Friday 23 November 2012

The value of proofreading courses

I came across something quite disturbing recently. At least I thought it was disturbing. It was basically a sales pitch for a proofreading book. Nothing wrong with that. No, the bit that I found disturbing was what it had to say about proofreading courses.

Essentially, the implication seemed to be that in proofreading there is always a right or wrong answer. The argument was that there's no point in doing a proofreading course because a book will tell you all you need to know (as long as it contains some model answers to exercises).

Personally, I think this is very wide of the mark. I've been helping students on Proofreading Today (the proofreading course from Editorial Training) for some time now. And I think they know as well as I do that a good proofreader often has to exercise a degree of judgement. Very often, it's far from black and white. The trickiest choices are typically around whether or not making a certain change encroaches on the editor's role. While a proofreader may justifiably correct all the grammatical errors in a scientific journal, how far should they go in a page-turner written in a colloquial style?

So I would say that the level of professional judgement required of a proofreader isn't something you can readily pick up from a book. Guidance on a training course can put you on the right track, and experience, over months and years, will help you develop the expertise you need to become truly proficient.

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