vendredi 17 octobre 2014

Quality Proofreading Is Similar But Different Than Editing

By Dominique Martin


You have just written some copy or an advertising piece you think will get interested people to your website. It may be a white paper or an article that must have wide distribution, including potential investors and or large purchasers. It has to be right and it must not be seen as an amateurish piece. Someone who has quality proofreading skills should be involved with it after you have all of the pertinent information written down.

There are two categories of review processes that can be used at this point. One of them is the proofreader. It is their skills that will ensure everything that is written makes sense and is punctuated properly. They will only work with the information presented in the piece, not insert any other data. That task is for an editor.

The use of an editor means getting someone who in involved in the same niche or the same industry for which you are writing. They will have an idea about what data must go into the piece you are writing and will be able to beef up the information. They will produce additional material for your approval before they use it and will also check all spelling and grammatical issues as well.

Back to the proofreaders you can access easily, no matter where you live. San Diego, CA has many of these and they are easy to work with. These professionals will know all of the many grammar rules as well as spelling issues. The sound alike words that are used and spelled differently will be part of their knowledge base. The commas, colons and semi colons and when they are supposed to be used are their trade marks.

One of their most important functions, especially on websites and in long articles or white papers, is to keep the tenses uniform throughout. Many times people will write in a first person singular at the beginning of a piece and, somehow, change into a second or third person by the end. This is confusing and frustrating for readers who are trying to gain operational information as in a how to do article or series.

A proofreader will know, as you do, that various pieces will need to be written in specific forms. An article, as an example, will be more formal than a blog. A white paper is usually a very formal, third person, statement filled with facts and statistics. A blog has the ability to be very informal and fun, often leaving data out of the main post to entice readers to look in on the next installment.

Many times, a proofreader will make some discoveries of things written that do not mean what the original writer wanted to say. They will find improper use of words, misplaced or illogical live links in some pieces and very humorous comments in inappropriate places. Most of the problems they find, especially on websites, are in already translated copy from a different language to one they are familiar with.

When searching for a proofreader, whether in San Diego, CA, or anywhere else, look for someone who has performed this task for many others in the recent past. Look on their website or printed material and see if their product reads as well as it should. Look for any of the problems associated with bad writing and then identify whether they have produced work for your particular niche or industry.




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