text when you assign a style to it. However, in a novel, you’ll most likely focus on the following:
How to access the Styles tool There are two ways to access the Styles function onscreen:
The gallery in the ribbon offers a preview of how the style appears. If I’m working with a lot of different text elements in a document, I find these visual clues useful when I want to locate a style quickly.
On smaller screens, less of the Styles gallery will be visible. To access the previews of all the styles in your gallery, click on the MORE arrow (circled). 
A new window will appear containing the full gallery.
Why you should format with styles
Using styles gives you control over design, consistency and formatting time. Time is money, so when you do the job instead of asking other professionals to do it, your book budgets goes further. Perhaps you can invest a little more time or money on cover design, sales and marketing, or learning how to improve writing craft. Can you format manually? Of course, but you could be making a lot of unnecessary work for yourself. Scenario 1 You complete the writing, drafting, and editing, and get cracking on designing the layout. Now that there are 85,000 words in place, your thriller’s looking more like a textbook thanks to the font you’ve chosen for your main text: Arial 14. A serif font like Times New Roman would be easier on your reader’s eye. The problem is, you can’t select all the text in the file with CTRL A and change it in one fell swoop because that would affect the chapter headings and the emails your transgressor is sending to the police, all of which are formatted differently. Instead, you have to work through the file, locate the main text elements manually, and change the font. If, however, you’ve assigned a style to your main text, you can modify that font property in just a few clicks. The change will automatically change all the main text, and only that element, to your new font. Further down, I’ll show you how. Scenario 2 You’ve written 12 additional paragraphs for your book but they’re in another document. You copy and paste the writing into your book file. Now you have to manually format the new sections so that they match the existing work. If you’ve assigned styles, however, it’s as simple as cut, paste and left-click. Job done. How to create a style There are several ways to create a style in Word:
1A. Manual method Open the styles pane and left-click on the A+ button in the bottom-left-hand corner. 
A new window will open (CREATE NEW STYLE FROM FORMATTING). Now you can give your style a name (1) and assign properties to the font, paragraph spacing and page flow (2 and 3).
1B. Manual method B
Alternatively, right-click on a piece of text that’s already formatted according to your preferences. A mini toolbar will appear. Click on the Styles button. 
A new window will appear. Left-click on CREATE A STYLE.
Name your style, modify if you wish, and left-click OK.
2. Updating method
Select a piece of text that’s already formatted according to your preferences. Now head up to the Styles gallery in the ribbon, or the Styles pane, and right-click on an unused style that you’re happy to update. Hover over UPDATE [STYLE] TO MATCH SELECTION, then left-click. 
How to modify a style
There are two ways to modify a style in Word:
1. Styles gallery Go to the Styles gallery in the ribbon and right-click on the style you want to modify. 
Left-click on MODIFY and amend the properties of your style. Note that this will change every piece of text assigned with that style.
2. Styles pane
Go to the Styles pane on the right-hand side of your screen and right-click on the style you want to modify. 
Left-click on MODIFY and amend the properties of your style. Again, bear in mind that this will change every piece of text with that style assigned.
How to assign a style to an element of text If a piece of text isn’t formatted correctly, left-click the cursor on a word or in a paragraph, or select it by double-clicking. Now head up to the Styles gallery in the ribbon, or the Styles pane, and left-click on the preferred style. Your style will be assigned. If you’re working on a smaller screen, you’ll probably find it easier to use the Styles gallery in the ribbon because it takes up less space than the Styles pane. To close the Styles pane and free up some screen real-estate, left-click on the X in the top-right-hand corner. 
Troubleshooting
Here’s how to fix some of the more common problems that arise when working with styles. 1. Styles gallery or pane isn’t visible If the Styles gallery isn’t visible, make sure you’re in the HOME tab in the ribbon. 
If the Styles pane isn’t visible, left-click on the small arrow in the Styles gallery.
2. Style not showing in gallery
If you’ve created a style and it’s not showing in gallery, head to the Styles pane and right-click on the missing style. This opens the MODIFY pane. Make sure that the ADD TO THE STYLES GALLERY box is checked. 
3. The gallery is cluttered with unused styles
If your gallery is busy with styles you don’t need to access, there are two ways to remove them. The quickest method is to right-click on an unwanted style, then left-click on REMOVE FROM STYLE GALLERY. 
An alternative is to right-click on the unwanted style and left-click on MODIFY. Then uncheck the ADD TO THE STYLES GALLERY box.
4. You’ve renamed a style but Word’s default name is still displayed in the pane
If you’re using the Styles pane to apply styles, the list might appear cluttered if Word’s default names are displaying, even though you've modified them. To fix, left-click on the OPTIONS button. 
Check the HIDE BUILT-IN NAME WHEN ALTERNATE EXISTS box, then left-click on OK.
Your list will now display with your modified names.
Heading styles and navigating your Word file
One of the advantages of using the Styles tool for a novel is navigation. To access the Navigation pane, press CTRL F on a PC. Now, left-click on the HEADINGS tab. Any style based on one of the in-built heading styles will show up in the menu. 
I use this function when I’m editing and want to check that chapter headings (and subheadings) are formatted consistently, assigned the correct level of priority, and numbered chronologically.
