GrammarPhile Blog

At ProofreadNOW.com, we give away our secrets. All the juicy goodness of how to be a great writer — expressing exactly what you want to in powerful, precise, as-close-to-perfect-as-possible language.

We also earn our keep with these secrets, by proofreading and copyediting business documents 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (and one extra in leap years).

On the surface, that sounds like a pretty dumb business model. Giving away our service, in a sense.

Aren’t we undermining profits? Putting ourselves out of work? Making ourselves obsolete, especially in the age of generative AI?

Not likely. Even the best writers use editors. In fact, the best writers are often the best writers because they understand that writing is an incremental, innately human, nuanced process of refinement, one that, if you’re serious about it, could last forever. But nobody has forever. So we’re bound to be around for a long time, helping time-strapped businesses that have a lot to say.

Still, our belief in our longevity doesn’t explain our primary motivations for helping people become better writers.

We were studying “stranger danger.” This is a difficult subject in any context, made only more so by language and cultural differences. I assumed my ESL students would struggle the most with the simplistic and potentially contradictory application for social interactions: Kind strangers = bad strangers. Mean strangers = bad strangers. Candy is good but don’t take the candy. Dogs are nice but don’t pet the puppy! Ride the bus home but don’t get in the white van with no windows! Run away, screaming!

“Ella, can you please read our story for today?” I asked. As the brightest six-year-old I’d ever taught, she had a strong chance of grasping the nuances of our text. A man, who was obviously pretending to have been in a car accident, was attempting to gain access to a young girl’s home, where she was alone.

“‘Help!’ the man yelled through the door. ‘I was in a bad car accident and I need to call an am-bu-lance.’ Ella sounded out the syllables of that sneaky borrowed word.

I nodded inwardly. We were on a Jack-and-Jill-down-the-hill roll. We might even have time to talk about some supplementary vocabulary words, like “paranoia.”

I assume when the author wrote the summary, he’d already finished the book content. Ripe with excitement, in a flurry of dopamine, he bashed out the synopsis on his keyboard, saved it with a flourish, then ate a donut to celebrate.

Despite this jovial possibility (or perhaps because of it), I cringed as I perused the outline on the back cover. There were twenty-five errors at first glance. I felt like I had happened upon a naked mannequin in a clothing store and wanted to fashion a quick cover-up for its embarrassing predicament.

Make no mistake, the author didn’t lack education or experience, as evidenced by his various academic degrees, business savvy, and multi-industry knowledge, including this self-published book on stock market investing. It was full of useful, well-founded information. The fly (flaw) in his soup:

He had not used an editor.

Sometimes you sit in front of your stone tablet, chisel and hammer in hand, and the inspiration pterodactyl fails to pass by your cave. You hem and haw, you stew and soup, you moan and whine for the muse. Nothing happens. Deadlines are deadlines, Triassic Period or otherwise, so you knock out the report in spite of your mental doldrums. And by that, I mean you chisel a few hundred half-hearted words, read them, and fling the tablet out your window in disgust. Except, you have no window and tablets are expensive and single use, all of which effectively ruin your tantrum. It’s back to square one, also known as “writing hopscotch purgatory.”

Eventually, you sit back on your callused heels and wipe the dust off the last letter, sigh, eat a hearty meal of cactus and hardboiled ornithopod, and call it a night.

The next morning, you rejoice in the recollection: The blasted report is done, and based on your effort, it’s a ringer. You grab the tablet, bounce out to your favorite rock, and bask in the morning glow as you read through your masterpiece, expecting to be dazzled by your writing acumen and talent.

It’s gibberish.

Don’t risk the heartache and indigestion bad proofreaders can bring. Read this highly scientific and casually vetted list to educate yourself on the obvious signals that indicate you’re dealing with proofreading duds or winners.

Signs of a Bad Proofreader:

1. They don’t own a monocle or a long-stemmed pipe. As everyone who is anyone within the proofreading community knows, at least one of these is absolutely necessary for the dual purpose of looking debonair and snooty while correcting someone’s grammar in a nasal tone. Though this deficit can be partially assuaged with a false accent (specifically one in which the “r” sound is absent), it takes a concerted effort to garner the same level of authority automatically endowed by a high-class monocle or classic meerschaum.

Which raises the question, if a proofreader lacks dedication in this area, what else are they letting slip? My opinion: probably a lot. And another question: What is a meerschaum?

2. Should you mention a style guide, they’ll wonder why people would be reading during a fashion show.

We submit, for the sake of tickling your funny bone, this unofficial and completely made-up list.

1. Proofreaders are all elderly spinsters who love cat sweaters, yell at children, and only date men who are named Oxford Comma.

Let us use this as a prime example of logical fallacy. First, cat sweaters are loved by any sane person so there’s no shame in that affinity. Yelling at children is something most people do on occasion even if they vehemently deny it (little people run around with sharp things, sing at the top of their lungs four inches from your ear, and describe bathroom habits to strangers—all on purpose, for goodness’ sake). Finally, there aren’t any men named Oxford Comma, more’s the pity for those of us for whom grammar-loving men are relevant and extremely desirable.

I may have given myself away.

I’ve come to confess. When I laugh extremely hard and simultaneously attempt to speak, I sound like a severely asthmatic pterodactyl. When I’m cackling over a bad joke* with my children or polishing off a bag of chips while binge-watching Netflix, it’s a delightful addition to the atmosphere. At other times, it’s a liability.

A couple of years ago, I was teaching an English class that went awry. My roster was filled with extremely dedicated, serious students, the type for whom a score of ninety was akin to a death knell for their scholastic dreams. While explaining a concept to a particularly sober young woman, I referenced the world map behind me. As I touched on the surface with the tips of my fingers, the clasp on the left-hand side broke and the map went catawampus. My eyes widened and I lapsed into stunned silence. I was overwhelmed by the awkwardness of the map’s precarious position and giggled. The student stared at me, deadpan, her lips disappearing into a thin line and her back ramrod straight. I attempted to regain my train of thought.

The map fell off the wall.

As a writer, you need to trust your editors and proofreaders, but you should still spend at least some amount of time polishing your writing before handing it over to them. Sure, this makes things somewhat easier for your proofreaders, but it also ensures clearer, better writing overall.

Do you have a clear review process that you follow before passing your work along to your proofreaders or editors? If not, here are a few things to consider if you want your writing to be the best it can be before giving it to someone else to edit.

If you use email as part of your job, you know what a pain it can be to sort through the daily onslaught. Endless “Re: re: re: re:” chains are just the tip of the iceberg – it just gets worse from there.

But here’s the important point: Everyone you email is in the same situation, and some of the messages they deem unimportant might be the ones you send. How do you get around that? How can you ensure that your message gets seen and understood by the intended recipients?

Many business disputes stem from misaligned expectations: Each party thinks it understands what should result from an agreed-upon transaction, but the results leave one or both parties unsatisfied. Proofreading is no exception, which is why it’s important to know going in what you can expect from your editors – and what you can’t.