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In this article, I offer 9 tips on how to make your book file editor-ready.
Interior book design is something that should be carried out after your book’s been edited, not before.
If you’re creating a printed book, post-design page proofs are perfect for the proofreader because they can check not only your spelling, punctuation and grammar but also the layout. Page proofs are either hard-copy or PDF versions of the book that are laid out exactly as they will appear in the final printed version. You and your proofreader will be looking at what the reader would see if they were to walk into a bookshop, pull the title off the shelf and browse through the pages … almost. The proofreader’s job is to ensure that any final errors and layout problems have been attended to before the book is printed. For a comprehensive overview of what needs to be attended to when proofreading designed page proofs, read this: Proofreading checklist: How to check page proofs like a professional. 
With copyediting (and proofreading raw-text files for digital books), it’s a different story ...
Working with raw-text files If you are asking a professional editor to work on the raw text of your book, follow these 9 recommendations to ensure that the file is editor-friendly. The good news is this: it means less work for you, not more, because you’re not having to design anything … not yet, anyway. 1. File format Most professional fiction editors work in Microsoft Word. That’s because, despite the odd glitch, it’s still the best word-processing software on the planet. It has a range of excellent onboard tools that help your editor style the various elements of your text consistently, and quickly locate potential problems that might need fixing. Word is compatible with a host of macros that complement the editor’s brain and eye. That means they can add an extra level of quality-control to the edit efficiently. Even if you’ve written your book in a different program – for example, Scrivener, Google Docs or Apple Pages – place the text in a Word file before you send it to your editor. You’ll get a better-quality book edit, I promise. 2. Number of files Unless you’ve agreed with your book editor to work serially – i.e. on a chapter-by-chapter basis – create a single master file that contains the full text of your novel. If you send them 75 separate chapters, all they’ll do is combine them into one file … after they’ve finished weeping with frustration. Editors want to ensure that your book is consistent – that Kathyrn doesn’t become Katherine, Catherine or Cathryn. There are Word plug-ins that can help them identify problems like this efficiently but they’re only effective if the editor is working with a single file. The same applies to ensuring that the various elements of your text are formatted consistently. For example, it’s conventional for the first paragraph in a chapter or section to be full-out (not indented). Your editor can use Word’s styles palette to define the appearance of a first paragraph. Once the style has been set, it’s a case of applying it to every relevant paragraph in the file. If they don’t have a master file to work with, they’ll have to create a new style for each one of your 75 chapters or import that style for the same. Fiction editors love master files, and they will love you if that’s what you provide. 3. Fonts You might have decided to use an unconventional font for your book interior. You’re perfectly entitled to use any font you choose ... just spare a thought for your editor’s eyes. When it comes to the editing stage, stick to something like Times New Roman, size 14. It’s a serif font, which means it’s easy on the eye. The less your editor struggles to read the text, the better the quality of their work. 
4. Colours
I recommend you use black text on a white page. Again, it’s about readability. The white text on the coloured blocks below certainly stands out, and the contrast is visually appealing, but for editing purposes it’s a challenge. 
A couple of years ago, I was asked to copyedit a fabulous book for an indie author. The pages were black, the text pink. The first thing I asked him – no, begged him – was for permission to change the file’s appearance to something more conventional.
He agreed to save the quirky colourway for the design stage and I was immensely grateful. So was he. I’d have had to increase my price because I would have edited more slowly. 5. Paragraphs Open any novel on your bookshelf and it’s likely you’ll see a text layout something like this: 
Those indented paragraphs are not made using the tab key. Instead, use Word’s ribbon to create proper indents.
To find out how to create a body-text style with proper indents, watch this video tutorial: Self-editing your fiction in Word: How to use styles.
6. Spacing At line and copyediting stage, don’t worry about how many pages your text covers. Instead, give your editor a file with the lines spaced so that the text is easy to read. Setting the line spacing at 1.25 or 1.5 works well for a font size of 12 or 14. The line spacing function can be located by right-clicking on text and selecting PARAGRAPH. A window will open. Make sure you’re in the INDENTS AND SPACING tab. Then amend the LINE SPACING field. 
7. Chapter headings
Your editor will adore you if you assign your chapter headings with one of Word’s heading styles: 
You can even modify the style so that it automatically starts on a fresh page.
Right-click on the heading style, select MODIFY, then FORMAT, then PARAGRAPH. A window will open. Make sure you’re in the LINE AND PAGE BREAKS tab. Check the PAGE BREAK BEFORE box. 
Why is this useful?
8. Page numbers
In a raw-text work of fiction, there’s no need for page numbers or other headers and footers. Word records the page number in the bottom-left-hand corner of the screen of a PC, and that’s what an editor will refer to if they need to direct your attention to a specific page. 
If you plan to upload a later version of your file for ebook creation, your page numbers will need to be removed anyway.
If you’re printing, save the page numbering for design stage. 9. Section breaks I recommend introducing three asterisks (***) to indicate a section break. You can change them at design stage of course, but they’re handy at editing stage because your editor can see that you intend for there to be a section break. Why not just have a line space? Because sometimes a writer will accidentally hit the return button twice. Your editor will have to spend time working out whether the break is intended rather than focusing on the flow of your text and any errors that need correcting. Summing up These are just suggestions, not book law, editing law, any kind of law. However, your editor will love you if you make life easier for them, not because they’re lazy but because they want to focus on making your narrative and dialogue sing rather than formatting text so that it’s readable. There’s absolutely a time and a place for great interior design, but pre-editing stage is not it. Save yourself the bother and keep it simple. For more raw-text tidy-up tips, grab this free booklet: The Author’s Proofreading Companion. 
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 Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and an Associate Member of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
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PerfectIt is the premier consistency-checking software for many professional editors and proofreaders around the world. Developer Daniel Heuman and I sat down for a chat about what's new!
So Daniel was in New York, and I was in a tiny hamlet in Norfolk called Panxworth. Despite the 6,000 miles between us, the construction works going on outside his apartment, and the internet-connection problems in my somewhat rural neck of the woods, we managed to produce a video of our chinwag!
For those of you who want to jump to specific parts of the conversation, here are the key themes and associated time stamps: ▶️ Louise introduces Daniel Heuman, developer of PerfectIt: 00:00:00 ▶️ What PerfectIt does and why it’s useful: 00:00:24 ▶️ PerfectIt Cloud – the new solution for Mac users: 00:04:08 ▶️ Windows users: Should we buy PerfectIt Cloud?: 00:06:12 ▶️ The subscription model and a new lower price: 00:09:27 ▶️ The benefits of up-to-date editing kit: Stability and support: 00:12:27 ▶️ PerfectIt and Office 2016: 00:14:54 ▶️ PerfectIt 4: Online, in the cloud, or both? 00:18:35 ▶️ Features of PerfectIt 4: 00:20:24 ▶️ Sign-off: 00:25:44 And below is the conversation in full. Click on the Play button to begin listening. I've included subtitles in case you need to turn the sound off or can't understand our British accents! There's a full transcript below. I've edited this for readability but essentially it's the words as they were spoken on the day. THE VIDEO THE FULL TRANSCRIPT Louise introduces Daniel Heuman LH: My name is Louise Harnby and I’m a fiction editor, and today I’m going to be talking to the founder of Intelligent Editing and the developer of a piece of software beloved by many editors all over the world. And that’s PerfectIt. Before Daniel and I start chatting about all the PerfectIt news, Daniel’s going to tell us a little bit about what PerfectIt does, because some of you might not know. So over to you Daniel! What PerfectIt does and why it’s useful DH: Thank you! It’s lovely to speak to you! This is very exciting. I don’t know that they’ve ever done a video interview like this before so thank you! OK. PerfectIt – for the people who have not come across it before (which is probably exactly who won’t be watching this, but hopefully they are!) LH: You never know! DH: You never know! Exactly! So PerfectIt is mostly consistency-checking software, and the key place where it comes in is that when you’re editing work it’s almost always under, you know, time pressure, and with a pressure to produce perfect work. It’s ultimately dealing with the fact that everything is going to be on a budget. So given a limited time, what is the best document you can produce? And PerfectIt really fits in there. It saves time; it helps you edit faster. And the way I was trying to explain it the other day was at the ACES conference. I have new way of explaining it ... I thought a little bit about what gets people into editing. And I think that without delving into the deep psychology of what makes anyone an editor, I think one of the things that does not drive people is the difference between tiny consistency mistakes. So, yes, it’s fun sometimes when you spot ‘e-mail’ with a hyphen in one place and not in another but mostly that’s not what’s driving people. People get into editing because you care about words, you like reading, you care about communication, you want to explain stories, you want to help people connect better with readers. And these little tiny mistakes that take so much time to spot are not the reason. They are a distraction. They’re significant because they jump out at readers but they’re not the reason why we get into this. And they’re certainly not the reason why one should be spending a lot of time on a document. LH: And you’re so right because they take so long to deal with. I’ve had manuscripts before where, actually, particularly if an author’s got a budget, people like me are spending perhaps hours and hours and hours when we’re using just our eyes, dealing with these tiny inconsistencies, which as you say are red flags. And, yet, actually what we want to do is immerse ourselves in the narrative in front of us and to make it better. And the more time we can spend focusing on the flow of the words ... because every time you come across a hyphen that’s inconsistent, or inconsistent capitalization, as an editor, you’re dragged out of the flow of the work as well. And so being able to do that, to save time by having a piece of software like PerfectIt to do that for you is just wonderful. And you still get the pleasure of knowing that you’re bringing this consistency to the work. But it is back-breaking doing that manually. I think that’s the thing that a lot of editors feel. It’s just back-breaking work. And I would rather an author paid me to do other things with my time. I want them to feel that I’m going to do those things but I don’t want to have to spend more time than necessary doing it, and that’s where your software comes in. DH: Absolutely, and we put on the homepage something like: you spend the time on what matters most, which is your words and their meaning. LH: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it. PerfectIt Cloud – the solution for Mac user LH: So, Daniel, in the past, PerfectIt’s only been available to Windows users. Well, that’s not quite true. I do have Mac-using friends who have been able to use PerfectIt but they have to be running something like Parallels, or I think it’s called VM Fusion Ware or something. Or they’ve had to go buy a cheap Windows laptop. So I suppose that’s the thing that everybody’s talking about. Like, what’s new for Mac users? DH: That is the news! So first off, it’s been touching and amazing, the extent to which people have been going to use PerfectIt. Like you say, they’ve been installing Parallels. People have been buying computers to run this program, which is touching. I know that buying another computer doesn’t cost as much as it used to but, still. But for Mac users who hate Windows and just run it for one program has been phenomenal to see. But yes, no longer! So we are producing PerfectIt Cloud, which is ... you’re going to have to forgive ... in the background you can probably hear the construction noise! I’ll do my best to speak over it. So we’re producing PerfectIt Cloud, which is an Office Store add-in. And the great thing about Office Store add-ins is that they are compatible in any version of Office 2016. So if you are on a Mac, if you’re on a PC, if you’re on an iPad, even in Word Online (which I don’t know that anyone actually uses), no matter which version you’re on, you see the same add-in. So the functionality is exactly the same across. And we’ve been developing this for ... I mean, you know, the amount of times people have heard me saying, ‘A Mac version is coming soon. It’s just a few months. It’s just a few months.’ But, no, as of 26 June we will have PerfectIt Cloud, which brings compatibility to Mac and to iPad for the very first time. So it’s really exciting! Windows users: Should we buy PerfectIt Cloud? LH: So what about Windows users? I have PerfectIt 3. I’ve had all the versions since it first launched. I work on a PC. Should I rush out and get PerfectIt Cloud? DH: In a word, no. So the introduction of PerfectIt Cloud is primarily for Mac and iPad users at this stage. So if you’re using PerfectIt 3, if you’ve got a Windows PC, that’s still going to be the best version that we offer. And it’s going to be strange because PerfectIt Cloud looks so much better! The interface is even easier than it was before. It’s a beautiful product, but underneath there are a few things that PerfectIt 3 can do that we haven’t been able to do for Cloud yet. So the most important one of those is customization of styles. That’s still going to take some time to bring into PerfectIt Cloud. The ability to check footnotes – we’re going to be dependent on Microsoft for them to make some changes before we can bring that in. So if you have PerfectIt 3, if you have a PC, in most cases the thing to do is not to rush out, and not to buy this at least until we produce a new version for the PC, which will be PerfectIt 4. There’s one exception, which is, you know, all those people who ... the ones, the amazing wonderful users that you’ve described who have gone and bought VMware, and Parallels, and even separate computers. A bunch of those users are really frustrated with having to turn them on every time, and going through Windows updates, which take forever. And just to get PerfectIt up and running takes two hours. And it’s saving them a lot of time so they do it, but if you’re one of those people who has both a PC and a Mac, in those cases, yes, you would. Not all the options are included but it’s close enough that you may not want to be uploading and updating your Windows computer each time just to run PerfectIt. LH: Yeah, and I suppose also for people perhaps who are, I don’t know ... I was thinking about the increasing number of editors who are location-independent. And, actually, maybe they don’t always have the latest ... you know, they’re don't want to be worried if their computers break ... and the idea perhaps of just knowing that it doesn’t matter which PC you’re on, or which Mac you’re on, that if you’ve got something, a machine in front of you, you can do your work and you can access the core functionality of PerfectIt wherever you are. And that’s an important thing, I guess. I mean, I’m not location- independent. I am very much dependent! I’m in Norfolk with a rubbish broadband speed and so I’m kind of quite keen to keep things offline and local when I can. But knowing that I’ve got the choice – that will be a big issue for me. The subscription model and a new lower price LH: Can we talk about price now? Because in the past, once every two or three years, you bring out a new version, and I’ve paid you, I don’t know, $90? I can’t remember the price off the top of my head. So that’s the way it’s worked. But you’re doing things slightly differently now, aren’t you? DH: Yes. So we are switching to a subscription ... sort of a subscription. And I know the minute I use that word people are turning off this video, don’t want to know anything more. because everyone is sick to death of subscriptions with, you know, Netflix and Amazon, and, oh my God, you can get a subscription for your vegetable delivery now, which is bonkers! But I think what we’re doing is really different to that. We switched to a once-a-year payment. At this point at least, there’s no handover-your-credit- card or anything like that. You pay each year if you want to continue using it. And switching to that kind of model means we can drop the price by a lot. So instead of being a $99 one-off purchase, we’ve made it $70 per year. And on top of that, we’ve really dropped the price for, you know, independent editors. So we’ve worked with as many of the editing societies around the world as we can – certainly all the big ones – to have a kind of a discount. And that’s going to be an additional 30%, so the price is going to be just $49 per year for independent editors who are, you know, a member of any of the big editing societies anywhere in the world. So subscriptions mean we can get down the price down a lot, and they mean we can create a really compelling, simple offer, which is that you will buy PerfectIt and then you will get any version you want on any number of devices you want, and not pay a separate charge, which I think is really what bothers a lot of people. So you buy PerfectIt and you can install the PC version on your PC, you can install the Cloud version on your iPad. You only pay once for that and you don’t get stuck with that additional charge you described, which was the upgrade charge. So, yes, we used to have a one-off price but people liked this product and much more than 60% of people paid the upgrade price anyway. So, really, there was a hidden recurring element. And by switching to ... we can call it a subscription, we’ve made everything included in that price very transparent. And you get all the upgrades, you get all the updates, you get support. So I think the way we’ve switched the pricing is really gonna be attractive, and especially attractive for independent editors. The benefits of up-to-date editing kit: Stability and support LH: I think it’s wonderful because, I mean, I’m a big fan of the subscription model, even with things like Microsoft Office, because I’m a professional, I want the latest software, and I want it to work in an environment that’s stable as well. And so I like having the most up-to-date version of Word. I had a situation a few years back when I first plonked a download of Windows 10 on my Windows 8, or Windows 7 computer or something, and I was trying to get PerfectIt to operate in an environment basically with two operating systems, and guess what? It wasn’t happy. And so at that point ... because PerfectIt was key to my editorial day-to-day working, it was one of the things that triggered me to actually think, ‘You know what? You need to get yourself an up-to-date computer with the latest operating system already installed, so it's not fighting with anything else.’ And to know now that I’m always going to be running the latest edition of Word on the latest operating system and that the plugins that fit into that software, like PerfectIt, are going to be the latest editions too ... for me, that’s just one less worry. It means that I can get on doing the business of editing rather than thinking, ‘I want to be able to do X, Y or Z but I can’t because it’s broken.’ And so I’m really excited about this because, as you say, it’s upfront, it’s clear, everybody knows what they’re gonna pay and what they’re getting. And you mentioned something there as well, and that was the issue of support. Because in days past, it was the case that if you decided to stick with an older version of PerfectIt you wouldn’t have access to you. And sometimes, you know when you get stuck on things, you just want to be able to ask the person who actually really knows the answer. It’s not guesswork. And knowing that that’s always going to be ... you get the full package. So I’m really excited about it. I think it’s a really good deal. I think the price is a steal as well. And for those of us who are members of professional societies, what a perk of membership to know that you can get one of your core pieces of editing software at such a huge discount! Thank you! DH: Yeah, those societies and the editors within them are absolutely the reason why we are where we are today. That’s been the core of this business so now I absolutely think that it’s important to support them. PerfectIt and Office 2016 DH: And I agree with you completely about thinking about Office and updates that way. I know that a lot of editors have been disappointed when we’ve said that PerfectIt Cloud is only gonna work in Office 2016. And they said, ‘Well, I’m never moving to Office 2016 because I’ve heard all these terrible things about it.’ And I just wonder every time I hear that ... I think, I know those stories are true – when you have a piece of software like Microsoft that is installed everywhere then you always are going to have some things that don’t work and that are gonna get on Facebook. And they’re gonna look to seek help. And they’re always going to be the ones who have some kind of problem. You never get someone who installs the latest version of Microsoft and says, ‘Yep, that worked’ and tells all their friends. So our perception of these versions has been really sort of distorted by, I think, the relatively lower number of people who have had problems in perspective to the total, in relation to total. And as you say, when you actually look at the package and what Microsoft are offering, I think it’s really good. And I’m fortunate that I’ve never had any sort of problems with it. I’ve used Word on the iPad, I use Word on the PC. I think they’ve done a really good job of making those two similar and in line. In the past, there’s been big differences between those things. You know, I was able to switch as a long-time PC-user to the iPad version. I had no trouble doing that. And they do it at a low monthly price. And what I’ve sort of been saying to anyone who’s asked about it is something like, yes, there are some users who’ve had problems, and there have doubtless been lots of glitches, and there always are with endless Microsoft updates, but what about trying it for one month? They offer a monthly price. And see if it works for you. And you’ve got your old version and you can always go back, but those old versions, they’re at this point ... you know, Microsoft has stopped supporting Office 2011 anyway, so we’re out of that period really. Yeah, I think I think as you say, the package they’re offering is very good, and especially the kind of value in the monthly offer. It makes a lot of sense. LH: Yeah, and I think the other thing to mention is that, you know, I think sometimes there are people in, well, not just the editing community but all sorts of communities who are trying to run say 2016, or with all the updates, 2018 software but on decade-old computers. And that’s a bit like taking your mobile phone to medieval times and complaining you haven’t got signal! You know, we need as editors to be, I think, working with the latest equipment. Within a budget, of course. Most of us aren’t rich. But I always think, get the best RAM you can ... get the best processor you can for your money. And then things like PerfectIt, within Word, within Microsoft Office, will work the best for you. DH: Absolutely! And we all make these mistakes! I’ve been screaming at my printer all morning and pressing over and over again, and wasting so much time trying to get this printer to work. And I know the reason why it doesn’t work – it’s because it’s really old, and would cost next to nothing to replace. But, you know, we’re old enough to remember that these things used to be very expensive, and it’s so difficult to get rid of them. But, actually, you know, when running a business, to spend my morning yelling at a printer is probably not the best use of my time! PerfectIt 4: Online, in the cloud, or both? LH: So can I just check something with you? Can we talk then about the next version of PerfectIt that will be also usable locally? So we’ve got PerfectIt Cloud but there’ll come a point I’m assuming when there’ll be the next version, like PerfectIt 4 that will be in the cloud. Will that also be something that someone like me who’s got a little bit of an iffy broadband connection can, if they want to, download to their computer? DH: Oh, so we are NOT moving to the cloud in any way, shape or form. We’re doing very much that kind of approach that Microsoft has gone for where you pay once and you have different parallel versions for different devices. We are not switching to the cloud. There will always be a local version. As I said earlier, it’s still kind of the best version for a number of reasons. And so at the moment, if you get a subscription, you will get PerfectIt 3 and PerfectIt Cloud, and as of the end of this year you’ll get PerfectIt 4 and PerfectIt Cloud. And we’ll keep the two in parallel so that they’re running off ultimately the same code, so that you’ll get the update for PerfectIt 4 locally, and at the same time, almost at the same time, we will update PerfectIt Cloud automatically, and they’ll offer the same checking. LH: OK, great, that’s good. I just wanted to be sure of that because ... just because my broadband is a bit of a nightmare here! DH: No, no, I don’t think we communicated that properly in our in our literature so it’s a really good question to ask. I’m sure a lot of people will be concerned about that. Features of PerfectIt 4 LH: So can we talk about ... do you have any specific plans for what will be new with PerfectIt 4 yet, or can we suggest things? DH: Well, obviously, I’m going to dodge that question because the trouble with that question is that if I start saying we’ve got plans for PerfectIt 4, that we’re working on ... I suspect if I start saying the things that I’m working on, the disappointment that will follow when we say we’ve failed ... [laughing]. But I like the idea of suggestions. As I said, this business has very much been built by support from editors, and feedback from editors. So if we wind the clock like all the way back to the first time that I was at SfEP conference, I remember someone mentioning en dashes and and why they could be in the hyphenation-consistency check. And let’s let’s be honest, at that point, which was been ten years ago or so, I didn’t understand the significance of that. Why would we need to be looking for en dashes and hyphenation? What’s the point? And actually it was that feedback which we then took on. And it got quite a few people explaining and saying, well, actually, this is the error that we’re looking for. This is what comes up. It’s really difficult to spot because of this. Is there anything you can do? And I think it was in PerfectIt 2 but certainly in PerfectIt 3. And we’ve built in an en dash versus spaced-hyphen consistency check. LH: And em dashes too. DH: Yes, the way we do the checking for those is a little different but, yeah, it ultimately came down to the same reason, which is editors suggesting that these were the things that they wanted to see. And I’d love to get those suggestions for PerfectIt 4. So, particularly ... LH: I’m thinking legal and medical might be obvious. DH: Yes, legal. I’ve got a long, long list of changes that we want to make for legal, but medical, pharmaceutical scientific ... I know we have a lot of editors working in those kinds of fields and I feel like we haven’t done as much for them as we should and could. So I’d love to get suggestions from every kind of editor, but especially those ones would be really good, because we need to do more in that area. LH: And speaking as a fiction editor as well, I think there are certain functions I’m using ... the possibilities are there but there are certainly things I could think of in terms of the similar-word-find function that maybe even we could put forward some suggestions that might help you to push that stuff further forward, and help us to adapt the style sheets more so that we could get more benefits in that field too. And I’ll certainly be thinking if there’s anything else from a fiction point of view that I can push your way. DH: Definitely. You know, we always get a nonfiction writer saying, ‘Can this be used for nonfiction too?’ We get fiction writers saying, ‘Can it be used for fiction?’ And we hadn’t been quite communicated clear enough that, yes, it’s for all of those things. And, yeah, the similar-words function. Lots of people are using that for character names. Can we improve that? Can we make it clearer that that’s a possibility for character names? Can we look and see if there are ways of improving that? And already you have got me talking about features that I swore just two seconds ago I wouldn’t get into! Some of those things people are really gonna be telling me, ‘But you promised, but you promised!’ I will avoid saying more about that but I am excited by that kind of change and by doing things that are specific to different kinds of editing, for sure. LH: I think from my point of view as an editor, and for people who are watching this who haven’t tried PerfectIt yet, knowing that you’re responsive to ways in which you can develop the software is a really important thing to emphasize, because the various iterations that I’ve used over the years have just got better and better. And that means I’ve saved more and more time. And so I want to say to people that when you invest in this software you are working with a company and a business owner who will listen to you, and that's a good thing. DH: Thank you! And my guess is that at this point in the video, between the dogs barking outside and the helicopter going overhead, anyone who is completely new to this software will probably have stopped watching 20 minutes ago! But, yes, anyone with us longer hopefully has experienced that we are ... it’s actually the other way around. It’s editors who’ve helped build this and made all this stuff possible, so we are absolutely listening, and will continue to iterate and improve. If we improve the product for actual editors, everyone else who uses the software benefits. And, you know, we really have the best people in the world advising us, so I think it’s fantastic. Sign-off LH: Daniel, thanks very much! That’s been really, really useful. So I’m excited about ... not just the cloud but also PerfectIt 4 coming out. I’m excited that I’m going to be able to use it on multiple platforms, in different spaces. I’m excited that I’m going to be able to get it cheaper than I did last year! So thanks for taking the time to talk to me. It’s been brilliant. DH: Thank you! And thank you for all the support through all the years. The excitement and enthusiasm is so encouraging after we’ve been telling people, you know, soon, soon just another month, just another couple of months. Now that it’s done, now this here, it’s fantastic! Thank you. 