Headings with arrows next to them indicate lower-level subheadings. You can expand or collapse subheadings by left-clicking on the arrows. Furthermore, if you want to shift a headed or subheaded section to another position in your document, left-click on the relevant heading and drag up or down the menu. Summing up Styles let you focus on your writing rather than fretting about internal text design. Applying a style to an element of your book file takes a fraction of the time required for manual formatting. And because any style can be tweaked, you get to change your mind as often as you like. If you have any problems with using Word’s Styles gallery and pane, drop me a note in the comments and I’ll do my best to fix the issue. Fancy watching a video tutorial? Visit my YouTube channel and watch: Self-editing Your fiction in Word: How to Use Styles.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you're a new proofreader or editor, having a global mindset in regard to choosing reference resources is essential for maximizing editorial business opportunities.
Like many of my fellow editorial business owners, I’m often approached by potential new entrants to the field who want advice about getting started. One of the most oft-asked questions is: ‘Which reference resources – style guides, dictionaries and the like – do I need?'
Bear in mind that anyone you seek guidance from in regard to best-fit resources must respect the fact that you might not be from the same place as them, speak like them, have the same potential clients as them, and spell colour/color like they do, or as a client brief asks them to. Centrism, whether from the United Kingdom, the United States, or elsewhere in the world, is useless to you as a new entrant because it’s based on false assumptions about you and your potential clients. 
Social science ‘styles’ from an international perspective
Here’s a wee case fictive case study. Imagine a new entrant to the editing profession tells me the following:
Based on this, I suggest that social science publishers and academics would be good initial target markets. Does my new starter’s location affect their choice of potential publishers clients? It’s not clear cut. The online world has knocked down those geographical boundaries; you don’t have to spend a fortune to send page proofs to someone hundreds of miles away; you can email them to someone thousands of miles away for the price of an Internet connection. And how does my new starter’s location in the United States more broadly affect what they need to learn in terms of styles and language preferences? Again, it’s not clear cut. I see The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) recommended as the sole must-have resource so often in online discussions about editorial work that I worry that new entrants may fall into the trap of thinking that this ‘bible’ alone will tell them everything they need to know. Super though it is (I love chunks of it for fiction editing), CMOS is not the be all and end all of style guides, because it depends on what a client wants, the subject matter and country-specific language preferences. The California-based publisher SAGE Publications asks that its copyeditors have a thorough knowledge of both the CMOS and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA). But note that these are core requirements for SAGE’s US book division. If you want to freelance for the US journal division, you’ll need to add the AMA Manual of Style and The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers to your reading list. (Bear in mind, too, that not all publishers want us to use the most current version of these manuals.) But why stop there? If my new starter can get work with SAGE in California, might it not be sensible to tap its sister office in London? But in that case, our newbie will also need familiarity with New Hart’s Rules, The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, and Butcher’s Copyediting. Or what if our new starter decides to target social science academics who are based in the US? They'll need to ask:
Actually, it’s just as likely that an eminent Boston-based scholar will submit to the European Journal of Political Research as to the American Political Science Review, Scandinavian Political Studies, or the Canadian Journal of Political Science. This will impact on what our newbie needs to know. For example:
Location doesn’t determine readership
Where our clients live doesn’t determine where they publish or the location of their intended readership. Given that the editorial freelancing market is competitive, it makes sense to exploit the most obvious opportunities. In the Internet Age, the physical barriers are gone. The only barrier to exploring an international work stream is an inability to appreciate that language conventions and preferences differ according to client (whether that be a particular publisher, a particular independent author, a particular journal), not according to one, and only one, globally recognized set of rules. Honestly – such a thing doesn’t exist; it doesn’t even exist within many countries.
Diversity of geography, language, and preferences
It’s not so much about where we live, but where our clients live and what preferences they have.
If you're a new entrant to the field and are wondering what you need to know, instead of listening to my preferences, familiarize yourself with a number of appropriate resources depending on what your clients want. Perhaps it’s CMOS; perhaps it’s not. And even if it is, ONLY knowing this could mean you're seriously restricting the base of clients for whom you can work, the types of material you can work on, and the geographical locations you can explore. So try the following:
If your world revolves around CMOS, it’s possibly a smaller world than it needs to be. And if your world is smaller than it needs to be, so are the opportunities you're exploring in a market that’s already very competitive. One other item to note. CMOS, CSE, APA, AMA, and the like are style guides; they give you guidance on whether, for example, to close up or hyphenate a compound adjective. They won't necessarily give you extensive guidance on how a word is being used, and whether that usage is considered standard, and in which community. Usage manuals, which give that kind of information, are as important as style guides. Using a style guide or a usage manual alone is an invitation to disaster. 
Out with borders and in with flexibility
When you’re the owner of an editorial business you need to learn what your clients want you to learn, whether it’s a manual published by Chicago or Oxford, a house brief designed by a team of publisher project managers, a detailed set of guidelines issued by a European NGO, or a short brief issued by an independent author of fiction. I encourage you to think broadly, globally, and flexibly. If someone tries to guide to towards only one set of ‘rules’, at best their advice will restrict you; at worst it will be just plain wrong or inappropriate. There is, alas, no simple answer to the question of which resources are best. Instead, careful thought and planning centred around client- and skill-focused research is a good first step. That way, you’ll learn for yourself what resources, tools, and knowledge bases are suitable for you, your potential market, and your particular business model. Language usage, styles, and preferences differ – and that’s okay. Don’t let anyone tell you that’s not the case!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you think there's no place for macros in fiction editing, think again. My friend Paul Beverley has collated a core group of macros that will have any fiction line editor, copyeditor or proofreader drooling! Self-publishing authors will love them too!
