In the autumn of last year, I completed the course Proofreading 1: Introduction offered by the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP). I blogged about the course here. I’ve now also completed (and passed) the SfEP’s second online proofreading course, Proofreading 2: Progress. In this post, I briefly describe the experience and what I learned.
Proofreading 2 is similarly structured to Proofreading 1, though longer: it is divided into nine different sections, each with study notes, a proofreading exercise and a model answer (except for the assessed exercises, on which more later). There were three main differences. Firstly, while the proofreading tasks in Proofreading 1 were closer to the types of text I normally work on, the tasks in Proofreading 2 were more unusual and challenging, such as comparing proofs against marked-up copy or checking that programming code had been transcribed with absolutely no errors. The one area that was rather more familiar was proofreading bibliographic references. Secondly, there was a much stronger emphasis on proofreading on paper using BSI marks. Again, this is something I don’t do in my normal work (though I have previous experience of marking on paper using a different set of symbols). I would definitely not have been able to manage this aspect of the course without having received a grounding in the use of the symbols in Proofreading 1.
On both these points, it was nice to be stretched and try out something new – and to reassure myself that I was able to cope with new types of proofreading task. In some cases, I deliberately limited how long I spent on the exercises so as to test my accuracy, and was pleased to find that I generally picked up everything on a single read-through (in real-world jobs, I generally do two read-throughs).
The third and most important difference is that, unlike Proofreading 1, Proofreading 2 is assessed. The first two exercises are checked to ascertain that the person taking the course is of a sufficiently high standard, while the final exercise determines whether they have passed the course overall. It was a considerable advantage to have this sort of direct feedback on my work, with more detailed explanations of better ways to correct certain errors and discussion of cases where the correct approach is not entirely black and white. I was also able to raise specific queries, to which I received helpful answers. I scored 90% on all three tests: funnily enough, I did particularly well on the use of the BSI symbols despite not having used them much before, but was less good at spotting “layout” errors such as alignment, spacing and “widows” (as mentioned in my previous post, such errors were emphasised less in my previous in-house proofreading training, so this is clearly an area I need to work on).
Having passed the course, I feel more confident in my abilities going forward, and also that I could tackle types of proofread that I don’t currently work on (even if, as the examiner acknowledged, proofreading against copy is increasingly rare these days). Passing the course also entitles me to register for mentoring with the SfEP, which could be a very useful next step in sharpening up my skills.
On both these points, it was nice to be stretched and try out something new – and to reassure myself that I was able to cope with new types of proofreading task. In some cases, I deliberately limited how long I spent on the exercises so as to test my accuracy, and was pleased to find that I generally picked up everything on a single read-through (in real-world jobs, I generally do two read-throughs).
The third and most important difference is that, unlike Proofreading 1, Proofreading 2 is assessed. The first two exercises are checked to ascertain that the person taking the course is of a sufficiently high standard, while the final exercise determines whether they have passed the course overall. It was a considerable advantage to have this sort of direct feedback on my work, with more detailed explanations of better ways to correct certain errors and discussion of cases where the correct approach is not entirely black and white. I was also able to raise specific queries, to which I received helpful answers. I scored 90% on all three tests: funnily enough, I did particularly well on the use of the BSI symbols despite not having used them much before, but was less good at spotting “layout” errors such as alignment, spacing and “widows” (as mentioned in my previous post, such errors were emphasised less in my previous in-house proofreading training, so this is clearly an area I need to work on).
Having passed the course, I feel more confident in my abilities going forward, and also that I could tackle types of proofread that I don’t currently work on (even if, as the examiner acknowledged, proofreading against copy is increasingly rare these days). Passing the course also entitles me to register for mentoring with the SfEP, which could be a very useful next step in sharpening up my skills.