Proofreaders/editors of DiS, unite!

We’re all about personifying pubs and clubs, sorry

The Diser’s Arms love putting on a party for you!

received an absolute humdinger of a letter from Glasgow City Council a few weeks ago about bins. Needed some serious investigation by the Plain English Police. Made no sense whatsoever. Will try to find it later and post a picture.

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*what are the question

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Thank GOD for this thread. That’s all I have to say.

Wait no, I have more to say.

Earlier this year I proofread my first book, for money. I had a great time doing it and I decided that that’s what I want to do with my life.

SO - if any of you know of anyone who needs any proofing/copy-editing… PM me?

Worth a shot isn’t it.

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These people are the bane of my fucking life.

Oxford commas are for incredibly needy people.

I’ll just leave this here:

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The thing is though it’s all actually fine and nobody minds.

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As a typist, one of my professional pet hates is when clients specify this. I’m probably a two-stop wanker about 20% of the time, but only for sweet, sweet cash.

I bet clients who need to actually specify something like this clearly give enough focus to what they’re actually saying.

Only if they’re needy for clarity and lack of ambiguity!

It’s just annoying more than anything else. We should have a language establishment like the French and be done with it. Standardise everything!

Surely it doesn’t matter because when it goes online the extra space gets ignored?

If current standards of web and print media are anything to go by, non existent.

I’m proof reading my own posts now, ffs.

Not EVERYTHING goes online, Theodosia.

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Don’t listen to Ruffers!

Here’s the suggested minimum rates for proofing and editing according the SFEP:

You could live very comfortably on that.

What people like Ruffers are forgetting is that very little of the work is for web and print media. Most of it’s for academic articles, medical journals, technical manuals and, yep, books. Standards are very high. Hence the need. Hence the viability of it as a career choice.

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I do the absolute vast majority of this sort of work via emails and apps like Evernote and so on, so don’t really need to live near a major city, at least for the kind of freelance things that I’m doing.

As for getting into it: I got my first proper proofreading “job” (it was unpaid) by just e-mailing a magazine and be like “Hey. You guys seriously need a proofreader. I can do it for you.” And then I was willing to do it for no money (got some free DVDs and stuff every now and again) because it was a film magazine and I was just beginning to write about films as well so it was a good gig for me.

I’ve gotten offered some other jobs as well by just contacting people. I e-mailed a publisher once and just asked them if they were looking for someone. But you’ll need to be willing to start doing it for maybe like student publications or something, for free, to get experience in order to get people to pay you for it further down the road.

Also I don’t know if I’d want to do it full time as you go a bit weird in the head from just staring at words and formatting all day.

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CTRL+H {dot two spaces} with {dot one space} then?

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Yeah, I got my first paid gig just by making it known to a few people that it was something I want to do. Then somebody I know was speaking to somebody who’s just written a book, and they recommended me as an editor.

Like with anything, you do have to be lucky, but you can make your own luck just by talking to people.

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