I don't use all of these (every editor has their preferences) but some of them are staples and save me oodles of time! 
Some of the macros apply when you’re looking at the whole text of a novel, while others are selective ... for use while you’re editing line by line. Bear in mind that they're designed to be used with MS Word files.
Macros that work with the whole text These macros are ideal near the beginning of the edit, when you’ve put together the whole book in one single file, and you want to look for inconsistencies. ProperNounAlyse searches the novel for any words that look like proper nouns; it counts their frequency, and then tries to locate, by using a variety of tests, and pairs of names that might possibly be alternative spellings or misspellings, e.g. Jayne/Jane, Beverley/Beverly, Neiman/Nieman, Grosman/Grosmann etc. 
FullNameAlyse is similar to ProperNounAlyse, but it searches for multi-part names, Fred Smith, Burt Fry, etc.
ChronologyChecker is aimed at tracing the chronology of a novel. It extracts, into a separate file, all the paragraphs containing appropriate chronology-type words: Monday, Wednesday, Fri, Sat, April, June, 1958, 2017, etc. This file is then more easily searchable to look at the significance of the text for the chronology. WordsPhrasesInContext tracks the occurrence of specific names through a novel. You give it a list of names/words/phrases, and it searches for any paragraphs in the novel that contain them. It creates a separate file of those paragraphs, with the searched element highlighted in your choice of colour. CatchPhrase searches your novel for over-used phrases and counts how many times each phrase occurs.
Macros for when editing line by line
FullPoint/Comma/Semicolon/Colon/Dash/QuestionMark/ExclamationMark These macros change he said, you know ... into he said. You know ... or he said: you know ... or he said – you know ... and so on. FullPointInDialogue and CommaInDialogue These two macros change “Blah, blah.” He said. into “Blah, blah,” he said. and vice versa. 
ProperToPronoun
This macro looks along the line to find the next proper noun, deletes it and types ‘she’. But if you then type Ctrl-Z, it changes it back to ‘he’. MultiSwitch You give this macro a list of changes that you might want to implement: Jane Jayne Beverley Beverly that which which that When you click in a word, and run the macro, it finds your alternate and replaces it. It also works with phrases and can also provide a menu of alternates: he said he opined he shouted he voiced she said she opined she shouted she voiced 
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you're proofreading final designed page proofs, there's more to look out for than the odd typo or double space. Professional proofreaders identify and find solutions to a range of layout problems too.
This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #84
Who's this checklist for? This is for anyone checking final designed page proofs, For example:
I've proofread over 500 books for the mainstream publishing industry. The checklist below is based on the house guidelines provided by the publishers I've worked for. The titles I've proofread include social science textbooks, handbooks and monographs, and works of fiction and narrative non-fiction. And while the subject matter has varied, the requirements for checking final page proofs hasn't. Note my use of the term 'final designed page proofs'. This checklist is not for those doing a final quality-control check in a Word document. Rather, we're dealing with a typeset PDF or hardcopy of the book as it will appear when printed or published online. For that reason, the proofreader is tasked with ensuring that the appearance of the book is consistent and correct according to client preference. This PDF provides a summary of the required checks. Click on the image to download your free copy. 
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Can you proofread your own book? Here are some quick tips on formatting your Word file ... final tidy-ups to get your file in shape, and that accord with mainstream publishing standards.
Truly, nothing beats a second pair of eyes on a piece of text, short or long. I know this all too well because I’m a professional proofreader and copyeditor, but I also write – books (yup, I've self-published four times), guides, booklets and blog posts.
And I miss stuff – not because I have a problem with grammar, punctuation or spelling, but because I’m too close to the text. I see my own writing in terms of the ideas I want to convey rather than the text in front of my eyes. That’s why I hire fellow proofreaders and editors to help make my written materials the best they can be. I don't expect those people to guarantee perfection but I do expect to them to ramp up the quality (and they've never failed me). Here’s another thing I know – the better shape the file's in, the better the price. Editors and proofreaders are professionals and, though we love what we do, we have bills and mortgages too. So, very broadly speaking, the more intervention needed, the higher the fee. There are things every writer can do to tidy up a piece of text by themselves, though. I’ve compiled them in one handy resource: The Author’s Proofreading Companion. The steps in this toolkit won’t replace a rigorous professional developmental edit, line edit/copyedit and final prepublication proofread, but they will help rid your file of some of the nasties! Here’s what the Companion shows you how to do:
Just click on the image below to get your FREE copy! 
Hope it helps! And come back soon for more handy tips and advice designed especially for beginner writers.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you’re an editor or proofreader who’s never once switched off Track Changes (TC) in the middle of an edit and then forgotten to toggle it back on again, congratulations – you’re a rare creature indeed!
I’m not rare. I’ve done it several times. If you’re like me, you know that sinking feeling – that you’re going to have to go back to where you stopped tracking and redo the work. I've come close to weeping when this has happened. It’s a waste of precious, precious time, pure and simple!
