 Proofreading is harder than it looks, and needed more than you think.Just a quick blog post to highlight two things The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course frequently strives to hammer home.
The image below illustrates both points very well.  Proofreading is harder than it looks...Some of you will have spotted the error immediately. Most of you, I imagine, took a little longer. Confession time: it took me a couple of minutes. Why? Because I immediately went searching in the small print and skimmed the heading. And why did I do that? Because it seems more likely that an error that had actually ‘gone to print’ is more likely to have ‘snuck through’ in a smaller point size. I also have a theory that spelling errors are more difficult to spot when a word is captialized. Further, I think this problem is exacerbated when the error is ‘concealed’ among similarly configured characters. Here, we have MULITIGRAIN, with the error hidden in this cluster: LITI. All those comparable bars and stems is a recipe for disaster. This is why, in The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course, I make a point of telling my readers never to criticize anyone for missing an error. Even other proofreaders. Especially other proofreaders. Because we all make mistakes. Or, in the case of proofreaders, we all miss mistakes. It happens. The proofreader (assuming there was one) who signed-off the artwork for this item of packaging will be kicking themselves and will doubtless be on the receiving end of a lot of criticism from their employer or client. In The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course, there’s a whole chapter dedicated to dealing with this kind of thing (Chapter Eleven: What to Do When It All Goes Horribly Wrong). One of the most important steps is letting your employer or client know what steps you’ll be taking to ensure his kind of thing doesn’t happen again. In the case of the MULITIGRAIN incident, there is one step the proofreader could have taken which would have dramatically highlighted the error. What is it? Use your ears. For as long as I’ve been proofreading (since 1989!) the notion that you should read the proof aloud has been common practice. Whilst this is very effective, and I strongly recommend doing it, it has one drawback. You are speaking aloud what your eyes are seeing. If your eyes don’t see the error, chances are you’ll simply say aloud a corrected version of the word or words. Thanks to modern technology, there’s a solution. Text to Speech. With free online software like Zamzar, it’s a cinch to convert a text, Word or even PDF file to MP3 format. Then you simply ‘listen to the text’. An error like ‘mulitigrain’ will jump right out at you. ...and needed more than you think.So, here’s a spelling error that can cause reputational damage and incur significant costs to put right and there isn’t a publisher or editor anywhere in sight. It’s on the packaging for a loaf of bread! So, who would be responsible for this? Well, a marketing and design agency is very likely to have been involved. That agency will have employed a graphic designer, possibly an artworker and a copywriter. They may have also employed the services of a proofreader. So, marketing and design agencies are a great source of work for a proofreader. It’s also possible that this piece of packaging was produced in-house. Which means the eagle-eye of a proofreader was required by a high-street retailer. This, my friends, is the motherlode of proofreading opportunities, the big wide world of ‘Everything That Isn’t Books’: brochures, catalogues, leaflets, flyers, manuals, reports, bids, prospectuses, websites, e-shots, social media campaigns… Proofreaders are required wherever the printed word (be it in ink or pixels) is used. When printing errors have the potential to cause significant reputational damage and incur big costs, that’s where proofreaders are needed. Many of these businesses will be very aware of their need for proofreaders. Many won’t. Your job is to reach out and educate these people… before it’s too late! Speak again soon, Mike If you think you've got what it takes to be a proofreader (of literary manuscripts or polythene packaging for baked goods), why not take a long, hard look at The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course? Click here for details.
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 Your Proofreading Business, SEO and Google.Your website is just the startIf you’ve been following my previous articles relating to the goal of becoming a self-employed proofreader, you’ll be aware that having your own website to present your proofreading business to the world involves more than simply creating a website. Building and promoting your site are pretty much covered in my previous articles, but this time, I thought I’d backtrack a little to explain the importance of Google and why you should try to stay in its good books. What is Google? Obviously, you know the answer to this one. Google is a search engine. But what does that mean? Well, it’s a piece of software that searches the internet in response to a query. So, if you google ‘proofreading courses’, Google will send its digital agents (sometimes called spiders) out into the internet looking for websites that match that query. But how does it know which websites to present first, which to present second, which to ignore entirely? When you key in a search query, the results are presented as a list, often referred to as SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), which are listed in decreasing importance in relation to the original search query. In other words, the websites that most accurately answer or explain the original search query are listed at the top of the SERPs. Pretty simple, huh? Well, the basic function of keying a search query and receiving a list of the most appropriate answers may be simple to understand, but how Google arrives at the most appropriate answers is wrapped up in its own algorithms that decide which pages are shown and in which order. Needless to say, those algorithms are a deeply guarded secret. It’s also worth remembering that the SERPs don’t represent Google customers. The person keying in a search query (Keywords) is their customer, and Google is trying to deliver the best results for that customer. In establishing yourself as a freelance proofreader, you obviously want to appear at the top of the SERPs (or as near as possible) whenever your target search phrase (Keyword) is keyed into Google Search, because in doing so, you’ll enjoy a steady flow of visitors to your website. Make no mistake though, appearing at the top of the SERPs for a given phrase or keyword is the holy grail and getting there takes time and effort. Why Should You please Google? Since appearing in 1997, Google has been hands-down the number one search engine globally. Excluding China, it dominates every metric of search with approximately 90% of the global market share in 2019. In short, Google doesn’t just lead search engine market share, it dominates it. Search Engine Global Market Share (approx.)