Contact Daniel Heuman: daniel@intelligentediting.com
Visit the PerfectIt website: www.intelligentediting.com Don't forget to check whether there's a discount available via your national editorial society.
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
Have proofreading symbols passed their use-by date? It’s a controversial question, but one that we definitely need to ponder. So, as an unconventional ‘celebration’ of 30 years in publishing, Melanie Thompson is setting out to answer this question – and she needs your help ...
Over to Melanie ...
A few months ago a colleague asked me whether (UK-based) clients want proofreaders to use British Standard proofreading symbols or whether they prefer mark-up using Acrobat tools on PDFs. ‘Good question,’ I replied. ‘I hope to be able to answer that later this year.’ That probably wasn’t the answer they were expecting. The widely different expectations of clients who ask for ‘proofreading’ has been niggling at the back of my mind for a couple of years. What's changed in three decades I have been a practising proofreader for 30 years, I’ve managed teams of editors and proofreaders, and I’ve been a tutor for newcomers to our industry. Yet I still learn something every time I proofread for a new client. It’s several years since I was last asked to use BS symbols for a ‘live’ project,* but I use them a lot on rough draft print-outs – because they’re so concise and … well, let’s face it, to some extent those symbols are like a secret language that only we ‘professionals’ know. I like to keep my hand in. But proofreading is now a global business activity, and ‘proofreading symbols’ differ around the world – which kind of defeats their original objective. And now so many of us work on Word files or PDFs (or slides, or banner ads, or websites or … ) and there are other ways of doing things. This all makes daily work for a freelance proofreader a bit more complicated (or interesting (if challenges float your boat). We might be working for a local business one day and an author in the opposite hemisphere the next. It’s rare, but not unheard of, to receive huge packets of page proofs through the mail and to have to rattle around in the desk drawer to find your long-lost favourite red pen. Usually, however, things tend to arrive by email or through an ftp site or a shared Dropbox folder. Digital workflows 
MELANIE THOMPSON: DEALING WITH DIGITAL WORKFLOWS FROM A STANDING DESK!
The ‘digital workflow’ is something we’re now all part of, whether we realize it or not. But clients are at different stages in their adoption (or not) of the latest tools and techniques, and that leaves us proofreaders in an interesting position.
We need to be able to adapt our working practices to suit different clients; ideally, seamlessly. For that, we need to understand what the current processes are, and what clients are planning for the future. And that’s where I need your help. A new research project: proofreading2020 I’ve launched a research project, proofreading2020, to investigate proofreading now and where it might be heading. 
The study begins with a survey, asking detailed questions about proofreading habits and preferences. Once the results are in, I’ll be conducting follow-up research for case studies and, early in 2019, publishing the results in book form.
You can find out more and complete the survey at proofreading2020. It's open now, and closes on 30 June 2018. Almost 200 proofreaders, project managers and publishers have already completed the survey. Several have contacted me to say it was really useful CPD, because it made them think about how they work and why they do things. So I hope you’ll be willing to set aside a tea-break to fill it in. It takes about 20 minutes to complete, but it’s easy to skip questions that aren’t relevant to you. There are only a handful of questions (at the beginning and end) that are compulsory (just the usual demographics and privacy permissions). Beyond that, the sections cover the following:
Your chance to join in!
Find out more and complete the survey at proofreading2020.
Don't forget, the closing date is 30 June 2018. * If a client does ask for BS symbols, I recommend downloading Louise’s free stamps for use on PDFs – they will save you a lot of time and help you deliver a neat and clear proof.
Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
This tutorial shows you a fast and free method to turn your video’s subtitles/closed captions into text that can be repurposed for blog posts and DIY transcripts.
There are 2 reasons you might want to do this:
Using the subtitles files in your existing videos means you can create content in a written format without starting from scratch. That saves you precious time, allowing you to focus your attention on creating words (if you’re an author) and amending them (if you’re a proofreader or editor). I’ll look at those reasons in more detail below. First, here’s the video walk-through. The written instructions are underneath. Instructions
Now you’re ready to edit the text. And you will need to edit it! As I’m sure you’re aware, we don’t speak like we write. I’m always shocked by how much I mumble, how fast I speak, and how non-standard my spoken grammar is when I see my speech in written form! Furthermore, while even the auto-subtitles generated by YouTube are rather amazing given that they’re free, it’s no surprise that a lot can go wrong. Still, the basics are there so we’re not starting with a blank page – the core written material is ready and waiting for us. If you’re creating a transcript, you might decide to leave in some of the time stamps. This is useful if you want to enable people to return to the video and access key themes, or if there’s more than one speaker. If you’re creating a blog post, here’s how to remove the extraneous information ... Removing the junk So this is a partial screenshot of a subtitles file: 
Let’s get rid of the time stamps first.
Now your subtitles file looks like this: 
Now let’s get rid of those stranded numbers above the main text, again using Word’s FIND/REPLACE tool.
If your video is long, you’ll have double-digit numbers too. In that case, click the REPLACE ALL button again. If you have triple-digit numbers, you’ll need to repeat it once more! Now your subtitles file looks like this: 
Now we can remove the extraneous paragraph returns. Again, we’re using Word’s FIND/REPLACE tool.
Now your subtitles file looks like this: 
Now you can tidy up your text, and copy and paste it into the text editor on your website. There, you can introduce paragraphs, bullet points, headings and any supporting imagery for your blog article.
Now let’s return to why we might decide to do this. Generating keyword juice for SEO purposes Video is compelling. It allows our audience to see our faces and hear our voices. That intimacy can be compelling, and it’s a fast-track to building trust. That’s important for authors seeking to build a readership, and editors wanting to attract clients who need editing help. However, there are no keywords in a video. Yes, YouTube is a search engine in its own right, but it’s not the first point of search for every member of our audience. By repurposing video as blog content, we’re increasing our chances of being found in the likes of Google and Bing too. Being findable on multiple platforms makes sense in an online world that’s becoming noisier by the minute. Respecting customer/client preferences Not everyone wants to watch video, and even if they do, it’s not always the most convenient option. Imagine the following scenarios: Our reader’s broadband speed is slow A blog post will load faster than a video on those occasions that the internet seems to be creaking at the seams. If we’ve solved a reader’s problem in our videos, but they can’t play those videos, they could become frustrated and go elsewhere. If we’ve offered a written alternative, we’re more likely to keep them on our websites. Video is difficult to scan Written content is easy to scan and digest quickly. That makes it attractive to busy people. If our visitors can’t work out whether we’ve solved their problem without watching a video in its entirety, we might lose them. When we provide written content as well, we can quickly show them what’s on offer with headings and bullet points. Our readers can scan this information and decide whether to dig deeper. Blog posts can be printed Some people still like to print useful content so that they’re not reliant on digital means to access it. A video can’t be printed; a blog post can. Again, it’s about respecting what’s convenient for our readers, rather than focusing on our own preferences. Other options What I’ve offered here is a DIY solution for authors and editors who need to keep an eye on the purse strings when they're repurposing vlog content. It’s the method I use when I’m starting with a video rather than a blog post. Plus, I rather enjoy the process. However, it’s not everyone’s bag. If you have the budget, you can commission a professional transcriptionist or content repurposer. They’ll have the tools and expertise to create top-quality written content from video that fits your brand and voice. Summing up Editors and authors who are creating valuable content to make their books and editorial services visible can repurpose it in multiple ways. No one method trumps another – audio, video and words all have their place. However, our audiences will have different preferences. What’s convenient today might not work tomorrow. Repurposing content allows us to respect those preferences. The trick is to find shortcuts to that repurposing so that we’re not starting from scratch each time. This is one of them.
Related resources
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
Here's a treat for PerfectIt users ... a custom style sheet that includes the find-and-replace strings in my free ebook, The Author's Proofreading Companion.
If the Companion has made your life easier, you'll love what my colleague Andrea Kay of Yours Truleigh Editing has done. Yep, she's upped the efficiency game for all of us by creating a custom style sheet that can be imported into PerfectIt.
Thank you so much, Andrea! For those unfamiliar with either the software or the booklet, I've provided an overview of both, and the benefits of importing the style sheet. Andrea's also created a style sheet for the Student Proofreading Toolkit. Double thanks! Below that are the installation instructions and the ready-to-download files for the Companion and the Toolkit.
What's PerfectIt?
For those readers who are not familiar with this software, PerfectIt is a sophisticated consistency checker that works with Microsoft Word. By customizing its built-in style sheets, or creating your own, you can define your preferences and let PerfectIt locate variations and possible errors. I recommend every professional editor add it to their toolbox. You can read my more detailed review of the product here: PerfectIt 3 – must-have software for the editorial freelancing pro. If you don't yet have PerfectIt, contact Intelligent Editing for pricing and download information.
What's The Author's Proofreading Companion?
This free ebook helps editors and self-publishing authors tidy up Word documents. In addition to showing you how to use some simple macros, it includes search strings to help you locate and fix potential problems, including rogue spaces at the beginning and end of paragraphs, double line returns, tabbed paragraph indents, lower-case letters at the beginning of paragraphs, paragraphs that end with no punctuation, and more.