Until recently, my solution consisted of frequently double-checking whether TC was on or off. No big deal, you might think. After all, it’s easy enough to take your eye up to the TC button on the Review tab and see whether it’s greyed out – only a tenth of a second. But those tenths add up. Furthermore, I’m not billing my clients for my attention to the TC button; I’m billing them for proofreading and editing. I should be focusing on the text, not distracting myself with checking that TC is on. I could work with ‘All Markup’ (or ‘Final Showing Markup’ in earlier versions of Word) showing, but that’s just another distraction. I want my eyes and brain to focus on what my client has written, not what I’ve amended. Paul Beverley, naturally, has the solution. It’s a macro called VisibleTrackOff4 and it’s amazing! Even if you don’t like macros, don’t use macros, are wary of macros, this is one macro that you should consider installing anyway. Trust me. It's a lifesaver. By the end of this article, you’ll know how to ensure you never forget you’ve switched off Track Changes. I’ll show you the following:
How it works In brief, VisibleTrackOff4 is an alternative TC on/off switch. You run this macro instead of using Word’s TC button. I work in Windows 10 with Word 2016. On my screen, the TC button is accessible via the ribbon in the Review tab. Your view may be slightly different. 
When you use VisibleTrackOff4 (rather than the TC button shown above) to switch on TC, your page appears white, as usual. However, when you use it to switch off TC, your page turns yellow. As you toggle TC on and off, your page colour toggles too. If the page is yellow, you know TC is off. That’s something you can’t miss, and that’s why it’s foolproof.
To use the macro efficiently, you can do one of the following:
How to install it Here’s how to install the macro:
How to run it efficiently To switch TC on and off efficiently using VisibleTrackOff4, you can do one of the following:
Create a shortcut key
Add the macro to your Quick Access Toolbar
Create a custom button in your ribbon (Word version 2010 onwards)
This is what your new button will look like:
Other versions You don’t have to go for the yellow-page effect. Paul’s provided other options. The installation and quick-access instructions are the same; only the script you’ll need to copy and paste is different:
Summing up I prefer the yellow-page effect because it’s so obvious, and because it doesn’t interfere with my view of the text while I’m amending with TC off. I also prefer to run the macro with a custom ribbon-based button because it’s right up there alongside Word’s TC button, which is what I’m used to. I’ve created a shortcut key so that I have choice in the matter. This comes in handy when I need regular access to the Styles tab and don’t want to keep switching the tabs on the ribbon. I urge you to try this macro. Remember, you need never again endure the frustration of having forgotten to switch on Track Changes! P.S. My colleague Adrienne Montgomerie was single-handedly responsible for showing me how easy it is to customize the ribbon so that you can easily and quickly access any command. Her article ‘Make a Custom Tab on Word’s Ribbon’ is a must-read if you want to increase your onscreen efficiency. And, as always, thanks to Paul Beverley for creating some brilliant macros, and for giving me permission to bang on about them via my blog!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
MultiSwitch is another gem of created by my colleague Paul Beverley. This useful little macro speeds up onscreen editing and proofreading.
The macro is available in his free book, Computer Tools for Editors. In a nutshell, it allows you to switch around a word (or words) with a single keyboard shortcut. I use it to save time with every single Word-based project I work on.
Imagine that you’re editing or proofreading a Word file in which the author repeatedly uses ‘which’ for restrictive relative clauses. You want to change it to ‘that’. This means carrying out three small actions: select, delete and retype.
That’s not a problem if the issue occurs twice in a file, but if it occurs tens or hundreds of times, those seconds are going to add up and eat into your hourly rate. And let’s not get started on the ache in your wrist!
Naturally, you might notice that a particular job has a number of similar niggles that you want to attend to, in which case this macro will be even more of a productivity-enhancer. Give it a whirl! MultiSwitch in action To run MultiSwitch, you simply place your cursor before or in the word you want to change (in our example here, ‘which’), and hit your keyboard shortcut (I’ve assigned alt-3, but you can choose whatever you like). Then, bingo, the macro amends ‘which’ to ‘that’. Here's a teeny-tiny video of me using MultiSwitch. This demo aims merely to show you where to place the cursor prior to hitting your assigned shortcut key command, and what you will see on your screen (a little flickering as the macro makes the switch). If you don’t know how to assign a keyboard shortcut, don’t worry – I’ll show you how later in the article. The beauty of MultiSwitch is that you need only one keyboard shortcut for a ton of different word switches. Here are a few examples from my switch list:
I love this macro for editing fiction because it's so quick to create contractions when I'm helping the author create a more informal narrative, or dialogue that's closer to natural speech. Further down, I explain how to create your list – it's a doddle. Or, if you'd like to save even more time, grab a free copy of my contraction switch list. You can edit it to include your own word switches. 
Installing MultiSwitch
Go to Paul’s website and download Computer Tools for Editors. Save the zipped folder to your computer and extract three files: one is an overview of the macros – what they are, what they do, how to store them and so on – plus all the programs themselves; another contains just the actual macro programs; a third is called ‘Beginners Start Here’; and the final file is a style sheet. The file you need to open in Word is ‘The Macros’. Use Word’s navigation menu on a Mac (or Ctrl F on a PC) to open the Find function. Type ‘Sub MultiSwitch’ into the search field and hit ‘Return’ twice. That will take you to the start of the relevant script. Select and copy the script from ‘Sub MultiSwitch()’ down to ‘End Sub’. Still working in Word, open the ‘View’ tab and click on the ‘Macros’ icon on the ribbon: 
A new window will open.