The bottom line is this: pleasing Google and playing by their rules isn’t an option, it’s a must if you want your business to succeed online. This last point is so important that if you take nothing else from this article, please understand this. Google & SEO So, you’re on board with the notion of pleasing Google, but how? By learning and applying the disciplines of SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and by applying the disciplines of SEO as a website owner, you are trying to increase the quantity and quality of search traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Central to achieving this is keeping Google’s search customers happy. SEO is where all of the jigsaw pieces of Google’s algorithm come together and are presented in the form of a list of websites (SERPs). In order for Google to compile those website lists, they’ve crawled the pages of those sites and ranked them in terms of their SEO qualities. On-site SEO to improve your search engine visibility In creating your website, its primary goal is to attract visitors from your target audience, but to begin with, your target audience are first and foremost Google’s customers. And before they present your website to their customers, they’re going to make damn sure that your site completely satisfies the needs of their search customers before presenting your site to them. Google: The Dos & Don’ts… The Dos:
Some technical Dos…
Off-site SEO Off-site SEO focuses on your site’s external perception in terms of search engines and users, and more specifically the quality and reputation of links form other sites. Inbound links from other websites are good, but links from relevant and reputable sites are even better. EAT: An acronym for Expert, Authoritative, and Trustworthy If you manage to get inbound links from an expert, authoritative, and trustworthy site that also includes your target search phrase in the anchor text, then… well, it just doesn’t get better than that! Don’t rule out links from social… Google has flip-flopped on the relevance of inbound social media links, going from a big thumbs up with the rise in popularity of social platforms, to more recently suggesting that social media links don’t affect search rankings. Whilst inbound social links may not currently add weight to your site, they can still boost your traffic and spread awareness of your services. The Don’ts…
Hard as it is to believe, Google really does want your website to succeed and to appear at the top of SERPs just as much as you do, because in doing so, you’ll be providing a brilliant visitor experience and you’ll be providing their customers (the searchers!) with the most relevant and valuable experience for the search phrase they’re looking for! To make that happen, Google have created all the tools and resources you’ll need to achieve that and they’re readily available… for FREE! Google Search Console, and why you need it About Search Console
Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results. You don't have to sign up for Search Console to be included in Google Search results, but Search Console helps you understand and improve how Google sees your site’ Sign up for ‘Google Search Console’ here… If you’re new to SEO or just downright terrified of the subject, MOZ(.com) is a great place to start your SEO journey. You can find their brilliant ‘Beginner’s Guide to SEO’ here… Put ‘Understanding SEO and pleasing Google’ at the top of your To-Do List and you’ll be the owner of a successful proofreading business to be proud of. Bye for now. Jeff Full disclosure & disclaimer… Mike and I are not affiliated in any way to any sites listed above. This information is presented without condition or for personal profit in the hope that, having bought The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course you can make money proofreading without delay.  A proofreader's guide to the Oxford commaWell, this is going to be a short blog post. What? A short blog post about the Oxford comma? Yes. The same Oxford comma that has had grammarians at each other’s throats for decades? Yes. The Oxford comma Horace Hart introduced during his time as printer and controller of Oxford University Press from 1893 to 1915? Yes, that Oxford comma. The same Oxford comma that was identified and named by Peter Sutcliff in his 1978 book about the Oxford University Press? Yes. The same Oxford comma that Sutcliff attributed to F. Howard Collins, who wrote about it in his seminal work ‘Author & Printer: A Guide for Authors, Editors, Printers, Correctors of the Press, Compositors, and Typists’? Yep. That one. A short blog post? About the Oxford comma? Yes, yes and thrice yes. Here we go. As we discussed in our earlier post 'A Proofreader's Guide to Grammar' (you can read it by clicking here), as a proofreader, your job is identify errors and not enter heated debates about ‘good, better, best’ issues of literacy. The use of an Oxford comma (sometimes called a Harvard comma or serial comma) is largely a matter of opinion and taste. Some people just like the Oxford comma. Just like some people love olives and some people think those pungent little blobs of stone-concealing disgustingness belong in the garbage. So, if the person who’s document your proofreading likes and uses the Oxford comma, that really is the end of the matter. If the style guide created or used by the publisher or company you’re proofreading for favours the Oxford comma then, again, that really is the end of the matter. The