What's the style sheet?
Andrea Kay just saved PerfectIt users a ton of time by building an importable custom style sheet that features the key search strings from the ebook! That means you don't have to manually type the strings into your Word document one by one, then repeat the process each time you work on a new document. Instead, import the style sheet, run PerfectIt, and let the software locate the potential problems for you. All you have to do is decide whether to implement the suggested change in your document. How to import your style sheet Importing the style sheet is a doddle, I promise, Follow the instructions and screenshots below. If PerfectIt is already installed, the process will take no longer than 20 seconds. 1. Unfortunately, I can't upload the files to Weebly, so I'm using my bot Lulu and delivering via Messenger. Click on the green button below. That will take you to a post on my Facebook page. There you can comment with the word 'perfect' and Lulu will send you the files. Click on each one to download to your device.
2. Once you've installed PerfectIt, open the Word document you want to check.
3. Launch PerfectIt. 4. Click on Manage Styles. 
5. Click on the Import button.
6. Select the pft from your device and click OK.
7. Click OK in the Manage Styles window.
8. Select the your pft from the Current Style drop-down box.
9. To run PerfectIt on your current Word document using the custom style sheet, press Start.
If you're not a PerfectIt user ...
If you're not yet ready to invest in PerfectIt but still want access to the find-and-replace strings and other tools in the ebooks, click on the images below. They'll take you to the download pages. They're free and you won't have to hand over any personal data to access it. Enjoy!
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
If you’re an editor, making Word work hard for you is a must. The new and revised edition of Editing in Word 2016 is one of my recommended resources. Here's why.
I’m a fiction editor who works solely for indie authors and self-publishers. I work on raw-text files, and Microsoft Word is one piece of software that I cannot afford to be without.
Word has its snafus but I don’t know of any word-processing software that comes close to offering its superb functionality. I don’t just edit in Word; I’ve also created print- and digital-ready books directly in it. So when fellow editor and author Adrienne Montgomerie asked me to review the second edition of Editing in Word 2016, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. I’ve been using Word since 1991, so could Montgomerie teach this old dog a few new tricks? How about younger pups? Let’s see ... More than an ebook This is a digital self-study course. Yes, you get the ebook with all the contextual information and foundational teaching. But there are also videos that show Word in action, and a bunch of exercises with which to practise what you learn at each stage of the process. I love the fact that the advice is actionable. You read, you see, you learn, and then you do. There’s no better way to ensure it’s all sunk in. A focus on core tools
‘We need a resource that gets right to the tools editors can’t live without; the tools that make our job easier and faster. We need to know about the tools that are the very reason we use Word at all.’
PREFACE, Editing in Word 2016
We certainly do. Here are some of the tools that Montgomerie focuses on:
If you don’t know 8 out of 10 of the above tools inside out, you’re likely not as efficient or productive as you could be. That alone makes this course a worthy purchase. That it’s a steal at just under 25 quid (excluding VAT) makes it a no-brainer. Let’s dig a little deeper ... Screens, operating systems and how we work with Word One of the best things about this course is its acknowledgement that editors work in different ways.
Top tips This course is rammed with useful and actionable tips on how to get stuff done and in ways that respect your preferences. For example:
And along the way, Montgomerie includes ‘Pro tips’, ‘Read more’ and ‘Troubleshooting’ callouts to keep you on track. Video demos I’m a big fan of multimedia learning. And when it comes to editing, sometimes just hearing your tutor’s voice and watching them go through the motions onscreen can trump the written word. In addition to the ebook, there's a support website with 27 video tutorials for both Mac and Windows users. 
This feature is excellent. I’ve come across a lot of editors who’d like to enhance their digital skills but are held back through fear. Montgomerie takes the stress away via accessible walkthroughs that even the most tech-nervous of nellies will be able to follow.
Here are just 3 examples:
Practice makes perfect There are 24 exercises in this course that help you to hone your skills and start doing what’s written in the book and shown in the videos. Just a few examples include:
A note on versions This course was created in 2017 using Word 365 on Windows 10 and Sierra OS. Given that the author’s using the latest software and operating systems, you might find that the instructions need a little tweaking here and there if you’re using medieval Word (or should that be Wordeth?)! For example, older versions of Word might have different ribbon displays, icons and menu options. That’s unavoidable, and a reminder that, as professionals, we should be aspiring to use up-to-date equipment. I’d prefer my dentist not to fill my teeth with 10-year-old composites; we should treat our clients similarly. My verdict Did I learn anything new? Yes, I did. But editorial training isn’t just about finding out what you don’t know; it’s also great for affirmation of what you do know. I was pleased to learn from a pro that a lot of my Word usage is on track. Here’s another thing, though: there are functions in Word that I use infrequently (e.g. erasing time stamps). I know it’s possible but I’ve simply forgotten how. And instead of trawling Google or spending valuable time asking questions in editing forums, I can have Editing in Word open on my desktop. From there, I can search, locate and solve my problem in seconds. I recommend this without reservation for any editor who wants to get the very best from Word with a one-stop shop, especially those who've been held back by fear. Montgomerie will take that away from you – I promise. Information and access
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
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 fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
Proofreading for publishers is something every professionally trained new entrant to the field should consider. Many of my experienced colleagues work exclusively for publishers. I used to and don't regret it for a minute.
And it can be profitable, despite what you might have heard. 
Just a few of the benefits of publisher work include:
Some proofreaders are finding that publisher work is not as profitable as it once was. Perhaps the fees haven't increased in real terms, or the proofreader is being expected to check more words per paid page. Being efficient has become key to sustaining these valuable client relationships. The PDF below includes some tips and tricks on how to make proofreading for publishers (and packagers) profitable by spicing up your digital efficiency. The advice is based on my experience of working for academic publishers for over a decade. Click on the image to download your free copy. I hope you find it useful. 
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
Anna is training to be a proofreader and plans to set up her own business in the near future. She’s ready to upgrade her kit but wants to make sure her investment is fit for purpose.
Says Anna:
At the moment I am working on an old-ish MacBook Pro but know I need to upgrade very soon. The dilemma is whether to buy an improved laptop or move to a desktop. My preference is for Apple products as I know my way around them better. I’m tempted to get a better laptop. I like the freedom of being able to move around and I often travel. But I know that a desktop would give me a significantly bigger screen. What are your thoughts on screen size for proofreading? How important is it to have a large screen, or is it easier to use two screens side by side at times? And if you use a laptop how small a screen would you consider too small?
Hi, Anna!
Great question. In short, I think you should go for what suits your lifestyle best. But let's look at some options. The greedy option This is my choice! In my shed, I have a desktop with two large screens. In my house I have a backup 14” notebook. 
Some of my editing colleagues have three or four large screens rigged up to their desktops. That’s great if your machine can handle it (some can’t) and if you have the space (some don’t).
If I’m honest, until recently I considered it unthinkable to work five hours a day on my HP Pavilion notebook. My desktop and double screenage setup was a necessity! I suspect there's evidence of that thinking somewhere here on the blog! But that’s hogwash. In November, a family member became poorly and I had to relocate from my office (at the bottom of my garden) to the dining table in my house. 
We’re now past the middle of January and I’m still there, though I’ll be heading back to the shed in a week.
But you know what? It’s been fine ... more than fine. Yes, I've had to toggle a lot more but that’s such a first-world problem! And I do have a second screen! My pal and fellow editor Kat Trail told me about an app called Duet that allows me to hook up my Windows notebook to an an iPad ... MS to iOS. Who'd have thought? And she showed off her new lap-desk. Like a sheep, I bought the whole caboodle! It works like a dream. Thanks, Kat! 
The light option
You say you like to travel. Meet Kate Haigh, another editor friend of mine. She’s location independent. She works with a laptop and nothing else. It gives her the flexibility and mobility she needs to travel the world. She’s in Guatemala City as I write! Once upon a time, she had multiple large monitors, but she adapted. Given your itchy feet, you might like to read her posts about location-independent editing and proofreading (see the Taking Your Proofreading Service on the Road series via For Editors and Proofreaders section on the Kateproof blog). There are lots of tips and tools on offer for editors who want to lighten the load. One of Kate’s favourite pieces of equipment is the lightweight, foldable Roost laptop stand If you decide to commit to a new laptop but want an additional largish monitor, hook up your existing MacBook Pro or splash out on an additional monitor especially for home use. What’s too small? I’d recommend a screen that's at least big enough to house the full width of one page at a viewing scale that’s readable, with some room in the margins to spare. That way you can call up a navigation pane in the sidebar without having to scroll across the page. Additional navigation panes could include the Find pane in Word or the Bookmarks pane in a PDF reader. I can achieve this comfortably with my 14” notebook screen. Beyond the screen: RAM and processor I think that screen size is less important than RAM and a decent processor. The more programs we’re running, the bigger the demands on our kit. When we’re professionally editing and proofreading, we’ll likely have multiple files open simultaneously. We’ll be running Word and/or PDF readers. We’ll be using additional software (macros, for example) to complement our beady eyes. And there are online tools and resources (e.g. email, dictionary and style manual) that we’ll need to access. Regardless of whether seeing all that stuff requires a quick keyboard toggle or is viewable on multiple screens, it’s greedy. Focus on performance first and screen size second. Smaller screens can be adapted to. Poor processor performance and memory can’t – they're just a frustration and will slow you down. Back to my notebook: the screen is only 14" but it has an Intel Core i5 7th gen processor (not the highest spec but good enough), 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, all of which means the machine can fire on all cylinders while I'm putting it through its paces. In a nutshell You don’t need one large screen to do a pro job. You certainly don’t need three. You might well find them rather marvellous if you have room and are not looking to go anywhere anytime soon. But if they’re going to clutter up your living space and remain unused much of the time because you’re on the road, they’re a waste of your money. Invest in the equipment you feel comfortable with and that works hard for you, and you’ll not go far wrong. Good luck with your training!
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
The latest from the Macro Chat column by editor Paul Beverley ... In this post, Paul shares the story of his programming and editing journey. Talking of which, his latest videos on wildcard find-and-replace techniques are gems: Wildcarding techniques 1; Wildcarding techniques 2; Wildcarding techniques 3.
Some people are surprised to discover that I have a bank of over 500 macros for editors and proofreaders, and I’ve recently had several encouraging comments about my ‘amazing programming skills’, but in my defence I’d like to point out that it’s not really as clever as it looks.
It’s just that I’ve been doing it for a very, very long time. Let me explain ... 
Genesis
It goes right back to 1982 and to the BBC Microcomputer. This spawned a word processor called Wordwise Plus, which had a Basic-like programming language for manipulating text (and numbers). So, with my love of the English language and a little bit of very basic (Basic) programming skill, I was able to write some useful programs that people were willing to pay money for – £10 a program, if memory serves, sold on 5¼” floppy discs! 
In 1987 Acorn produced their first Archimedes computer (then the fastest desktop computer in the world) and I started publishing a subscription magazine.
Every month I would transfer the text of the magazine (produced on an Apple Mac Plus, with its 9” screen!) onto a floppy disc (now 3½”) that I could sell to subscribers (for £2 a month) so that they could electronically search for things in the back issues. For that, I had to do a series of find and replaces (F&Rs) to convert the Mac text to Acorn format, such as changing the Mac’s snazzy fl and fi ligatures to ordinary fl and fi, and proper dashes to hyphens. For this, I kept a list – on a piece of paper! – of the required F&Rs until, eventually, I thought, Surely, this is the sort of thing a computer could do! 