If you don’t have any macros already loaded:
If you already have macros loaded (your TEST macro or any other):
This will open up another window: 
Don’t close this Visual Basic window quite yet – there’s something else you need to do first! Creating your MultiSwitch list Now head over to Word. Open a new document and call it zzSwitchList. Create your list using the following style: that which which that last past like such as less fewer Less Fewer it is it's Save it somewhere just as meaningful! Mine’s in my Macros folder, but you can save it wherever it suits you. Now close the document. You can amend this list any time you want to – just add or delete words as you see fit. Changing the MultiSwitch script Now you're going to make a small amendment to the macro script so that it's personalized for you, so go back to the window into which you pasted the MultiSwitch script. At the top of the script, you’ll see the following:
Sub MultiSwitch()
' Version 06.12.17 ' Scripted word/phrase switching maxWords = 8 listName = "zzSwitchList" myDir = "C:\Users\Louis\Dropbox\Macros\" ' Set min number of chars for an abbreviation minChars = 2 includeApostrophe = True useSpike = True The text in red shows how I’ve customized the script to suit my needs – you need to put in your own location. Now you can close the window by clicking on the ‘X’ in the top right-hand corner. Do the same with the general Visual Basic window too. Don’t worry if you get a message about a debugger – just press ‘OK’. Creating the keyboard shortcut for running MultiSwitch If you don't know how to create keyboard shortcuts, this section's for you. If you do know how to do this, you don't need to read any further! I'm working in Word 2016 on a PC. If you are too, the instructions are as follows:
(If you are working in a different version of Word, see pp. 14–15 of the ‘ComputerTools4Eds’ file in the Macros folder that you've downloaded from Paul’s site in order to install this macro. There, he provides details of the process for different versions of the software.) The image below shows how I assigned a keyboard shortcut to another macro called ‘UndoHighlight’. The steps are exactly the same. 
That's it! I hope this macro saves you as much time as it's saving me!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Every writer, copy-editor and proofreader comes across words that are used correctly but spelled incorrectly (typos), but we also have to look out for words that are spelled correctly but used incorrectly – this is the world of confusables.
What are confusables?
Some confusables are not only spelled differently, they sound very different too, e.g. imply/infer; militate/mitigate; reactionary/reactive. In this case, the writer might have misunderstood the meaning. Some confusables are homophones – words that are spelled differently but sound the same, e.g. rein/reign; stationary/stationery; prophecy/prophesy; loath/loathe. In this case, the writer understands the different meanings, but is unsure of the appropriate spelling. Then there are errors that are simply a result of hands moving too fast over a keyboard – the meanings and correct spellings are known to the writer, but, in their haste, perhaps they’ve transposed a couple of letters or omitted a character. Or it may be that the automatic spellcheck has kicked into gear and the writer hasn’t noticed the problem because they’re concentrating on the bigger picture. Examples might include e.g. filed/field; adverse/averse; pubic/public. Blind spots Writers aren't the only ones with blind spots. Editorial pros do too. It’s our job to spot these problems and fix them. However, we’re only human and most of us have a few blind-spot words that our eyes are, on occasion, less likely to notice, even though we do know the differences in meaning and spelling. My own blind spots are gaffe/gaff, brake/break and peek/pique/peak. I don’t know why my eye doesn’t spot these pesky confusables as readily, especially when the likes of compliment/complement or stationary/stationery scream at me from the page! However, I accept that I do have blind spots and have taken steps to ameliorate the problem with a little mechanical help – the macro. How can macros help? Using macros enables us to identify possible problems before we get down to the business of actually reading, line by line, for sense. Every time we find an error, we have to think about it and decide whether to amend. By reducing the number of interruptions, we can focus our attention on the flow of the words in front of us and increase efficiency. For this reason, I, like many of my colleagues, run my macros at the beginning of a project (though I often repeat the process at the end stage too). What’s on offer in the world of confusables? There are several free macros available to the copy-editor or proofreader who wants to tackle confusables with efficiency. See, for example, the excellent “A Macro for Commonly Confused Words” published by C.K. MacLeod on Tech Tools for Writers (updated July 2015). Another option, and the one that I’m currently using, is the CompareWordList macro created by Allen Wyatt on WordTips. See “Highlight Words from a List” (updated July 2015). As some of you will already know, Wyatt has two WordTips sites; the one you use will be determined by which version of Word you’re running. The linked article above will take readers to the article written for MS Word 2007, 2010 and above. If you are working with an older version of Word, you’ll need to follow Wyatt’s links to the sister site. Why I’m using Wyatt’s CompareWordList CompareWordList is currently my preferred tool simply because of how easy it is to create and update my own list of words to be checked – words that can, on occasion, be blind spots for me. As I’ll show below, customizing the list of confusables doesn’t require me to amend the script of the macro once it’s installed. Instead, all I have to do is amend a basic list in a Word document – nice and simple! Using CompareWordList 1: Create your list of confusables The first thing to do is to create a list of the words you want the macro to find, and highlight, in a Word document.
Using CompareWordList 2: Get, and tweak, the code Visit “Highlight Words from a List” and copy the code. If you’re completely new to installing macros, just paste the script in a Word document for now so that you can tweak it easily. Below is a screenshot of Wyatt's code. The highlighted sections show where I’ve tweaked the code to suit my own needs. 