Oxford comma is in and the Oxford comma remains. Likewise, if an author, publisher company do not favour the Oxford comma or employ a style guide that doesn’t favour the Oxford comma (e.g. The Associated Press Stylebook), then the Oxford comma is a no-no. It doesn’t matter how much you love or loathe the Oxford comma. It’s not your call. Sorry. It’s a mean ole world. But there are exceptions. There are – as far as I know – no situations where an Oxford comma has caused a grammatical or semantical problem. Opposition to the Oxford comma is largely based upon its inelegance. It can be seen as visually cluttering a sentence. But – as the Dude once said – well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man. There are, however, occasions when the lack of an Oxford comma can be problematic. When an Oxford Comma can be Problematic EXAMPLE: Opponents of the Oxford comma might suggest restructuring the sentence to avoid the need for an Oxford comma, at all:
My wife and I were sat in the hospital waiting room for three hours with a drunk and a drug addict. But it’s really a matter of opinion. And that's it: a proofreader's guide to the Oxford comma. I told you it wouldn't take long.  What is Legal Proofreading?I’ve been asked this question a lot over the last 12 months. This question and several variants thereon. What is a legal proofreader? Does your proofreading course teach how to be a legal proofreader? Does you proofreading course teach how to read court transcripts? Are legal proofreading courses worth the high price tag? So, what is Legal Proofreading?Well, first of all, let’s be clear: it isn’t the opposite of illegal proofreading. So far as I’m aware, there is no situation in which someone might be told, “Put down the red pen, punk! You’re going to be doing all your proofreading in the state penitentiary from now on.” I could be wrong, but nothing springs to mind. I’ll be honest with you, when people first started asking me these questions, I had no idea what a legal proofreader was or what legal proofreading entailed. So, I did a bit of research. Which is to say, I Googled it. "What is a legal proofreader?" All I got was a handful of results telling me I could make $$$s as a legal proofreader or court transcript proofreader. I then turned to Google once more. "Court transcript proofreading jobs." This time nothing. Quite a lot of insurance transcript proofreading opportunities popped up (and that might be the subject of a future blog post), but nothing for court transcript proofreaders. Now, I’ll admit, I only did a quick toe-in-the-water search, so I’m not saying for a moment that those jobs don’t exist. I’m sure they do. So, thanks very much Google but it looks like I’m going to have to take my search offline. When is a legal proofreader not a legal proofreader? I asked a few proofreading colleagues and a friend of mine who happens to be a solicitor and lecturer in Law. Turns out, there’s no such thing as a Legal Proofreader. But there are people who proofread legal documents. There are people who proofread court transcripts, people who proofread legal journals and people who proofread books on the subject of the Law. But wouldn’t you call a person who proofreads legal documents a Legal Proofreader? I suppose you could. It wouldn’t hurt. But that would make me a Construction Proofreader. Hang on, Mike. We haven’t got to the bottom of what a Legal Proofreader is and now you’re telling us there are Construction Proofreaders? Actually, what I’m saying is there’s no such thing as a Construction Proofreader in much the same way there is no such thing as a Legal Proofreader, but in both cases these terms could be loosely applied. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking Is this a Matrix thing? No. Prepare to not have your mind blown. Over the last several years, I have proofread heaps of documents for the construction industry. I’ve proofread case studies detailing various construction projects, from luxurious residential high-rises to schools, universities and laboratories. I’ve proofread technical documents for a whole host of construction materials, including acoustic insulation, fire-resistant building boards and thermal bridging barriers. I’ve proofread brochures, adverts, press releases and every other type of marketing collateral you can think of to promote construction products, systems and brands. Here’s an example of the kind of thing I’ve proofread: Technical Data It’s not for the fainthearted and having an understanding of construction terminology, building regulations, material-testing standards etc is a huge advantage. Because I have this knowledge (gained through experience, not qualification) I could refer to myself as a Construction Proofreader. But let’s be absolutely clear, the ‘construction’ and ‘proofreading’ skill sets are completely discrete from one another. At no point am I ‘construction proofreading’ a technical document. I am proofreading whilst simultaneously calling upon my knowledge of the construction industry. Likewise, the ‘legal’ and ‘proofreading’ skill sets are completely discrete from one another. If you are proofreading a court transcript, you will be using your proofreading skill set and your understanding of the formatting, content and purpose of court transcripts. Now, if you want to call that person a Legal Proofreader, go ahead. That’s fine. Me? I’d call a person who proofreads legal documents a ‘proofreader’. I’d call a person who proofreads construction documents a ‘proofreader’. I’d call a person with a PhD in Botany proofreading a dissertation about ‘Epigenetics and Polycomb Regulation in Plants’ a ‘proofreader’. The benefits of additional skill setsPossessing secondary (or in many cases primary) skill sets opens up opportunities for you to proofread in areas that might be out of reach otherwise. If you have a background in education, you’re more likely to be given an opportunity to proofread a University Prospectus. If you previously worked as an accountant, you’re more likely to be given the opportunity to proofread a company’s end-of-year report. But at no point do you need to learn:
