Some of the things that proofreaders check for are:
Doesn’t a big company such as Victoria’s Secret use proofreaders? From Red Pen, Inc.
From Failblog
Just in case anyone has been living in a cave recently, we’ve had a royal wedding.
My children and I watched it and my daughter and I celebrated by painting our toenails red, white and blue with some friends, including an 8-year-old boy who when they were 3, wanted to marry my daughter and have 5 children (my daughter was totally in agreement with this). He had it all worked out: they were going to live near Legoland and he was going to go out to work so that she could stay at home and look after the children (until his mum pointed out that might not be what his wife wants out of life).
I was glad the children wanted to watch the ceremony as there was a royal wedding when I was just a little bit older than my daughter which we watched, followed by a street party, and my grandad collected all the newspapers and books — he was a staunch monarchist who stood up for the national anthem even when he was 80 and made us wait for Christmas presents until after the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day.
I loved all the pageantry, which is something we are very good at in Blighty and I was proud that my children had been learning the national anthem at school, even Monster. I loved seeing all those flags waving in London and the party atmosphere. I concur with the rest of the world in thinking that the dress was beautiful, most of the outfits were spectacular and some of the hats were a bit odd. I’m delighted that the rain held off (especially as we had a barbecue in the afternoon with all the participants of our sweepstake-style quiz about the morning’s events). The best bit for my children was the kiss (believe it or not) but there is a lot of talk around here at the moment that if you kiss someone on the lips, you have to marry them. Watch out, 8-year-old boy from paragraph 1!
I was also very proud that in my capacity of professional nitpicker, I didn’t see any grammatical howlers. The only mistake I have seen in the run-up to the wedding was this one on a commemorative mug:
To all my friends who enjoy a tipple: according to Redhill and Reigate Life, Surrey County Council has issued a warning that fake bottles of Jacob’s Creek wine have been found on sale in the county. Apparently the bottles are easy to spot as they have spelling mistakes on the label. Twenty bottles have been found with labels on the back stating that the drink was a ‘Wine of Austrlia’ instead of Australia.
A Surrey County Council spokesman is quoted as saying, “The abysmal spelling gives new meaning to the phrase ‘thick as thieves’. Another sign that the cheap plonk is a smuggled counterfeit, thought to be from Asia, is that it tastes foul.” He also said, “What really staggers me is that they’ve got the winemaker’s signature perfect, but they couldn’t spell the word ‘Australia.’”
It seems that in this instance it isn’t much of a bargain to pay £2 instead of the usual £10ish.
But it did remind me of these two pictures from one of my favourite blogs, Failblog:
My daughter celebrated her 8th birthday on Friday. We had a weekend full of celebrations: the actual birthday, a pyjama party (no boys allowed!) on Saturday and a family party yesterday.
I always feel a bit nostalgic around my children’s birthdays about the anticipation of the birth and the elation of their safe arrivals and also about their achievements to date. My daughter was determined to stay up until the time of her birth (20:47) as her brother was born at 01.35 so has already aged by the time he wakes up on his birthday.
The pyjama party went very well with lots of girly activities such as dancing, painting our nails, colouring in door hangers, making our own pizzas and watching a DVD while eating popcorn. I was pleased that there was still a request for pass the parcel, musical bumps and pin the tail on the donkey though, proving that she isn’t too grown-up yet.
My daughter decorated her own birthday cake beautifully (and did another one the next day with her cousin). But what would I have done eight years ago if I had been presented with a cake like this? What a shame – all that hard work and no spellcheck facility!
From a fantastic blog: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com
My trip to the supermarket with two children in tow was more stressful than usual this week, mainly as we decided to try using the handheld scanner for the first time as we walked around to try to save time. My daughter will be 8 next week and my son is 4½ and was not speaking much this time last year. He is catching up with his peers now very quickly, particularly thanks to speech therapy and starting school in September.
He has finally started singing nursery rhymes too, which we thought we had bypassed, so it’s wonderful that he is now doing it, and he’s quite tuneful. But on Monday, Monster had learnt a new song: the Alphabet Song which he sang continuously at top volume.
So when I spotted this the next day on Failblog, it seemed so appropriate.
I became a proofreader because I don’t like seeing mistakes in signs and other printed materials which people have paid good money for. I feel one doesn’t acquire a professional image of a company whose advert says Proofreader’s ‘R’ us.
I am all too aware that offering a proofreading service opens me up to criticism if I make typos in my emails and spent hours double-checking my website, only to be told by my friend that I had made an error or two. This is probably because I didn’t have much formal training in typing, growing up in that bygone era when offices had typing pools and secretaries just before computers took over the world. A common error in my own typing occurs when I have to type a double letter as I often pre-empt myself and type the letter before the double letter twice, e.g. prrofreader! Therefore I always read things through at least twice. This just goes to show that it is very difficult to proofread your own work.
I have been known to spot spelling errors in printed materials and then contact the writer to offer my services. That said, I would never look down on someone for making mistakes and would never correct a friend’s email unless specifically requested. And I wouldn’t write sarcastic comments either — I believe this has been given the term flaming.
I recently came across an article in the Daily Mail where the actress Emma Thompson criticised teenagers for using ‘teenspeak’. Readers leaving comments were condemned by a certain Cherry of South Oxon who took it upon herself to correct other people’s English from their comments. However she made herself look incredibly silly by wrongly insisting that the possessive of the plural word children is childrens’ and rudely put down anyone who tried to correct her. The argument rolled on and on for pages and became more and more amusing. It got to the point that I was desperate for Cherry to see she was wrong and own up to it. Someone tried to defend her by copying a quote from The Apostrophe Protection Society’s website but missed the point completely by not quoting a section about irregular plurals such as the word children! Cherry’s absolute classic comment was:
I speak as a grammarian of some forty years’ teaching experience. (Please note – the apostrophe comes after the ‘s’… because? Answerts on a postcard, please.)
Earlier in the comments, she had spelt the word grammarian with one ‘m’ and, as you’ve probably noticed, also spelt answers incorrectly.
The moral of the story: there is no need to be condescending to other people, which is why I like to see the lighter side of life.
Amongst other things, a spellchecker won’t pick up:
If anyone finds any errors in my writing, please let me know!
This is an exciting and scary moment for me as I have been threatening to write a blog for a while now and am nervous about finally getting round to clicking on the publish button. If anyone in cyberspace is reading this, please be patient with me as I suspect this will be a steep learning curve.
So, fingers crossed and here goes…
