Proofing And Editing

In the world of writing, there are some basic confusions that seem to propagate with time, distance, language barriers and whether or not it’s Tuesday. One of these is the responsibilities of two different people who read a nearly-finished piece of work: the editor and the proofreader. Many people – including those posting freelance jobs on various sites – believe they are the same role under two different names. They’re not.

An editor (or copy-editor) is the person with the harder job. Their role is to take a piece of text – an article, a story, a book or whatever – and transform it into something that flows smoothly. They look at the bigger picture, trying to determine whether the author’s point is well-expressed or if a reader would understand it better were it formulated differently. The editors of the world are the true wordsmiths: they tear a piece of writing down to its component ideas and rebuild it, piece by piece, until it feels right. They will rewrite or remove some of the content and work very closely with the original authors.

A proofreader usually steps in at the last stage, just before publishing. Their job is not to determine whether the paragraphs are in the right order or whether the author’s intention is one thing or another. They are correctors: their role consists of going over every letter of every word, every punctuation mark and every conjugated verb to hammer out every single error that remains in the text – even those missed by the editor. They are the geeky technicians, the “grammar Nazis” who will argue whether that colon should be a period or not.

The editor usually sees the work before the proofreader, and often sees it in a native state: that is, unformatted for the final presentation. The proofreader generally checks the work after it has been formatted and prepared for publication, so their job also entails verifying alignment, page breaks, columns and other layout details.

Both roles are expected to correct many of the basic problems, such as grammar, punctuation, spelling, subject-verb agreements, hyphens, capitalisation, abbreviations and any obvious mistakes, such as a character’s name changing part-way through a story.

In some cases, there is an additional overlap of the two roles. Proofreaders are frequently expected to spot bad writing and bring it to the attention of their employer or the author. They are not generally expected to rewrite the content, though, unless specifically requested – this is because such activity would be stepping on the editor’s toes!

In the job market, be it online or bricks-and-mortar, it is always worth checking exactly where the boundaries of the role lie before committing yourself to the task. And make sure your pay reflects your efforts.

[Originally published on www.wordophilia.com]