Quality Assurance · Proofing + Proofreaders’ Notations

As part of our standard quality assurance process, all rounds of layout are checked against client-supplied copy and edits. In the process, we make an effort to ensure that text is properly formatted, italics and other text highlighting details are true to the text provided, that English and French words break in the proper places, and that details such as the use of capitalization follow existing standards. For style issues, we reference The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing, and Le guide de rédacteur.

Here are a few tips for providing text edits:

• Ideally, minor text edits should be provided as clear and tidy mark-ups on hardcopy. This saves time and minimizes error by indicating instantly the location of the specific text that requires changing. Treasure-hunt instructions that are becoming a popular means of providing edits via e-mail (e.g.: “fifth page, third paragraph in left column, third line down, fourth word”) are more costly because
  • they take a great deal of time to decipher,
  • they render proofreading after layout difficult to impossible without adding an additional process step (taking the instructions provided by the client, marking up the hardcopy, and then providing it to the designer for changing), and
  • significantly increase the chance of error. All of this results in higher costs to you.
• Use proofreaders’ notation. This has the advantage of removing any chance of error with regard to exactly what change is being requested. While there are dozens of notations, please see below for a list of those that you are mostly likely to need.
• For major text changes, such as rewriting a portion of text or expanding existing text, provide the designer with your rewrites electronically. This way, your new text can be copied and pasted into the layout thereby reducing time spent and potential errors that can result from keying in text or deciphering handwritten instructions.

Common proofreaders’ marks