You need to learn to proofread. You can then call upon your additional experience and knowledge to give you better access to these additional proofreading opportunities. If you don’t have the necessary experience of knowledge, you should seek it entirely separately from the proofreading aspect. Take court transcript training course if you want to proofread court transcripts. Now if you only want to proofread court transcripts and you’ve found a course which is more cost-effective than taking both, then go for it. My advice? Learn to proofread first, then specialise. For one thing, there are lots of opportunities for proofreaders which don’t require much in the way of specialist knowledge, and those markets open up to you the moment you’ve learned to proofread. With no knowledge or experience beyond that of a proofreader, I’ve undertaken proofreading work for IT businesses, online lingerie sellers, opticians, beauticians, dentists, solicitors (yep, without Legal Proofreader status), accountancy firms, charities, timber merchants, carpet manufacturers… Better, I would say, to be a busy proofreader who proofreads a wide range of materials – including legal documents or scientific dissertations or construction-product datasheets – than a proofreader who is limited to particular document types or sources of work. Legal proofreading, in summary So, in summary, what is a legal proofreader (or a court proofreader or transcript proofreader)? Well it’s a proofreader who proofreads legal documents or court transcripts. But, first and foremost, that person is a proofreader.
 Promote your proofreading website: write, post and blog like crazy!Finally, we’ve reached Step 4 of our ‘Where to Start’ list I set out in my earlier article (here…), and if you’ve stuck with me this far, this should be a perfect summary of where you’re up to:
The essence of this article is to write, post and blog like crazy. But where specifically? Before we get started, lets call this activity for what it is… Marketing! Yep, marketing. “But I’m not a marketer!” I hear you cry. It’s a fair comment, and in the No-Nonsense Proofreading Course, Mike has a chapter called: ‘WHAT A PROOFREADER DOES AND DOESN’T DO’ and, to be fair, marketing isn’t listed as a requirement. Hopefully, this won’t come as an uncomfortable truth, but in order to become a self-employed proofreader, you’ve got to become an effective marketer because ultimately, if your customers or prospective employers don't know you exist, you won't get any proofreading work, regardless of how good you are. However, having worked your way through the previous three steps of my ‘Where to Start’ list, the building blocks will all be in place and you should already be well armed with much of the information you need to start confidently marketing (promoting) your proofreading business. If you remember, in Step 2 (here…), I asked you to take a pause before jumping in and ‘signing up with every online freelance proofreading marketplace you can find’ to focus on creating your personal profile. If you did that recommendation justice, you’ll have a fantastic resource to dip into for your self-promotion efforts. Having done that, you should have variants of your personal profile depending on which freelance proofreader website or which social media platforms you chose to sign up with. Thankfully, much of what you’ve done already from Step 1 to Step 3 can be considered marketing or self-promotion in one form or another, and all you have to do now is ramp up your efforts. Your Proofreading Business Website and Linking… This is primarily where your best work will be displayed and should form the central pillar of your promotional (content marketing) strategy. Searching on the internet is one thing, but being found is another thing entirely, especially if your business is in a competitive niche. The following suggestions will definitely raise the profile of your proofreading business and should ensure that your website is better placed than most when a proofreader is needed. When you post and share articles on your blog, they really should be your best work. Any article you write should always be high quality, relevant and be of great value to the reader. If your articles tick these boxes, they are much more likely to be shared. Whilst I’m talking about sharing, it should go without saying, that your own blog posts should have social share buttons featured conveniently at the end of your articles.  Re-write your blog articles and post them on external article or Q&A sites such as Medium (.com), Quora (.com) and Reddit (.com) to name just a few. These sites have very good authority and receive plenty of traffic, but when posting here, really do include value to your articles, especially on Quora where visitors are looking for genuine solutions, not spammy nonsense!