So I asked my subscribers if anyone could write me a program. Paul Sprangers, in the Netherlands, wrote me one, so I started using scripted F&R (think of a text-only version of FRedit).
Around 2005, after about 18 years of editing, typesetting and proofreading monthly magazines, I was becoming quite adept at using scripted F&R. 
However, I could foresee the end of my magazine, and began freelance proofreading and then editing. But that meant using Microsoft Word for the very first time in my life – Microsoft was the devil incarnate to a pure Acorn user.
So, for the first time in 18 years, I didn’t have the aid of scripted F&R! Then I discovered that Word had a programming language – Visual Basic. I got on to my Acorn contacts again and found someone who could write me a (text-only) scripted F&R program (a macro), then called PreEdit. 
How (not) to win friends ...
By this stage I’d joined the UK’s Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP). I used their email discussion list to ask them newbie questions such as ‘How do I apply a style to a paragraph?’, while at the same time trying to point out to them that they could do their editing jobs much more quickly and easily if they used scripted global F&Rs. Not surprisingly, not everyone was receptive! To put my blunder into context, I’ve recently discovered that, at that stage, Ann Waddingham was pioneering the SfEP’s on-screen editing courses when, in her words in the current issue of SfEP’s Editing Matters, ‘people’s attitudes to on-screen editing were mostly negative. I spent much time ... persuading publishers and editors to take the plunge – both parties were deeply suspicious’. And there was me trying to persuade them to embrace automatic methods of on-screen editing. Oops! So it’s hardly surprising that I upset a lot of people with my evangelical zeal. Sorry, folks! But in my defence, please remember that, at that stage, I had already been using scripted F&R for almost 20 years! I simply couldn’t understand why people weren't able to see its huge power. 
Exodus
It was 2009, and I was enjoying a quiet Sunday lunchtime picnic with Sue, my wife. We were by a river in the Norfolk Broads and it was idyllic: the sun was shining and a beautiful swallowtail butterfly landed not six feet from where we were sitting. I was trying to concentrate on the book I was reading but my mind kept straying to work issues. In particular, I was thinking about PreEdit, and how the list of F&Rs was held as a text file rather than as a Word file, which made it very cumbersome to use. ... But what if I made the list a Word file? Why should I not use a Word file? No reason on earth. That would make it much easier to use. Oh, hang on a minute! If the list was a Word file, then some F&Rs could be bold or italic. And why not consider super/subscript, small caps, styles, highlighting, font colour? As I thought about it, the excitement mounted. Sunday or no Sunday, I had to go home there and then and do some macro programming. 
A land flowing with milk and macros
With the core tool – FRedit – in place, in 2010 I set about adding tools to speed up my editing in a whole variety of ways: analysing the text for inconsistencies, checking references and citations and speeding up my text editing sentence by sentence. This all supported and enhanced my growing workload of editing scientific books. Unfortunately, relatively few of my colleagues shared my enthusiasm for macros, so I just beavered away, increasing my own efficiency and effectiveness, and sharing my macros, via my website, with anyone who was interested. 
However, in 2015–16, Stephen Cashmore pioneered the SfEP’s new online course, ‘Editing with Word’. The syllabus included a section on using FRedit.
The course was a huge success, with many more people taking it than the organisers had dared to hope. It was encouraging to me because it brought me into contact with more and more people wanting to use my macros. In the past year, I’ve started venturing into the (for me, as a technophobe) brave new world of Facebook, joining some of the editorial groups. And there I’ve found a ready acceptance of my ‘new’ ideas. People have been surprised by the range of macros available and have made many encouraging comments. 
The right place at the right time
This brings me back to the original purpose of this post – to demythologize my macros. Remember that I’ve been using scripted global F&R for nearly 30 years and writing VBA macros for almost 10 years. Add to that the fact that in 2008 my business was failing: the magazine was fading away, I had large debts and I feared losing my house. I was therefore highly motivated to develop the means of generating cash, fast! I grabbed anything that would speed me up with both hands. And a more positive factor: I’m absolutely fascinated by the English language (David Crystal is my absolute hero!) and I really love working out how to express things more effectively. So macros are a tool for clearing away all the boring, nitty-gritty bits of an editor’s job, allowing me to focus on the meaning and flow of every sentence. This is the most enjoyable job of my whole career. So, if my macros are of help to others then that’s great, and I’m grateful to God that I was in the right place (almost bankrupt!) at the right time.
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
Macro Chat is back! This is where I hand over the Parlour reins to my friend, macro king Paul Beverley. A lot has happened since March: Paul's written lots more macros (close on 600 now) and has created another couple of dozen screencasts, 45 in all (see the Resources at the bottom of the blog for more on that). So over to Paul ...
What can macros do for you?
More and more people are taking a deep breath and loading their first macro tool. (I say ‘macro tool’ to differentiate my pre-programmed macros from those that you can record for yourself.) But why bother? What can macros do for you? 'I’m a proofreader – is there any point?' Most definitely! The better view you can get of the (in)consistency within your document before you start reading, the more problems you’ll be able to spot as you read through. Did the client pass on the editor’s style sheet? Maybe, but anyway, you can easily analyse your document to find the predominant conventions and get a count of the exceptions:
'I’m an editor, but do I need 600 macros?' Absolutely not! Indeed, that’s part of the problem, knowing where to start. (Sorry!) But if I suggest a possible general strategy, maybe that will help.
Fine! Except that (3) is a massive over-simplification. Let’s dig a bit deeper, and see how a macro-aided editor might work. FRedit – the powerhouse The principle I use (for books, anyway) is that I make as many changes as I can globally, but I do it chapter by chapter. I do a number of global find and replaces (F&Rs) on chapter 1, but I keep a list of them, so that I can do the same ones again on chapter 2 as well, and I don’t forget any of them. But hang on! Couldn’t you get the computer to go through that list and do all those F&Rs for you? Absolutely, and that’s what FRedit does! And it doesn’t just do the F&Rs, it allows you to add a font colour or a highlight to each and every F&R, and/or to track change (or not) each one – do you really want to track change all those two-space-to-one-space changes? But isn’t global F&R dangerous, especially when you can do a whole string of F&Rs at the touch of a button? Definitely, so start with just a few F&Rs and build up confidence; but if you colour or track all the changes, you’ll be able to see, when you read chapter 1, any inadvised F&Rs, so you can remove them or refine them. To give an example, if you changed every ‘etc’ into ‘etc.’ you’d get ‘ketc.hup’, ‘fetc.h’, etc.. (sic)! So use a wildcard F&R: Find: ‘<etc>([!.])’ Repl: ‘etc.\1’ (without those quotes, of course). And you don’t even need to work out those wildcard F&Rs yourself – just look in the library of F&Rs (provided free with FRedit) and gain from other people’s wildcard expertise. As you refine your F&R list, chapter by chapter, more of the dross is sorted out before you read, so (a) you miss fewer mistakes (as there are fewer to find, as you read) and (b) you can concentrate more on the meaning and flow of each sentence and (c) the job is more interesting, involving fewer boring tasks. Enjoy! Resources
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access my latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
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 fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access my latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
Ever wondered how a professional book index is created? My colleague Vanessa Wells offers an honest and humorous glimpse into the world of a pro indexer – the challenges and the joys, and the 'sense of having created a beautiful thing'.
Let's take a peek into Vanessa's diary ... 
I attended the Canadian national indexing conference in Montreal, where we – like most conference attendees – go to strengthen connections with colleagues and expand our professional knowledge. Since the indexing community in Canada is very small, this is a valuable investment and full of good people.
As a result of the conference, I’ve received a referral and am being hired by a university professor to write an index for a 220K-word anthology he’s editing with 22 chapters and almost as many contributors. It’s a ‘straightforward’ index of ‘names and titles’ which, of course, means that it’s both a name and subject index in reality. Yikes.
Against my usual policy, I agree to meet the professor in person, as the campus is close by and it would be faster than exchanging several emails. An excellent meeting results in ironing out expectations, discussing needs and agreeing we’re on the same page! It’s due July 26.
I send him my contract to review, and we discuss rates. Rate structure, I find from speaking to other indexers, is variable. Some people will work for $2/page; others charge much more. A figure I often hear is $5/page, but that definitely depends on your market – geographically and by genre, specialization, and timeline. An independent author writing a non-fiction trade book is not going to generate the same fee as a university-paid gig. Some indexers provide other means of calculating their fees, such as a flat project fee. I tell him my academic rate, and he agrees. I submit my invoice for a non-refundable 30% deposit, payable before work begins. 
Proofs are due. They don’t arrive. They’re rescheduled by publisher for the 30th … While publishing timelines are often shifting (there’s a domino effect when a hitch arises), the end deadlines of proofreading and indexing are rarely budged.
So now I have to recalculate the number of hours and pages per day I’ll have to complete to meet the non-budging due date of July 26. Four days lost means Goodbye, weekends! for the duration. 
It’s a long weekend here for #Canada150, our sesquicentenary. I’m so wiped from the previous month of conferences and making a second website for the new arm of my business that I take (most of) the weekend off. I can’t afford to get sick during this project. Self-care and all that.
Forgot I start a weekly course on Tuesday afternoons for the summer, with an appointment this morning. Will have to start tomorrow. Now that I’ve lost another 5 days, I’ll have not only to work weekends but very long days, everyday. My bad.
21 days to go: I begin the pre-read (see above photo) to start gathering my thoughts on how I’ll approach this behemoth. And I need at least 3 days at the end to edit the written index, so really I only have 18 days available.
I note there are A LOT of errors still in the MS. I judiciously email AU to double check that it’s been edited and that no other file is forthcoming. He confirms it has been copyedited … Sigh. 
Re-install my $500USD indexing software on my new PC. Pay $39 for TextExpander, which is an online tool that lets you build a library of ‘snippets’, sort of like hot keys or macros, but it’s much simpler and faster. Using TextExpander for repeated, long index headings is making my life so much easier: it works pretty well with .ucdx files!
I’m already 50 pages behind. Indexing academic books is so much harder because you have to interpret the often-verbose language to get to the ideas (then re-edit them in your mind) and THEN start forming index relationships between the ideas on that and every other page.
Since there are almost two dozen authors in this anthology, I’m doing a lot of mental shifts. Why do I pine for indexes so much when they can be so draining?!? I’m being foiled by the very poor copyediting that was(n’t) done. I email the author-editor several times regarding his preferences for word options that I’m finding in the errata … 
Working on a Saturday is particularly annoying when you hear other people having a great day off. Such is the freelance life.
Here’s how I start an indexing day. Wish I had more than one monitor and can’t believe I used to do this on a 15-inch one!
CINDEX software file open; Google to check MS info, with related sites and academic books on the subject; book PDF marked up with terms needing indexing; and TextExpander to cut down on keyboard strokes. For the time being, I just type the entries into the index; refining connections comes later.
I emailed the author again about the serious issues around the practically non-existent copyediting of this book. It’s causing me to complete about 3pg/hr instead of 5–10pg/hr, never mind that I’m not being paid to correct such things, so again my budgeted time has to be rethought. He’d like errata forwarded to him so he can take the examples to the publisher and complain. (Understandably, he just doesn’t realize how much is involved in corrections before indexing can be done: research, confirm which instance is the error, note error, find other instances of it in MS, return to indexing the term and fixing all related cross-references). Ctl+F is my BFF. Wish I still drank alcohol. And for all you fellow CCLs, here’s what’s behind it all (because this, after all, is what’s important in life, not crying over indexes). 
I had a good phone chat with the author about the terrible editing. (Again breaking the rules; normally I never share my number – learned the hard way with an abusive client once – but there’s too much to discuss via email.)
