Earlier this year, I finally joined the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP). Although I have worked as both a translator and proofreader ever since my initial in-house training at a German translation agency, proofreading has often played second fiddle to translation in terms of professional development, so I wanted to focus some more of my attention on this aspect of my work. This month, I completed my first online training course with SfEP – Proofreading 1: Introduction. This post shares some reflections on my experience of the course for anyone else who is considering taking it.
I was initially uncertain which SfEP course to take. According to the website description, Proofreading 1 is “suitable for beginners contemplating a career as a proofreader”. Since I have been working as a proofreader for eight years already, I don’t exactly fit this description. However, my in-house training and experience were quite specific: primarily, I was proofreading business texts produced by non-native speakers. I have subsequently branched out into other areas (such as proofreading/editing academic proofs and papers, sometimes written by native speakers) in which I have adapted proofreading practices that were originally geared to quite a different context. Following discussion with other members on the SfEP forum, I decided that I wanted to build up from first principles so that I could be sure that I was correctly following standard practices.
As such, the Proofreading 1 course provided me with exactly what I needed. The course functions as follows: there are six separate stages (the right frame of mind, the proofreader’s world, proofreading on paper, proofreading PDFs, proof-editing in Word, exercises). Each stage is in turn divided into three parts: initial study notes for you to read containing detailed information about that area; proofreading exercises for you to complete based on these stages; and then model answers to the exercises that you can compare your own answers with. Your work is not assessed (so there is no pass or fail) but you are able to email a mentor to ask questions, and there is an interesting feature where you can read comments left by other people who have previously taken the course (and leave your own comments).
In my case, the main value of the course was that it allowed me to consolidate my existing skills and reassure myself that I was able to spot all the mistakes in the exercises, make the right kinds of changes, etc. Which is not to say I didn’t learn anything new. The course suggested some differences in emphasis from the proofreading we did in-house, which was primarily geared towards removing language mistakes made by non-native speakers: firstly, a greater focus on checking for mistakes in layout/setting (design and typography, “orphans” and “widows”, missing or misplaced visual elements), and, secondly, increased attention to the sense, rather than just the grammar, of texts (e.g. does the list contain as many elements as the text says it does? Has this item in a list been correctly categorised?).
It was also interesting to learn how to use the BSI proofreading symbols (in-house, we used a different set of marks), though I have not had call to proofread on paper for several years now, and to get a broader sense of the proofreading market. Perhaps most valuable of all was finally learning how to properly categorise an activity that I have been doing for years without quite knowing how to describe it: namely, “proof-editing” texts in Word (as opposed to in the final layout). This process, which is distinct from proofreading proper, is often what clients want when they request “proofreading”, and it was very helpful to read about what this distinction entails (even though this part of the course was somewhat underdeveloped compared with the rest).
Overall, I felt that the length, structure and content of the course were pitched very well. The interactive features (e-mentoring, comments) seemed well integrated, though I didn’t make much use of them. There was a suitably varied range of text and correction types in the exercises. However, I suspect that people entirely new to proofreading might be left a little frustrated or confused by certain aspects of the exercises (and some of the comments backed this suspicion up): the information in the study notes could in some cases be better tailored to the types of corrections that come up in the model answers, and these model answers could be more extensively annotated so that it is clear on what basis particular corrections have been made. It was also unfortunate that there were a small handful of errors/omissions in the model answers: not sufficiently serious to prevent the exercises from being valuable, but enough (especially in combination with the rather sparse annotation of the model answers) to confuse people without prior experience of proofreading. Some of these mistakes are documented in the comments (one reason that it is well worth reading them), and I am assured that they are going to be rectified in the exercises themselves at some point in the future.
Following the course, I do now feel more comfortable and confident in offering proofreading and proof-editing services. Now I just need to plan which training course I will be taking next …
As such, the Proofreading 1 course provided me with exactly what I needed. The course functions as follows: there are six separate stages (the right frame of mind, the proofreader’s world, proofreading on paper, proofreading PDFs, proof-editing in Word, exercises). Each stage is in turn divided into three parts: initial study notes for you to read containing detailed information about that area; proofreading exercises for you to complete based on these stages; and then model answers to the exercises that you can compare your own answers with. Your work is not assessed (so there is no pass or fail) but you are able to email a mentor to ask questions, and there is an interesting feature where you can read comments left by other people who have previously taken the course (and leave your own comments).
In my case, the main value of the course was that it allowed me to consolidate my existing skills and reassure myself that I was able to spot all the mistakes in the exercises, make the right kinds of changes, etc. Which is not to say I didn’t learn anything new. The course suggested some differences in emphasis from the proofreading we did in-house, which was primarily geared towards removing language mistakes made by non-native speakers: firstly, a greater focus on checking for mistakes in layout/setting (design and typography, “orphans” and “widows”, missing or misplaced visual elements), and, secondly, increased attention to the sense, rather than just the grammar, of texts (e.g. does the list contain as many elements as the text says it does? Has this item in a list been correctly categorised?).
It was also interesting to learn how to use the BSI proofreading symbols (in-house, we used a different set of marks), though I have not had call to proofread on paper for several years now, and to get a broader sense of the proofreading market. Perhaps most valuable of all was finally learning how to properly categorise an activity that I have been doing for years without quite knowing how to describe it: namely, “proof-editing” texts in Word (as opposed to in the final layout). This process, which is distinct from proofreading proper, is often what clients want when they request “proofreading”, and it was very helpful to read about what this distinction entails (even though this part of the course was somewhat underdeveloped compared with the rest).
Overall, I felt that the length, structure and content of the course were pitched very well. The interactive features (e-mentoring, comments) seemed well integrated, though I didn’t make much use of them. There was a suitably varied range of text and correction types in the exercises. However, I suspect that people entirely new to proofreading might be left a little frustrated or confused by certain aspects of the exercises (and some of the comments backed this suspicion up): the information in the study notes could in some cases be better tailored to the types of corrections that come up in the model answers, and these model answers could be more extensively annotated so that it is clear on what basis particular corrections have been made. It was also unfortunate that there were a small handful of errors/omissions in the model answers: not sufficiently serious to prevent the exercises from being valuable, but enough (especially in combination with the rather sparse annotation of the model answers) to confuse people without prior experience of proofreading. Some of these mistakes are documented in the comments (one reason that it is well worth reading them), and I am assured that they are going to be rectified in the exercises themselves at some point in the future.
Following the course, I do now feel more comfortable and confident in offering proofreading and proof-editing services. Now I just need to plan which training course I will be taking next …
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