Still include backlinks to your blog or specific landing page, even though some sites (Quora) are ‘nofollow’ for backlinks. If readers really do like the content that you’re referencing in your article/answers, they may use that (‘nofollow’) link in their own blog post or mention it online on some other platform (which could have ‘dofollow’ links), meaning you could actually generate new ‘dofollow’ links simply by placing your links in all of the articles/answers you post. Be careful! If you fall into the trap of over-stuffing your articles with keywords and backlinks, your efforts will completely bomb. Content marketing isn’t a quick win strategy, nor should it be. The aim of the game is quality, relevance and authority. Building a quality blog in your proofreading niche will help to drive traffic by piquing the interest of Google in whose eyes you will be positioning yourself as an authority and publisher of quality and relevant proofreading information. By becoming an authority in your industry, you'll attract the attention of consumers and business owners alike, which will only be good for your proofreading business. On the subject of backlinks in general, whenever you write a post or comment, you should try to include links back to a corresponding page or post on your website. Be aware that not everyone will allow you to include a ‘dofollow’ link back to your own website, but do it anyway, as a great many will. Posting articles elsewhere… Social sites: A really good tip I picked up some time ago was that on each and every social site that you choose to promote your proofreading business, head straight to the ‘Privacy & Settings’ section and turn off any option that allows any ‘Viewer of this profile also viewed’ feature or similar. Why? Because you want your profile/page to focus on you. If you don’t turn this feature off, your page, depending on the platform, may well display any competing business or potential employer who’s looked you up or is following you! This is especially true of LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn to connect with LinkedIn groups which are a great way for quickly connecting with others in your industry or niche to start laying the groundwork for your efforts in establishing yourself as an authority. LinkedIn is an ideal platform to promote your content as long as your articles once again tick all of the quality boxes. Conclusion This strategy is the basis of content marketing and in this instance, your website should be the primary source of all of your best work. Over time, your articles will provide you with a legitimate and related destination to direct people to, when you respond to answers (or post your own questions) on external article or Q&A sites, without appearing spammy. Coming soon… Your Proofreading Business Website, SEO and Google Bye for now. Jeff Full disclosure & disclaimer… Mike and I are not affiliated in any way to the social media, article or Q&A sites listed above. This information is presented without condition or for personal profit in the hope that, having bought The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course you can make money proofreading without delay.  How to proofread a websiteAs The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course makes clear, not all proofreading takes place in publishing houses. It’s not all literature and manuscripts. Anywhere words are being produced for human consumption, there will be a need for proofreaders.