Screenshot of Allen Wyatt's CompareWordList macro code
Tweaks to consider
(1) I’ve changed Wyatt's code (as per his suggestion) so that it describes where my list of confusables is located: sCheckDoc = "c:\Users\Louise\Dropbox\Macros\confusables.docx". You’ll use the location you made a note of when you created your own list (see the section above – Using CompareWordList 1: Create your list of confusables). (2) Wyatt's code emboldens the words found by the macro; I wanted them highlighted so I replaced the highlighted text as follows: .Replacement.Highlight = True. (3) I changed the Match Whole Word instruction to False because I wanted the macro to find part words. This, of course, will pull up some false positives but it was the easiest solution I could find. (4) I also changed the Match Case instruction to False. Now that you’ve tweaked the code to suit your own needs, you’re ready to install it (the basic, step-by-step instructions below are provided for the benefit of those who are completely new to macro installation). Using CompareWordList 3: Install the code With Word open, open the “View” tab and click on the “Macros” icon on the ribbon. 
This will open up a new window.
If you don’t have any macros already loaded:
If you have macros loaded (your TEST macro or any other):
This will open up a further window:
Running CompareWordList
Removing highlights one by one Here’s a tiny macro that I recorded to remove a highlight as I move through a Word document. Installing this means I simply have to click on a highlighted word and run the macro. Assigning a shortcut button (see below) makes the job easy and efficient. I decided on Alt H because I don’t have that keyboard shortcut assigned to any function that I carry out regularly. Sub UndoHighlight() ' ' UndoHighlight Macro ' ' Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight End Sub To install: Simply copy the red script above and install it in the same way that you installed the CompareWordList macro. To create a shortcut key: In Word, select File, Options, Customize Ribbon (1). Click on Customize (2). A new box will open up entitled “Customize keyboard”. In the Categories window (3), scroll down and select Macros. In the Macros window (4), select UndoHighlight. Finally, choose your preferred keyboard combination by typing it into the Press New Shortcut Key window (5). Select Assign and Close. 
To remove ALL highlighting in one go: For this job, Paul Beverley’s your man. A huge number of macros are available in his free book, Computer Tools for Editors (available on his website at Archive Publications).
Hope you find this useful!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you proofread or copyedit fiction or non-fiction, or you're self-editing your own books, here's a macro that will highlight potential inconsistencies in proper-noun usage.
I've been meaning to review some of my favourite proofreading macros for a while now and ProperNounAlyse deserves its first place in the queue (only because it performed so brilliantly on a recent proofreading project!).
ProperNounAlyse is just one tool among many, of course. Those of us who use macros on a regular basis have a whole suite of them that we run during the process of a proofread or a copy-edit. ProperNounAlyse was created by my colleague Paul Beverley, and it’s just one of a huge number of macros available in his free book, Computer Tools for Editors (available on his website at Archive Publications). I've written this post for the person who doesn't use macros and is nervous about trying. I think it’s such a shame when a fear of tech leads to lost opportunities for those who want to increase productivity (which is great for the editorial pro) and improve quality (which is great for the client). Why bother? Three reasons
Go to Paul’s website and download Computer Tools for Editors. Save the zipped folder to your computer and extract three files: One is an overview of the macros – what they are, what they do, how to store them and so on – plus all the programs themselves; another contains just the actual macro programs; and the final file is a style sheet. The file you need to open in Word is “The Macros”. Use Word’s navigation menu (or Ctrl F on a PC) to open the Find function. Type “Sub ProperNounAlyse” into the search field and hit Return. That will take you to the start of the relevant script. Select and copy the script from “Sub ProperNounAlyse()” down to “End Sub”. Paul’s helped us out by highlighting the name of each new macro. Still with Word open, open the “View” tab and click on the “Macros” icon on the ribbon. 
This will open up a new window.
If you don’t have any macros already loaded:
If you have macros loaded (your TEST macro or any other):
This will open up another window:
Running ProperNounAlyse
A fictive sample
Below is a simple word list of proper nouns with lots of inconsistencies – differences in accent use, apostrophe use and spelling. 
I run ProperNounAlyse on the document. It analyses the text and then creates a new Word file with the following results:
I’m provided with an at-a-glance summary of potential problems that I need to check. It may be that the differences identified are not mistakes, but I know what to look for.
“I don’t need to use techie tools … my eyes are good enough” Macros don’t get tired. Macros don’t get distracted. I don’t believe any proofreader who claims they can do as good a job with their eyes alone as they can do with their eyes and some electronic assistance. It’s a case of using these kinds of tools as well as, not instead of, the eyes and brain. I could have relied on my eyes to find all of the above problems, and in a small file I would hope to have hit the mark 100%. But if I’d been working on 100,000 words of text, and there were twenty key characters, a plethora of grammatical glitches, two major plot holes, numerous layout problems, and a mixture of hundreds of other inconsistencies regarding hyphenation, capitalization, punctuation and regional spelling variation, there would have been a lot of problems to solve; I want to utilize every tool available to help me do that. Yes, my eyes and brain are two of those tools. But using macros like ProperNounAlyse and others (PerfectIt, for example, just because it’s another favourite!) speeds me up, pure and simple, and massively reduces the chance of a miss. I ran ProperNounAlyse on a recent fiction proofread for an independent author who is a phenomenally good writer – great plot, excellent pacing, engaging characters. But he was so busy crafting the 95,000 words it took to build a fantastic story that he’d introduced a lot of proper-noun inconsistencies. That’s fine – it’s not his job to deal with these; it’s mine. It took me minutes, rather than hours, to locate them and deal with them. And I know I found them – every one of them. What will the client remember? If you’re still reluctant to try out ProperNounAlyse (or any other editorial tool for that matter), consider this: What will the client remember? The three hundred mistakes that you spotted or the three howlers you missed? When it comes to proper nouns, especially in large volumes of character-based editorial work, it’s too easy to miss a discrepancy. And character names stand out to readers. Taking just a few minutes to run a simple-to-use macro might determine whether your client thinks your work was pretty good or outstanding. Which of those is likely to gain you a repeat booking or a referral to another potential client?
