Who is a Proofreader? & what is Proofreading?

The profession of proofreader is among those professions that doesn’t require any specific education. That means that almost everyone with a degree in humanities or in anything can try themselves in this field and become a proofreader. Nowadays, there is a huge demand for proofreaders on the market as almost each sphere deals with documents, content and publishing. Any respectable enterprise knows that law quality of content is unacceptable. It may not only impact the reputation badly but can lead to the financial losses. Therefore publishing stage is preceded by the editing and proofreading stages.

Main requirements:

·         To be fluent in the language you proofread

·         To have good spelling skills

·         To have a good knowledge of grammar and punctuation rules

Some companies may also require to pass their proofreading trainings or courses. The trainings or mentorship programs may be provided by the company or you may be asked to pass them outside the company. Also you may find a lot of trainings available online.

Often along with the interview you may be asked to pass a proofreading test. Proofreading test usually presupposes a text excerpt full of different kind of mistakes. A test is usually time limited.

How to prepare?

You can easily train your proofreading skills by doing grammar, spelling exercises, revising rules of punctuation etc. It is also advisable to read different kind of literature: from newspapers to doctoral thesis.

Depending on the variety of subjects involved, proofreading may be general or specific. General proofreading takes place when you work with different subjects and literature types such as do my physics homework.

When we talk about specific proofreading we mean that we work only with one subject. It can be legal proofreading or medical proofreading or anything. While in case of general proofreading no specific degree is required, specific proofreading may require degree or at least deep understanding of the subject you work with. For example Legal proof reading

Responsibilities

Proofreader is supposed to:

·         Read the original text

·         Mark spelling mistakes

·         Mark grammar mistakes

·         Mark usage mistakes

·         Mark punctuation mistakes

·         Mark factual mistakes

·         Make the text coherent and cohesive.

Sometimes proofreader has to be a team worker cooperating with author, editor or second proofreader.

Proofreader is not supposed to:

·         Improve the content

·         Rewrite sentences

·         Edit the style

·         Insert something new

·         Delete something.

Personal qualities that the proofreader has to have:

·         Attentiveness to details

·         Good concentration skills

·         Patience and persistence

If you possess all the mentioned qualities – this job is right up street! Move ahead and grab up, IAAN always tends up to brush the hidden talents of its students in the college and make them professional in their naturally owned rough skills into finer one.