And nowhere are there more words being produced for human consumption than on the internet. If you were to print out all of the internet’s web pages as if they were the pages of a book, it would be (according to a 2015 report) 300 billion pages long. That’s 305,500,000,000 pages, the equivalent of 212 million copies of ‘War and Peace’. Obviously, most of those pages are about cats, Harry Potter and naked people (not at the same time), but a large proportion are business websites. In many cases, this will be the only means a company has to communicate with its audience of potential customers. Not all businesses can afford to advertise in magazines or send out glossy brochures. Online real estate offers great value for money. But where there are words, there are errors. And for any business an error can range from an embarrassing faux pas to a financially damaging catastrophe. Which is where you step in, to shield businesses from embarrassing faux pas and financially damaging catastrophes. Like Captain America, but with a dictionary instead of a shield. So, someone asks you to proofread their website. What do you do? The first thing you do is say, “Sorry, no, I don’t proofread websites.” Okay, don’t actually say that, but let your client know (as politely possible) that you don’t proofread ‘websites’, you proofread ‘website content’. Proofreading a website is a potential nightmare. It isn’t like proofreading a document or a manuscript or a piece of print-ready artwork. Why? Because it isn’t linear. You don’t start at the front cover, tackle the front matter, then work your way through in page order. A website is more like… well, a web. Not that any self-respecting spider would appreciate the comparison. Spiderwebs are neat, geometrical things. Websites are, frankly, a mess. In theory, you could start on the home page and work your way through the main navigation. But not all pages are accessible through the main navigation. What about all those links at the bottom of many websites? Terms and Conditions, Refund Policy, those things? What about all the pages that can only be found through links within the content of other web pages? How do you begin to identify and read those? Well, there is a way, but we’ll deal with that later. For now, we’re going down the ‘website content’ route. You need to ask your client to provide you with the content that they want you to read. This can be in the form of Word documents or PDFs. If they’re in the process of creating a website, this is easy. They’ll likely produce the content in that form anyway prior to uploading it. Once you’re in possession of these documents, print them out. As The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course insists time and again: ALWAYS READ FROM A HARD COPY. NEVER FROM THE SCREEN. Once you’ve sent your corrections to your client, they can correct them and upload them or (if the content is already live) make the necessary amendments themselves or have their web developer do it. But what if my client isn’t very tech-savvy and wants me to “just proofread the website”? It’s not ideal, but it’s also not the end of the world. Avoid this situation if you can, but if you need the work and this is the only way the client wants to play it, follow the process outlined below. Firstly, you’re going to need to identify all the web pages that need to be checked. There are probably a number of ways of doing this, but I’m going to cover two. These are the two I use. Yes, even I get pain-in-the-backside customers who say, “Can’t you just check it on your laptop?” Get hold of the website’s sitemap. If it has one. Many sites do. Not all. Not even most. But plenty. To find a website’s sitemap, go to the site’s home page then, in the address bar, at the end of the site’s URL add “/sitemap” or “/sitemap.xml”. This should bring up a page showing every page that exists for that site. Here’s an example: You’ve been asked to proofread the website for a guy who’s famous for eating crockery. He’s a big deal on YouTube. His website address (or URL) is www.ieatcrockery.com. So, go to his website and add the suffices I mentioned earlier: www.ieatcrockery.com/sitemap or www.ieatcrockery.com/sitemap.xml Hopefully one of these will present you with a comprehensive list of every web page on the site. But what to do about websites that don’t have a site map? Well, you could ask your client to generate one. There are websites and applications that can do this. If your client is using the WordPress content management system, then they can install, activate and use a simple plugin. Alternatively, you can use something like XML-Sitemaps.com to generate sitemap. Another method is to use Google Analytics (or to ask your client to do so). They can go to the ‘Behaviour’ section, then ‘Site Content’ and finally ‘All Pages’. If they set the date parameters for the last 12 months, this will give you a list of all the active pages on the site. The data can be downloaded as a CSV document which can be opened in Excel or most other spreadsheet applications, or it can be downloaded as a PDF. Either way, you are presented with a comprehensive list of web pages. So, now you know what pages the site is comprised of, you can begin to harvest the content. The easiest way to do this is to ‘print’ the web page. This can just be a simple case of hitting ‘Control P’, selecting ‘Destination’ as ‘Save as PDF’ and job done. Depending on the size of the website, within a few minutes (hours, days, weeks…) you’ll have a folder full of web pages ready to proofread. But not all websites will allow you to print their content and some web pages are formatted in such a way that the content won’t fit onto a single page and remain at a size that is legible. What if a website's content is protected? It’s time to start swiping. You need to go into each page and swipe the content, then paste it into a Word document or similar. Now, this can get messy. Swiping and copying text on a website is not like swiping and copying text in a word document. It’s probably closer to swiping and copying text from a PDF. You can find yourself picking up text from an adjacent paragraph or from a caption. When you’re selecting your text, you might (actually you almost certainly will) click on a link and find yourself on an entirely different web page. It’s frustrating. It’s long-winded. But it’s necessary. It’s vital that you shepherd your content from the virtual world of the internet to a format that can be printed out as a hard copy. Because – sorry, I know I keep going on and on about this – ALWAYS PROOFREAD FROM A HARD COPY. NEVER FROM THE SCREEN. Now, some websites can’t be copied and pasted; there are content-protection measures that prevent it. What then? Well, if your client (or potential client) can’t give you the content in another form, I’d strongly recommend a hard pass. The only exception I’d make is if the website is very light on content with a simple layout. Proofreading a website: summary
If you have any questions, please feel free to send them via our contact form.  Use social media to promote your proofreading business.Here at The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course, our aim is not only to show you how to become a proofreader, it is to show you precisely how you can make money proofreading. Depending on your goals and commitment, proofreading can become your sole source of income or it can be a lucrative side-hustle.