We’re hatching a plan to shame the publisher into redoing the copyediting or letting me do it. Either way, my schedule is messed up, and he’s sympathetic. What he’s told me about their process with him this far is appalling. 
Email from author: basically, the publisher will redo the copyediting after indexing (!!!). This is a problem because it can affect pagination, thus rendering entries incorrect. I asked that my name not be included due to peer reviews in a trade journal, and I wouldn’t want residual index errors to be ascribed to me. The prof was cool with this; I am not, but that’s life in publishing.
Slogging away, only getting about 35 pages/day done. Have to step it up to get in an extra day for editing the index. I hired a subcontractor to proofread it the day before it’s due. I need an emoji for dollar bills flying away. [Note from Louise: I've obliged.]
Tenth day. Just shoot me.
I’ve put in 12 hours today. I’m starting to wonder if I’m going too deep with this index. Re-evaluating.
Good thing I hate summer weather. I worked smarter today, however, using more automations.
Panic time. I’m only at pg 385 out of 557 and I have less than 4 indexing days left before I start editing.
Trying a new – and, to me, risky – tactic: indexing on the fly, not marking up first. I’ll see how one chapter goes. I’ve got to save time! I’ve subcontracted out a small job (1–2 hrs) due to the copyedit snafu. I need every hour I can get. I figure it’ll be worth the money. 
What happened to yesterday? Feel like I’m getting sick, which would be disastrous. As an editor, I can always subcontract out a project for an emergency, but not only does indexing have a smaller pool of trained professionals, the intricacies of indexing style are so individual that really no one could easily or seamlessly take over. At least, not if the index is to retain its integrity and essence. Sigh.
Yay, I’m not sick! Done the inputting of entries! 6,388 records, which is on par for a book of this size and topic. The hard part is yet to come: finessing the cross-references and making links to interrelated concepts. While the software can help check for bad references and missing locators, there are many variables to consider. Some cross-references will have to be truncated and reworked; others will simply have to go; and yet others will require double posting due to wording.
This is the part that indexers must educate authors and publishers about – explaining that Word’s ‘indexing’ program just cannot replace a trained human brain. Word creates a concordance: that’s like taking the ingredients off a cereal box and listing them in alphabetical order. An index, analogously, takes the main words, interrelates them, looks at their nutrient values and considers how the ingredients work to give us a food product, but we can also just know what’s in there if that’s all we need. In fact, there’s our professional comparison: indexers are the food chemists of the book world – ta da! This stage is exciting and a bit terrifying. I read an article in our UK journal, The Indexer, wherein another indexer (Margie Towery, Ten Characteristics of Quality Indexes) admitted to having two moments of feeling stuck during the process: getting started and this stage. Glad I’m not the only one! 
I’m just doing some basic cleanup so that I can get to the editing described yesterday. Fixing typos deletes erroneously duplicated entries and ensures consistency: now’s the time to go back to the MS and confirm correct spellings; get rid of unnecessary, duplicated or differently phrased duplicate subheadings (the latter because you don’t see repeats in the Draft Format that you might have entered previously); add subheadings for entries that have too many unrelated locators, etc.
It’s 11 a.m. and I’m only at the Cs. As the meteorologist at the beginning of Twister says, ‘This is going to be a long day’… 
Finished cleanup from the Ms to Z; also a lot of double-checking that sufficient entries existed for major and meta topics, as well as the book’s contributors, which the author-editor requested. I’ve planned out the editing for tomorrow before a review by software on Monday.
And to prevent potential meltdowns, I save every 30 minutes or so, and back up to hard drive and Dropbox every 4 hours. That’s because once someone turned off the fuse box, and I lost a huge part of an index I had been working on. Live and learn. 
Sunday morning, so starting late at 10 a.m. I had a good night’s sleep, which is great because today’s to-do list is intimidating … Except my optical mouse isn’t working, so thank god I have a wired spare. Kind of like giving a chef a loaner knife they’re not used to.
The mouse worked after a reboot, but the reboot took about 20 mins, so essentially I’m half an hour behind again. I can’t just Control + F terms in the PDF, type the page numbers in and I’m done: half of them are in citations, references or footnotes, and the latter should usually only be included when they’re substantive (which can take some time to decide). So whittling down the number is time-consuming. Then they have to be organized by thought. Then entered, and without page-number errors. 
Butterflies. I heard a reminder on the radio yesterday talking about how, philosophically, Good Enough should be good enough, i.e. that striving for perfection is not good for us. I don’t think this is the inclination of the indexer (or editor or proofreader for that matter), no matter who says it. But I’m sure Annie Lamott would tell us to be gentler with our sorry-ass selves.
I confirmed that the proofreader is available to complete their part tomorrow. On to my penultimate review … 
Due to other commitments, I had to forget about the index today and trust it would be well proofread by my subcontractor. Not easy to do ...
Bad dreams all night about repeatedly calling said subcontractor because the file was late.
Spent several hours correcting, finessing, re-sorting (getting the locator order right – Roman numerals, ascending page numbers interspersed with those with an i for illustration (sometimes we just put illustrated page numbers in italics), so it would show thus: ix–x, 132, i234, 496), and double-checking things before putting it in a double-columned .rtf file. I’ve heard that before this editing stage, an error rate for page numbers of about 10% can occur, but with the ones my subcontractor found, I was at 0.002% errors: I hope that’s true! Corrected, I hope it’s near-perfect. Even human indexers with software can make mistakes. In a book of 220K words to be considered for indexing, perfection cannot be expected. I’ve clicked Send … 
Anti-climax: the author couldn’t access the file properly (the .rtf was showing up strangely), so he just asked for a new file format. He hadn’t got past the first 10 lines. But he did thank me for my ‘copious explanatory notes’, i.e. my return-file letter, which outlined info about the parameters of the index and changes that had to be used.
The prof is going to read the index this weekend, as he’s travelling. I could have had extra days after all! Waah!
Author got back to me with a few queries and the following: ‘Thanks for the painstaking and thorough job – it’s clear you took a lot of care, and I appreciate that … Thanks again for all of your hard work.’
Hopefully he’ll call me again in the future or refer a colleague to me. But after a few days’ reflection and relaxation, I’m not sure I’ll accept such a long and dense manuscript again – unless it truly is strictly names and titles! And I’ve realized that an index you’ve written is more like your baby than a book edit: there’s the same pride of accomplishment, but there’s more of a sense of having created a beautiful thing. And the labour and delivery stories are way better!
Vanessa Wells is a copyeditor, proofreader and indexer who taught Latin for almost 20 years before becoming a freelance editor. When she’s not working, she’s either reading, watching films, or cat-sitting for senior cats with special medical needs. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
www.wellsreadediting.ca
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. For instant access to more self-publishing and indie-author resources, visit her Self-publishers page.
Another email from a Parlour reader ... the answer will be of interest to anyone with similar manual dexterity issues and who is considering a career as an proofreader ...
Rachel asks:
‘I am looking into a career in proofreading. I have multiple sclerosis and need to work from home. I was wondering if you know whether any of the online courses cover the use of things such as Track Changes. Unfortunately, I have lost almost all manual dexterity and am unable to mark up on hard copy. I am, however, able to use a keyboard and mouse comfortably.’ Thanks so much for your question, Rachel. So the good news is that because you can use a keyboard and mouse, and you therefore prefer to work onscreen, professional proofreading is certainly a viable option for you (assuming your spelling, grammar, and punctuation are up to scratch, and you're ready to market your business effectively). Furthermore, there are industry-recognized training courses and resources that will support your onscreen learning. One thing we need to look at is how different client types’ expectations of what proofreading entails present challenges for you. It’s important to me that you’re forewarned about this so that you can target your clients appropriately, and communicate your service offering in a way that makes it clear what you will and won’t do. I’ll tackle that issue first and then move on to the training options available. Proofreading – expectations and possible challenges So, you’ve told me that your MS affects your manual dexterity, but my first thought was whether it also leads to fatigue. You didn’t mention this in your email, but I think it’s worth discussing for reasons that I hope will become clear. In my first decade of proofreading practice, almost all of my clients were mainstream publishers. Now I work exclusively with self-publishers (a few businesses but primarily writers of fiction). What’s clear from my experience is that the expectations of what has to be done and how it has to be done often differ depending on client type. Furthermore, how much will be done by the proofreader is often (though not always) quite different. What and how much does a proofreader do? Traditional publishers When working for traditional publishers, a proofreader is usually annotating designed page proofs. These are the pages (either paper or digital) that are almost identical to what readers would see if they pulled a book off the shelf. It’s a quality-control check of a book that’s been through developmental-, line- and copy-editing. The author has reviewed the files at each stage. Once the team is happy that the book’s ready to be laid out, an interior designer or typesetter will format the book to professional, industry-recognized standards. The proofreader’s job is to find anything missed during an extensive copy-edit, that no errors have been introduced at design stage, and that the various elements of the book are rendered consistently, correctly, and according to the design brief. In this case, the proofreader is looking at more than just spelling, punctuation and grammar. She’s also spotting problems with page numbering, chapter headings, line spacing, paragraph indentation, running heads, image captions, table and figure numbering, widows and orphans, page depth, prelims and end matter, and more. In my experience, because most of the problems in the text have already been attended to during previous rounds of editing, there might be only a few changes that warrant querying or marking up on each page. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but, on the whole, most of a proofreader’s time is spent carefully reading and checking rather than marking up. That’s important for you because while your hand movement is somewhat impaired, your vision isn’t. And because you wouldn’t have to make thousands of changes, the strain on your hands wouldn’t be excessive or challenging. What and how much does a proofreader do? Non-publishers Outside of the mainstream publishing industry, things become a little more tangled. The role of the proofreader is not nearly so well defined. It’s not unusual for clients to ask for a service they call ‘proofreading’ but that a traditional publisher would call ‘copy-editing or even ‘line editing’. Here the raw text is amended (or suggested recasts to the text are made using Word’s commenting tool). Furthermore, it’s not unusual for the so-called proofreader to be the first professional to work on the text. And that means that the changes made might well run into the thousands. We’re not talking about a few amendments on each page, but hundreds per chapter, perhaps even per several pages. Of course, it does vary, but every change, every query, requires the use of one’s hands. So you need to be aware of the potential impact of this kind of work on your health, and think carefully about how it will affect your hands and your fatigue levels. I’m not saying that working for non-publishers isn’t an option for you. Rather, you’ll need to take your speed and fatigue levels into account and factor them into the time you assign to complete projects. If you're working in Word, I suspect that =2K–10K-word business documents, Master’s dissertations, journal articles, short stories, brochures and newsletters won't present you with the same challenges as book-length work of 80K–100K words will. How does a proofreader mark up? Traditional publishers Because the proofreader is usually providing a pre-publication quality-control check on designed page proofs, most publishers like the annotations to take the form of industry-recognized proof-correction marks. In the UK, these are BS 5261C:2005. Any decent professional training course will teach you how to use these appropriately. Traditionally, these annotations were made on paper but publishers are increasingly providing PDF proofs. This affords you an opportunity because you can use a keyboard and mouse to annotate the page proofs in a way that mirrors a paper markup. There are a few options, but many proofreaders use a combination of a PDF editor’s (e.g. Adobe Reader DC, Acrobat Pro, or PDF-XChange) onboard comment and markup tools and digital proofreading symbols (custom stamps). I supply free files of stamps that proofreaders can download and install in the stamp palettes of their PDF editors. These stamps conform to BS 5261C:2005. How does a proofreader mark up? Non-publishers Because many non-publishers supply Word files, you’ll be working directly in Word and using Track Changes. You’ll also be able to take advantage of several macro suites and find/replace strings that will improve your efficiency and reduce the strain on your wrists and fingers. That’s good news for all of us – with or without MS or other manual-dexterity issues – in terms of time, quality and consistency. Summary of what, how, and how much So, all in all, it’s worth your taking the time to think about the types of clients you’ll work for, how many changes you might be required to make, how those client types will expect you to mark up, what length the projects will be, how long it will take you to complete the different project types, and how all of those things fit in with your specific health condition. Professional training My two recommended online proofreading training providers in the UK are the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and The Publishing Training Centre. The SfEP has practical online courses on the technical aspects of professional proofreading, a grammar brush-up course, and editing in Word. Of the latter, the SfEP says, ‘It includes chapters on styles and templates, find & replace and wildcards, and macros. Guest chapters have been written by Paul Beverley on FRedit, Daniel Heuman on PerfectIt and Jack Lyon on The Editorium. All chapters contain downloadable study notes, exercises and model answers.’ The PTC offers a grammar course, and its flagship Basic Proofreading course. Before you sign up, I’d recommend you have a conversation with either or both organizations in order to assure yourself that the course materials are usable in a way that suits your needs. Additionally, there are numerous free online tutorials and screencasts on how to use Word’s Track Changes, so Google will be your friend here. Search for one that matches your own version of Word. The most important issue for any professional proofreader is understanding first what to change, and making sure that she and the client are on the same page, figuratively speaking, about what degree of intervention is expected and how it will be rendered. Online books and resources Here are some resources that should help you on your journey:
I hope this helps you move forward, Rachel, and wish you all the very best in your search for a career that will work for you alongside your MS rather than in opposition to it. Good luck! Further reading
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
This question is from Alison, who’s new to proofreading and still completing her professional training with one of the UK's industry-recognized bodies.