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Do we still need to learn how to use traditional proof-correction symbols given that most proofreading work is done onscreen these days?
My answer is an emphatic “Yes, you should learn them!”
As I'll show below, knowing how to use them will increase your efficiency, productivity, clarity, marketability, and professionalism. Traditional proofreading: Checking typeset proofs Many proofreaders work directly in Word, making actual changes to the text. In my experience, it's primarily self-publishing authors, academics, students and businesses that commission such direct intervention; almost all of my publishers want me to use the proof-correction symbols. That’s because I’m not editing the text; rather, I’m annotating pages that have been professionally designed – the pages appear as I would expect to see them if I walked into a bookshop and pulled the published book from a shelf. In this situation, I'm not just looking for spelling and grammar mistakes. I also need to annotate for problems with layout, for example:
So, if you plan to work on page proofs that have been professionally typeset prior to publication, and you hope to acquire this work from mainstream publishing houses, you will need to know how to annotate the pages correctly with these symbols, even if you are proofreading onscreen. What do the marks look like? It depends where you live. If you need guidance about proof-correction marks in your particular region, contact your national editorial society. In some countries, the UK’s BSI marks are accepted for proofreading and copy-editing practice. In the UK, there is a single set of industry-recognized symbols. These have been prepared by the British Standards Institution (BSI) and are entitled “Marks for copy preparation and proof correction”. Over time they’ve been updated. The current marks are identified as follows: BS 5261C:2005. If you’re working for Canadian or US clients, read Adrienne Montgomerie’s article, “The Secret Code of Proofreaders” (Copyediting.com, 2014). As she points out, the Canadian Translation Bureau’s Canadian Style guide marks are quite different from the marks preferred by the Chicago Manual of Style. Why are proof-correction marks useful? When we proofread typeset page proofs, there’s little room to indicate what we want to change. Recall that each page we’re working on appears almost as it would if the printed book had been published. Using industry-standard proof-correction marks is an efficient way to annotate the page with the desired corrections. The symbols are a short-cut code of instructions that tell the designer exactly what to do. Once you’ve learned all the symbols by heart, they’re much quicker to use than long-hand text and take up minimal space. Open the nearest book you have to hand and look at how much white space there isn’t between the text and the margin – it’s not uncommon for me to work on page proofs with a 2cm margin either side of the text. Notice, too, how small the space is above and below a single line of text. The book has been designed and there's little room to annotate. Now imagine that in a given line there is a missing comma, a spelling mistake, and a word that needs decapitalizing. The example below illustrates how these problems would be marked up using the BSI proof-correction symbols. The long-hand alternative might be something on the lines of <Change “fax” to “fox”> in the left-hand margin, and <Insert comma after “grass” and decapitalize “Legs”> in the right-hand margin. Given that we only have 2cm margins to play with, that each line is spaced closely to its neighbours above and below, and that in a real set of proofs there may be several corrections in multiple lines, any instructions to the typesetter are likely to become cluttered and confusing. Proof-correction symbols solve the problem. 
The use of proof-correction symbols therefore offers increased efficiency, productivity, and clarity. And if you’re a proofreader-to-be who wants to ensure you’re marketable to as wide a range of clients as possible, acquiring the ability to use this mark-up process is a no-brainer.
Attending to professional standards In addition to enabling you to work efficiently, productively, and clearly, and maximizing your marketability, there is also the issue of professionalism. Membership of a professional editorial society often requires knowledge of the relevant nationally approved mark-up symbols as a standard of good practice.
Where to find the UK marks The BSI provides a laminated 8-page summary sheet of all the marks you need to know for proofreading. Also included are short notes that enable the proofreader or copy-editor to identify the correct mark for both marginal and in-text mark-up, colour of ink to be used, and positioning of the symbols. The CIEP has an arrangement with the BSI whereby members can purchase the sheet for a reduced price. How to learn to use the marks Any comprehensive proofreading course worth its salt should test your ability to use the marks according to industry standards. It's not just about using the right mark so that the instruction is unambiguous, but also about knowing when to use the mark and when to leave well enough alone. In the UK, the CIEP and The Publishing Training Centre are examples of organizations offering industry-recognized courses that attend to these issues. If you live outside the UK, ask your national editorial society for guidance. Further reading If you’re considering embarking on a professional proofreading career, you might find the following related articles of use:
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Like so many of my proofreading and editing colleagues, I never rely on my eye alone. I’m human, and my eye sometimes sees what it wants to see rather than what’s there, even when I’m working with clients rather than reading for pleasure.
One of my favourite tools is TextSTAT. Actually, it wasn’t created with the proofreader or editor in mind. Rather, the program was designed to enable users to analyse texts for word frequency and concordance. However, I use it to generate, very quickly, simple alphabetized word lists.
Time and again, those word lists have flagged up potential problems that I need to check in a proofreading or copyediting project. If I'm proofreading a PDF, I strip the text from the PDF proof and dump it into a Word file. I remove word breaks from that Word file (using "-^p") so that TextSTAT generates a list of whole words that I can compare, rather than thousands of useless broken words). If I'm editing in Word, I can obviously bypass the above steps. Here’s a small sample from a word list I generated in TextSTAT. As you can see, there are several possible problems:
(The colour coding is mine; I've provided it for clarity only. TextSTAT's word lists are in plain text.)