Let’s have a recap on where we’re up to:
In this article, I’ll address Step 3 from our Where to Start list of steps that will give you concrete solutions on your journey to creating your own successful proofreading business. OK. Here we go. Step 3. Sign-up with every appropriate social media channel you can find. The way to get this right, is to only sign-up with the most appropriate social media channels for what you’re trying to achieve. So, if you’re trying to promote your online proofreading business, there are clearly going to be social media channels that are more suitable for you to have a presence on than others. Put another way, don’t think that you’ve got to sign up with every social media site, regardless of the number of people on them! That’s not to say that you shouldn’t have a presence on multiple, or all social media sites if they have an appropriate audience, but do try to be selective. Take for example Tik Tok. It allows its users to create their own short video clips and then share them. Despite having an impressive 1.2 billion users worldwide (and counting), it’s highly unlikely that these same users are going to respond well to your proofreading business, even if you’ve gone to the trouble of making a cool short video! The point is, your target audience is much more likely to have a presence on other social media platforms. The 16 most popular social networks worldwide*
This list may well represent some of the most popular social media platforms, and the ones to promote your proofreading business are definitely amongst them, but going back to that word ‘appropriate’ many of these platforms will have little impact on your business, as their popular user bases are unlikely to be your target demographic, unless of course you’re looking to promote your proofreading business in China or to Gen Z! (it’s okay, I had to look that up too!) So how do I know where to promote my proofreading business? Like I said, not all social media platforms are going to be appropriate or lend themselves to promoting your proofreading business, but let's take a brief look some that could. The biggest and most far-reaching social media platform of them all. First things first: Create a business page. For a professional Facebook presence, you should have a separate business page from your personal page for your proofreading business. Use the many settings options to include as much information about your business as possible, especially important is your contact information. With an active user base of over 2.4 billion, you shouldn't have any trouble getting a 'like' or a 'follow' from your posts. Always try to be engaging and helpful when you post, remember that social media is all about building relationships and not all about selling. LinkedIn: Maybe not the biggest, but LinkedIn is all about business promotion, recruitment and networking, and having a LinkedIn profile could definitely benefit your proofreading business. Above all else, LinkedIn is an environment where aspiring business professionals and potential business partners go to build their client base and their peer to peer network. It's the perfect showcase for your proofreading skills and services. You should consider creating a LinkedIn company page for your proofreading business. You can set up a business page and as you complete the Résumé section of your personal LinkedIn profile, your company page will be automatically linked to the Résumé in your profile. With your profile set, you can start actively marketing yourself and your business to other LinkedIn members because in all honesty, that’s what they’re expecting (unlike Facebook). Twitter: According to Twitter ‘It all starts with a Tweet’. Twitter is a microblogging and social networking platform where users post (Tweet) messages (of up to 280 characters), videos or both, and it has the potential to drive thousands of targeted customers to your proofreading business. You can also ‘Follow’ people or organisations that you hope to work with and be alerted every time they Tweet. Equally, your own followers are alerted when you Tweet too. Despite having an active user base seven times smaller than Facebook, Twitter punches well above its weight in terms of public exposure, not least because it’s the go-to place for every news service in the world who are all monitoring Twitter for trending and viral tweets that have breaking news potential. As with all of the other social media platforms, getting your settings and profile right will pay huge dividends, and once again as with the other platforms, your posts should be engaging, helpful and worthy of a like, retweet or fingers crossed, five minutes of fame with a viral post. YouTube: Maybe not the most obvious channel to promote your proofreading business, but a great asset is your own YouTube channel. Once you remind yourself that a big goal of using social media is to be interesting, engaging and helpful, it shouldn’t take much to get you inspired. It wouldn't be difficult to create a compilation of videos or slideshows of the most common grammatical errors that a proofreader encounters. YouTube is also a valuable source of backlinks to your proofreading website, never post a video without including Google-loving links back to your site! To conclude, choose the social media platforms that have a natural fit with your business and your message, and whichever ones you do sign up with to promote your proofreading business, remember to link them to the social buttons on your own website! As ever, the choice is yours but go ahead and get stuck in, you won’t regret it, and once you do, you’ll be the proud owner of a successful proofreading business much sooner than you think. Coming soon… Step 4. Write, post and blog like crazy! (and the best places to do it!) Bye for now. Jeff Full disclosure & disclaimer… Mike and I are not affiliated in any way to the social media sites listed above, other than to have our own business pages on some of platforms listed. This information is presented without condition or for personal profit in the hope that, having bought The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course you can make money proofreading without delay. *The 16 most popular social networks worldwide as of October 2019 as compiled by Statista  A short proofreading exercise.This week, I’ve put together a little proofreading exercise for you. It’s a very brief summary of the early years of William Blake’s life. Set your beady eyes to work and see if you can spot the errors and issues. As with all proofreading activities, I strongly recommend you print this out and read from a hard copy. You can just cut and paste the paragraphs below into your word-processing application. William Blake was born in 1757 in Soho, London. In 1772, he became an apprentice engraver under the tutelage of James Basire. At the end of this seven-year apprenticeship, Blake became a student at the Royal Academy, where he studied for six years. During this time, he became friends with the artists John Flaxman, Thomas Stothard and George Cumberland, and married Catherine Boucher. There are only two errors here.
