The final proofread/edit of a novel. It’s the thing writers dread. We start with hope, that our text will be perfect, and clean and delightful – and then we come across the dreaded typo, or a phrase that contradicts a previous one, that just glare at us off a page. Dammit!
It’s a necessary evil. It’s better that we find these evil errors and excise them before they get published. (Rule No. 12: Avoid alliteration. Always. 32 Extremely Funny English Proofreading Rules)
Books aren’t perfect when they’re written. We go back and make them better through numerous edits.
I love this quote from William Zinsser – it captures exactly what a good writer is trying to do:
“I don’t like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity. I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to strengthen the transition between one sentence and another. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line. With every small refinement I feel that I’m coming nearer to where I would like to arrive, and when I finally get there I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that won the game.” William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
But through all those edits, errors inevitably creep in. Hence the chore of proofreading, of sifting through thousands of sentences with a fine-toothed comb. Mayhem results if we don’t.
So, after days of editing and proofreading my latest novel, book 2 of my Chaos Roads trilogy, available on July 12, 2024 (I hope – if I don’t find anything else that needs to be changed lol), I’m now busily formatting it for publication. Front cover, spine, back cover. ISBN numbers for each different version of the book (three in my case: one for the printed version, one for the ebook/Kindle version, one for the EPUB version). Dedication; acknowledgement; maps; List of Characters.
It’s all fun, but time-consuming, so I’m going to leave you in the good hands of a couple of amusing things about proofreading that I found on the internet. Hope you enjoy!
A joke sent in about proofreading by a reader to the Vappingo website. I especially like it because there’s a monk in my novel:
“In an ancient monastery, a new monk arrived to dedicate his life to subservient solitude and to join the others as they copied ancient records. The first thing he noticed was that the other monks were copying, by hand, books that had already been copied by hand.
The new monk had to speak up: “Forgive me, Brother Mark, but copying other copies by hand allows many chances for error. How do we know we aren’t copying someone else’s mistakes? Are they ever checked against the originals? Who is proofreading them?”
Brother Mark was startled. No one had ever suggested that before. “Well, that is a good point, my son.” He replied, “I will take one of these latest books down to the vault and proofread it against its original document.” He went deep into the vault, where no one else was allowed to enter, and started the proofreading process.
The day passed and it was getting late in the evening. The monks were getting worried about Brother Mark. Finally, the new monk started making his way through the old vault and, after he searched for a while, he heard sobbing.
“Brother Mark?” he called. The sound of the sobbing grew louder as the monk drew nearer to Brother Mark. He finally found the old monk sitting at a table with both the new copy and the original ancient book in front of him. It was obvious that Brother Mark had been crying for a long time.
“What is the matter?” asked the concerned new monk. “Oh, my Lord,” sobbed Brother Mark, “the word is ‘CELEBRATE’ !” “
Shared from Proofreading Joke: An Important Distinction, https://www.vappingo.com/word-blog/proofreading-joke/