Upon checking the actual proofs, some of these issues turned out to be fine. For example:
Some issues had to be queried. For example:
Some issues needed further checking and amending. For example:
When proofreading hard-copy or PDF proofs, would I have spotted these problems with my eye alone? I'm not confident I'd have got everything, particularly the issues with the names of the less well-known cited authors. And if "beginings" had been in point-9 italic text, my eye might have passed over the missing letter. Where’s the context? There is no context – that’s the point. When using TextSTAT as a word-list generation tool, we’re just looking at one word and how it compares with words above and below it in our list. We’re not reading phrases; we’re not paying attention to grammar and syntax. It’s just a long list of words in alphabetical order. Later, we can focus on the words in context – TextSTAT’s word lists are just a tiny part of a process that help the proofreader or editor to provide his or her client with a polished piece of work. Fast, free and offline TextSTAT isn’t the only word-list generation tool available for free. However, I love it because it can handle huge chunks of text without glitching – it will quickly generate word lists for books with hundreds of thousands of words (the sample I gave above was taken from a project of over 150,000 words, but I’ve used the program for larger projects). It’s never crashed on me. You can download the software to your own computer, so there’s no issue regarding confidentiality. My clients don’t want me to upload their content to third-party browsers without their permission, so when I use a particular proofreading tool to augment my eye, that tool needs to be able to sit offline on my PC. Furthermore, it costs nothing. Say the creators: “TextSTAT is free software. It may be used free of charge and it may be freely distributed provided the copyright and the contents of all files, including TextSTAT.zip itself, are unmodified. Commercial distribution of the programme is only allowed with permission of the author. Use TextSTAT at your own risk; the author accepts no responsibility whatsoever. The sourcecode version comes with its own license." Is it worth the effort? Some might think that an hour or so trawling through a simple word list, and cross-checking any potential problems against hard copy or PDF, is a lot of extra time to build into a proofreading project. I think that time improves the quality of my work and increases my productivity. When I come to the actual reading-in-context stage, I'm confident that some really serious snags have already been attended to. That gives me peace of mind and enables me later to focus on other important issues like the page layout, the sense of the text, and more. I've found that using this method for dense academic projects has been particularly worthwhile. However, I'll not forget a recent fiction project (a "big name"-authored book that's in its nth edition and was first published over two decades ago) where the main protagonist's name was spelled incorrectly in two places: an easy thing to miss again and again over many years and many proofreads. I caught it – not because my eyes are better than those who came before me, or because I'm a better proofreader than those who came before me, but because I used a simple tool that allowed me to concentrate on just the words. Want to try TextSTAT? If you want to give it a spin, it’s available from NEON - NEDERLANDS ONLINE. Finally, the usual caveat applies: generating word lists as part of the proofreading and editing process isn't the one and only true way. TextSTAT is an example of one tool that I and some of my colleagues utilize to improve the quality of our work. You might utilize different tools and different methods to achieve the same ends. All of which is great!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If your client wants sensitive end-of-line word-breaks in their text, and they will if they're asking you to proofread for print, this online tool will help you decide where to break the word and insert the hyphen.
For example, Oxford Dictionaries recommends the following:
There's always the trusty New Oxford Spelling Dictionary, an authority on spelling and word division. However, if you have clients that want every end-of-line hyphen checked, you'll need something more efficient than a book.
Perhaps you work on magazine articles, three columns to a page. Word breaks abound. And since the client pays on a flat-fee basis for each job, looking up these darn things impacts on your hourly rate in no small way. Oxford Dictionaries includes online access to its dictionaries and thesauri, New Hart's Rules and Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage. It also includes a function for checking word-breaks. I'm not chucking away my print book quite yet. There are limitations to the online version. For example, 'wingless' doesn't have its own entry, but is part of the definition of 'wing', so the preferred break (wing | less) isn't offered. Still, productivity increases are only a click away if you have to check end-of-line word-breaks frequently. To access, go to Oxford Dictionaries. 
You might have to pay for an account. However, if you're a member of a UK library, access is free. Pop in your library card number (1) and click on the LOGIN button (2).
Now select the language.
Type in your word, then scroll down to FOR EDITORS AND PROOFREADERS. There you'll find the recommended break where the word should be broken and the hyphen inserted.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Accidentally deleted a file or folder? If it's in Dropbox, you can recover it up to 30 days after hitting the delete button.
Think Dropbox is great for cloud-based file-sharing and back-up? It's a business life-saver too.
You can restore any deleted file or folder you'd saved to your Dropbox account. Here's how to do it: Recovering and restoring deleted files or folders on Dropbox. It's a doddle. I put it to the test after a tech-meltdown led to hundreds of precious family photos disappearing from my PC. The're safe and sound and the recovery process took under a minute.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. How to annotate a PDF with digital proofreading marks Below are my free proofreading stamps files in red, blue and black. They conform to British Standard BS 5261-2 (2005). 
You will not have to resize these stamps – I've designed them to work with the font size that most book files use. Simply upload them into your PDF editor and you’re ready to go!
What users are saying ... 
A sample of just a few of my proofreading stamps
Click on the buttons below to download the PDFs files containing the stamps, then head over to the installation instructions. UPDATED 5 JUNE 2020 ... all the stamps now have transparent backgrounds, which means they can be placed on top of greyscale and colour pages and boxes, and squeezed between text without blocking out the elements.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. |
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