‘I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the iPad Pro 12.9" with a stylus as a proofreading tool. I am currently using my MacBook Air.’
That’s a great question, Alison. Here’s my take on the situation: Broadly speaking, I wouldn’t recommend a tablet as a primary professional proofreading tool because I think you’ll struggle to match the functionality available on a laptop or desktop computer. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it in your home office to increase your screen real estate – perhaps for fact checking, referring to an onscreen style guide, displaying your online dictionary, or checking emails. Overall, though, I think there are too many limitations for the pro proofreader. Here are some thoughts … Proofreading and tangled terminology Your professional training will distinguish between proofreading (annotating designed pages – page proofs) and copyediting (correcting the raw text). This distinction will match the expectations of many traditional publishing houses, though not all. I’ve worked for two publishers in my career whose ‘proofreading’ required me to edit raw text. We might call it a light edit, or a proofedit, or just stop beating about the bush and use the term copyedit! What we’re talking about here is a quality-control check prior to publication. And it’s done in Word. In this case, you’ll not be scribbling hieroglyphics on your tablet with your stylus; you’ll be directly amending the file. iPads and Word files I have an iPad Air. I love it for email, search, messaging, reading, listening to music and audiobooks, social media and gaming. I also like it for writing – drafting anyway. But I wouldn’t use it as a professional proofreading tool if you paid me (unless you paid me a lot to compensate for how much slower I’m going to be!). The screen size is still too small for one thing. Now, it’s not necessary to have two mammoth screens, but I like mine! I’m happy to work on my 15” laptop when required, but that’s as low as I’ll go. The more I can fit on a screen the less I have to scroll. And that reduces the strain on my wrist. There is a lot of functionality in the app, but I just don’t think it’s anywhere near as quick or accessible as when one’s working on a laptop or desktop. Making a decent living from professional proofreading means taking advantage of complementary efficiency and productivity tools wherever possible. Basics like find/replace, wildcard searches, keyboard shortcuts, and the styles palette should speed you up, not slow you down. But the biggest downside is what you’ll lose from not being able to run a whole suite of gorgeous macros that will make your life easier and improve the quality of your proofread.
You get the point! Thus, the iPad is not a contender for working in Word for many professionals. Here's some good news though. PerfectIt for Cloud is now available and works with Windows and iOS, so you can run it on a tablet. I've yet to test it, but it is doable. You might also like to read the comments from a proofreader who does find her iPad an extremely effective tool. Click on the image below to read her insights in this LinkedIn thread: iPads and PDFs Whom you’re working for will affect things here. If you proofread for publishers, you’ll likely be asked to work on designed-for-print page proofs. This presents a number of challenges on a tablet. Even on a larger tablet like the one you’re considering, you won’t get a clear view of a facing recto and verso. And that means you won’t be able to check quickly for unequal page depths. Then there are the comment and mark-up tools to consider. A stylus is great if you want to use industry-standard proofreading marks, though it’ll need to be a high-quality stylus with a fine nib if your marks are to conform to BSI 5621C. I’ve experimented with a stylus and it wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped to annotate a PDF to professional standards. I wasted time ensuring each symbol was clear and neat, whereas if I’d been working on paper or on a laptop using digital BSI stamps, I’d have already moved on to the next annotation. Just something to bear in mind – practice will be essential if you experiment with tablet/stylus markup. Talking of stamps, you can mark up a PDF on a laptop or desktop (Mac or PC) using digital symbols. I provide a free set (see More Resources below). I want to mention the search function, too. One of the things I like best about marking up a PDF is the ability to do global searches for repeated errors. And while the search tool is quite neat on a tablet, it doesn’t have the range of functionality that you’d find on a laptop or desktop, particularly if you’re using pro versions of Acrobat or PDF-XChange. And, yes, the comment and markup tools, and the bookmarking are there in the app, and again quite neat if you’re working on a basic file with very little text for a non-publisher client. But for an 80,000-word book in which you might have to make hundreds of changes, I think you’ll struggle. Overall, the issue is one of speed. There’s a lot you can do on an iPad but I don’t think tablets in general are designed to let you move efficiently around a designed book page in the way a professional proofreader needs to. I want to be able to see a double-page spread at a glance. Yes, I’ll need to inspect the text word by word, line by line, but I also want to be able to view the page as a whole, including its running heads, its margin and line spacing, the position of all of the various elements and whether they’re aesthetically pleasing. I want to be able to bounce around on one page, and back and forth between pages via bookmarks, without keyboards and windows popping up all over the place while I’m working! That just slows me down, and in an age when many mainstream publishers are feeling the pinch and increasing their freelance editing rates only marginally each year, smart proofreading is essential. The more efficient you are, the better the hourly rate you’ll earn. I recommend you stick with your MacBook Air. My friend and colleague John Espirian concurs: 'My iPad is a wonderful writing platform but I wouldn't use it for editing or proofreading in any professional capacity. A MacBook is going to win hands down on that score. I write all of my blog drafts in Byword on my iPad. I use Apple's Smart Keyboard (see More Resources for a review). And unless you're location-independent and need to carry as little as possible, treat yourself to a second screen. I wish you good luck with your training, Alison! More resources
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 Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, and a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
Can you proofread your own book? Here's my advice on what can be done, and how you can do it.
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 fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access my latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.  Woo hoo! Paul Beverley is now creating screencasts in which he demonstrates how to get the best from some of his wonderful macros. At the time of writing, the following are available via YouTube:
You can download all of Paul's scripts via his book, Macros for Editors. Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
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 professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. 
My Student Proofreading Toolkit includes 17 handy Word find/replace strings and wildcard searches that will help you tidy up your PhD thesis or Master’s dissertation before you hand it over to a third-party professional proofreader or submit it to your university’s assessors.
The toolkit includes:
These DIY tips are designed to complement, not replace, a rigorous proofread. You can polish your document at any stage, but, for the sake of efficiency, I recommend carrying out the tasks after you've finished writing your thesis or dissertation and reviewed its purpose, content and structure. No advanced technical knowledge is required – even the novice Word user will be able to implement these tasks by following the step-by-step instructions (and associated screenshots). You can even select and copy some of the longer find/replace and wildcard search strings from the PDF. A word of caution – always save a backup copy of your file first, just in case you implement changes incorrectly. It's easier to revert to a fallback document than to repair a damaged one. I always test complex find/replace and wildcard search strings beforehand. The self-editing tips I’ve chosen are some of my personal favourites. I hope you find them as useful as I do!
Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. 
MultiSwitch is another gem of a macro created by my colleague Paul Beverley.
It’s 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. So 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. I’m currently working on an 85K+ academic book in Word – multiple authors, some whose first language isn’t English. The publisher is a stickler for the which/that and last/past prescriptions, even though many in the UK are a little more forgiving. There are hundreds of instances, and MultiSwitch is saving me soooo much time! 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 Ctrl Q, 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. My list currently includes the following switch options:
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: 
Creating your MultiSwitch list Now head over to Word. Open a new document and call it something meaningful (mine’s called LHSwitchList). Create your list using the following style: that which which that last past like such as less fewer Less Fewer 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 as you see fit. Changing the MultiSwitch script Now you're going to make two small amendments 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 11.05.16 ‘ Scripted word/phrase switching maxWords = 4 listName = “LHSwitchList” ' Set min number of chars for an abbreviation minChars = 2 myDir = “C:\Users\Louise\Dropbox\Macros\” The text in red shows how I’ve customized the script to suit my needs – you need to put in your own switch-list file name and 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:
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 fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
PerfectIt is my go-to editorial software when I'm copyediting and proofreading in books Microsoft Word. Here's why I think you should use it ...
Needless to say, this review only scratches the surface – to understand all of the tests and checks that PerfectIt can do for you, you really need to get stuck in and play with it.
I’m not going to use this article to provide an instruction manual for how to use PerfectIt – the developer, Daniel Heuman, has provided plenty of guidance on the Intelligent Editing website and a stack of video tutorials on the Intelligent Editing YouTube channel. What I will do is highlight the new features that I find most useful when proofreading and copyediting for those clients who want me to work directly in Word. Readers who are specialist copy-editors or who have different client groups may well have different preferences. Disclaimer: I have a PerfectIt licence and am a long-time user of the software. However, the developer has not asked me to write this review, nor have I been remunerated in any way for doing so. The views expressed herein are mine and based solely on my experience of using PerfectIt on a regular basis. What is it? For those readers who are not familiar with this software, PerfectIt 3 is a sophisticated consistency checker. By customizing its built-in style sheets, or creating your own, you can define your preferences and let PerfectIt locate variations and possible errors. Note: PerfectIt is not compatible with Macs. If you’re a Mac user, you’ll need software that specializes in enabling Windows applications to be run on a Mac (e.g. VMware Fusion or Parallels). What's so brilliant about PerfectIt 3? There are two reasons why I fell in love all over again.
To get the best out of PerfectIt, you must tell it what you want it to do. That does mean launching one of the style sheets and taking the time to look at all the various options (and there are a lot). In my early days of using PerfectIt, I didn’t do this. The result was that I didn’t get the most out of the software because it was ignoring inconsistencies (or flagging up false positives) that I'd marked as not relevant, when the opposite was true. It isn’t that PerfectIt wasn’t working properly, but rather that I wasn’t. Here are two examples:
There’s a developer summary of all the new features and improvements of PerfectIt at ‘What’s new in Version 3’. The following is a brief overview of what I love the most. Wildcard searches PerfectIt 3 allows you to harness the power of wildcard searches using exactly the same terms that you’d use in Word. I love this feature because it means I can work more efficiently – I don’t have to run a set of find/replace searches in Word and then go and do a bunch of other stuff in PerfectIt. I can consolidate all my wildcard searches in one place, which saves me time. Example: one of my clients has a house style that asks for comma separators in four-digit numbers (e.g. 2,999), but fixed spaces in five-digit (and above) numbers, e.g. 12 999 or 112 999. In Word, the wildcard search is: FIND: ([0-9]{2,3}),([0-9]{3}) REPLACE: \1^s\2 I can add those exact same instructions into a PerfectIt style sheet, customizing it via the Wildcards section in the Style Sheet Editor. Then, every time I use that style sheet, PerfectIt will test for the pattern in red and adjust the comma to a space. Note that you can tell PerfectIt to always use comma separators (or alternative renderings) but the wildcard search comes into its own when your house style asks for inconsistency (as in this example). As my colleague Sarah Patey wisely pointed out, wildcard searches in Word can be problematic when Track Changes is switched on. Word doesn’t always behave itself! However, PerfectIt seems to handle wildcard searches with TC rather better. Missing brackets and quotation marks This is a gem for those of us who work on academic projects with lots of brackets (e.g. author/date citations or quoted matter) and those of us who proofread and edit fiction (e.g. dialogue). To take advantage of this function, launch PerfectIt, select your preferred style sheet and click on the Tests in the sidebar to activate the dropdown menu. Then select ‘Tests and Options’, choose ‘Formatting’ and make sure that ‘Brackets and Quotes Left Open’ is checked. Oxford/serial comma The debate about whether the Oxford comma is useful or unnecessary rumbles on in the world of words. No matter – editors and proofreaders often find themselves instructed by their client to use it or bin it (except where enforcing the preference would lead to a lack of clarity). PerfectIt allows you to set a preference either way – just make sure the test is checked (it’s in the ‘Formatting’ section mentioned above, and that you’ve actually set the preference. To tell PerfectIt what to do, click on ‘Edit Current Style’ on the top ribbon, choose ‘Settings’, scroll down to ‘Oxford (Serial) Commas’ and make your choice. Italics If your client has insisted that a particular word is italicized (or not), you’ll love this function. PerfectIt already has a built-in list of words that can be styled, but you can add your own. Here’s a quick example: some clients want [sic], some want [sic] and some don’t care as long as it’s consistent. In ‘Edit Current Style’ on the top ribbon, select ‘Italics’. Then choose an existing word or add your own. You can then tell PerfectIt whether it should be italic, Roman, consistent, or italic at first use only. This is one of those functions that really does save time if you work on lengthy academic texts. Heading format Here, again, PerfectIt 3 enables us to harness the power of Word’s styles palette. You can set your preferences for several different heading levels, e.g. sentence case, initial caps on significant words, upper case, or all initial capitals. As with the italics check, this is particularly useful when working on academic books and theses. Additionally, those who regularly work with clients who have a specific house style that explicitly defines how heading levels should be formatted (e.g. journal article editors) will love this too, regardless of the length of each individual project they’re working on. Dashes and non-breaking spaces These searches are my final wow tools! If, like me, you regularly work on documents riddled with hyphens that should be spaced en dashes or closed-up em dashes, or you want to ensure that all those space-separated numbers and measurements are not going to end up falling over the cliff, you’ll adore this function. Again, these are issues that can be corrected using Word’s find/replace tool, but being able to consolidate the searches within the PerfectIt platform is simply another time-saver. The fewer programs I have to use to get high-quality consistency within the framework of my client’s brief, the more time I save and the better my hourly rate. A few final comments One of the big plusses of PerfectIt is its stability. Despite the fact that it’s often asked to work on very large Word documents and check a tonne of stuff, it doesn’t crash. This was true for older versions, and PerfectIt 3 is no different. For me, this is important – I feel confident when I’m using it. I also think US$99 for a permanent licence that never expires and permits me to upload PerfectIt onto my laptop and desktop for no extra charge is great value for money. However, I do want that US$99 to offer me a product that’s fit for purpose. PerfectIt 3 is. If you’re someone who’s reluctant to use software to complement your beady eye, I’d urge you to try this. I don’t say this within the framework of one of those human-vs-machine arguments. Rather, it’s about time. Even if your eyes are so beady that you will spot every single hyphen that should be an en rule, every double space that should be a single, every missing closing quotation mark, every comma in a large number that should be a non-breaking space, every Mrs. that should be a Mrs, every heading with initial capital letters that should be in sentence case, and so on, using a program such as PerfectIt enables you to make all of those hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of changes more quickly. That’s something that can’t be argued with – it’s a fact that PerfectIt works faster than my hand, so why would I not reduce the likelihood of eyestrain and RSI by getting it to do the donkey work? The faster I work to bring high-quality consistency to my clients’ files, the sooner I can get down to the business of actually reading the text word by word and line by line, for sense and context. The more efficient I am, the better my hourly rate. Increased efficiency means I can accept more projects from more clients because I have more time. I want my business to be profitable. I want my clients to be thrilled with the quality of my work, so much so that they retain my services. PerfectIt is one tool that enables those two ‘wants’ to sit at the same table with ease.
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
My new free PDF resource for independent authors is out now: The Mechanics of Self-Publishing Print Books: 10 guidelines in 10 minutes.
Aimed at writers who want to do their own print formatting – using Word – this PDF toolkit helps the independent, self-publishing author to deliver a professional-looking book to market. The guidelines are based on my own experience of publishing three print books, and my previous career experience within the publishing industry.
And, because time is precious to us all, I've designed it so that each of the 10 sections can be read in a minute! If you'd like to download this booklet's sister PDF, visit: The Mechanics of Self-Publishing Ebooks: 10 guidelines in 10 minutes
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access my latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
If you're a professional proofreader or copyeditor, you probably already think Word's styles function is one of its best functions. Styles save us so much time!
We used to be able to grab styles from one project and use them in another (by creating Style Sets) and that was a huge time-saver. 
I was sorry to lose Style Sets when I upgraded to Office 365 (for PC).
I used to create styles for a particular client, save them as a Style Set, and open them in other files as and when I needed them. This came in handy in three situations:
There is a solution for those who are editing or proofreading on a PC using Word 2016. It's a little long-winded compared with the old method, but it does the job. Either read and follow steps 1–10 below, or watch a short video in which I walk you through the process. 1. Open up the document you want to import styles from and save it as a .dotx (template). Close this file. Consider naming your new template such that it’s easily identifiable in the future (e.g. PublisherXStyles.dotx or AuthorNameStyles.dotx). I like to keep my style templates in a distinct folder for ease of access. 2. Now open the document you want to import styles into. 3. Make sure the Developer tab is available on your ribbon. To do this, open Word. Choose File, Options, Customize Ribbon. Ensure that Developer is checked. Click OK. 
4. Click on the Developer tab.
5. Select Document Template.
6. Click on the Organizer button.
7. Select the Close File button.
8. Now the button has changed to Open File. Click on it and browse for the template you want to import styles from.
9. After you’ve selected your file, it will show up in the Styles available in: box. In the window above, you’ll see a list of all the styles available for import (use the toolbar to scroll up and down if you can’t find what you want). Now click on the style you want to import and press the Copy button.
If you want to copy a group of styles next to each other, use Shift-click to select. If you want to copy several styles that are not next to each other, use Ctrl-click to select. Bingo – your new styles will show up in the left-hand window of the Organizer box. 
10. Close the Organizer pane and head over to the Home tab on the ribbon. Your imported styles will now show up in the Styles pane.
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
(Disclaimer: I'm the CEO of Futureproofs so this article is doubtless biased – although it's also entirely honest!) Regular readers may recall that, a few months ago, Louise wrote an excellent review of Futureproofs. 
(For everyone else – Futureproofs is a web-based platform for on-screen proofreading that is designed specifically for publishing workflows. With simple markup based on the BSI or Chicago standards, collaboration to resolve queries and real-time data for project management, Futureproofs aims to provide the tools that editors, proofreaders and authors actually need.)
In her review, Louise praised many aspects of how Futureproofs works (my particular favourite was her description of our markup tools as ‘frankly gorgeous’!) but also had some absolutely legitimate criticisms. There were (and are) plenty of places where we could improve. We've been heads-down improving things in the past few months, so Louise asked me to take a look back and talk about how we've got on since her original review. Search This was the major area where Louise thought we needed to improve, and we've done so. From March this year, we've had a completely revamped search tool. The way this works now will be familiar to everyone who uses MS Word or Adobe Reader – every term is highlighted on the page, and you can quickly step from one to the next. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing this for a web interface was a real challenge! 
Of course, we've kept the advanced search panel, too, which shows you the full context for every result in the proof. This makes it much easier to identify one particular result among many uses of a word in the book. In addition, we still provide both exact search matches and smart matches to help you find your results as quickly as possible.
Overall, search is vastly better than it was a few months ago and I'm very grateful to Louise (and many other users) who helped us with feedback and advice to get there.
Navigation One of Louise's first suggestions for improving Futureproofs was bookmarking, and we've obliged. You can now bookmark any page in the proof within Futureproofs and name it – ideal for cross-referencing with the table of contents or the answer section of a textbook. These bookmarks are also shared across the team – so, if one person creates the bookmarks, everyone benefits. In addition to bookmarks, we've introduced a thumbnail-navigation mode to Futureproofs, so you can navigate visually through your book to find a particular page. Especially for books with lots of artworks, this can be a great time-saver. Also, we've added a 'Jump back' button that returns you to the previous page you were working on. So, if you need to visit the table of contents to check a chapter title, you're just one click away from your previous page and quickly continuing with your proofread. It's a small thing but often useful! Other things As well as the things that Louise picked out, we've continued to improve in other areas. We now have a comprehensive Maths markup tool, for example, and it's easier than ever to collate a master proof and then to compare this with updated proofs to ensure that all corrections are made. And we've just released a new way for designers to work within Futureproofs, too – to review corrections on the master proof, to check them off as they're done, and to raise queries about anything that's not clear. We're really excited about this because it supports a full 360º workflow, helping everyone involved to work within Futureproofs. The bottom line is that we're hugely grateful for all the feedback we get from our users – especially when they point out where we're getting things wrong. We're always looking to improve Futureproofs, and there are several big things coming later this year that could make a real difference. (Let's just say that the poor quality of many ebooks really annoys me!) 
John Pettigrew is the CEO & Founder of We Are Futureproofs – a company dedicated to making editors' lives better by creating software that is designed for the jobs they actually do. Before this, he headed up the editorial team for International Education at Cambridge University Press, survived as a freelance editor for six years, and has created both leading print books and acclaimed iPad apps.
Connect with John on Twitter and LinkedIn.
My new free PDF resource for independent authors is out now: The Mechanics of Self-Publishing Ebooks: 10 guidelines in 10 minutes.
Aimed at writers who want to do their own eformatting – in Word – this PDF toolkit helps the independent, self-publishing author to deliver a professional-looking ebook to market. The guidelines are based on my own experience of publishing three ebooks, and my previous career experience within the publishing industry.
And, because time is precious to us all, I've designed it so that each of the 10 sections can be read in a minute!
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access my latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly. |
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I write quirky flash fiction too! Click on the book jacket above to read my free debut collection of 9 stories.
Dare Rogers'Louise uses her expertise to hone a story until it's razor sharp, while still allowing the author’s voice to remain dominant.'Jeff Carson'I wholeheartedly recommend her services ... Just don’t hire her when I need her.'J B Turner'Sincere thanks for a beautiful and elegant piece of work. First class.'Ayshe Gemedzhy'What makes her stand out and shine is her ability to immerse herself in your story.'Online courses to make you visible
  
Finalist: UK Blog Awards (Arts & Culture category)
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