Well done if you spotted both errors. See you next time. Mike  It's Time to Get Your Proofreading Business Online and Start Making Money: Create a Website! Our aim is to help you make money proofreading.
Let’s have a recap on where we’re up to…
Okay, this is Step 2 of our Where to Start list of steps that will give you concrete solutions on your journey to creating your own successful proofreading business. So, why create a website for your proofreading business? As I mentioned in my initial post (here if you want to refresh your memory…) the obvious benefit of having your own website is that you’re in complete control of how you communicate with your target audience to sell your products or proofreading services. Your own website is a shop window to an ever-expanding online community, which also happens to include the very people you want to advertise your services to. Consider this: when was the last time you leafed through a printed copy of the Yellow Pages? No, I can’t remember either. The fact is, almost all searches are conducted online, and if you don’t have an online presence, all of your efforts to become a proofreader will be wasted. Just some of the reasons why you should create your own website:
Despite these obvious benefits of having your own website, I also understand why many people avoid doing so. It’s all too easy to feel overwhelmed at the prospect of learning yet another new discipline, especially if you’re fresh from working your way through The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course. And hiring a professional can be just as daunting and expensive. The key is to do some research and break the process down into manageable steps. If you stick around, that’s exactly what I’ll try to do. Hopefully you’re now fully on board with the idea that in order to take your new proofreading business forward, you really should have your own website, so let’s start with the most cost-effective route to making this a reality: Free web hosting and free website builders Yes, they do exist, and they’re an excellent place to start if this is your first foray into setting up a website. Most of these free website builders offer a range of solutions that provide template-driven designs and drag and drop designs that make the process pretty straightforward. Below is a list of fourteen popular free website builders which include free web hosting. (They’re all .com if you’re copy and pasting.)
As ever, before you jump in, let me make a couple of things clear from the outset. Whilst all of these website creation options offer ‘free’ web hosting and in most cases ‘free’ site builders, not all of these options may be acceptable to you for your first proofreading business website. For example, just about all of the free options are indeed ‘free’ in than you won’t part with a single penny but the name of the website host will remain in your website title. Using Wix.com as an example, you may want to call your site ‘abc-proofreader.com’ but a ‘free’ website set-up with Wix.com would become ‘abc-proofreader.wixsite.com’. I fully understand that this may not be acceptable for many people, especially if you’re trying to convey a professional persona, but if this is your first exposure to website creation, this is without doubt a fantastic opportunity to experiment on someone else’s dime. Whichever site you choose from the list above, you’ll find all of them provide templates or themes in one form or another to help you with your design choices. Going back to Wix.com as a further example, they offer a superb automated set-up assistant called Wix ADI, which actually creates a site for you based on a series of questions and answers that you’re guided through in the setup. Whilst I’ve referred to Wix in my examples, please go ahead and take a look at all of the sites I’ve listed, as you’ll only find one you’re comfortable with by signing up and trying them out. It’s also worth keeping in mind, that having set up your proofreading website with any or all of the free website builders listed, you’re not obliged to publish or make them live, until you’re good and ready to do so. Once you get to the stage where you’ve got your site set up and designed to your liking, you can go ahead and publish it (for free!). If, however, having the webhost's name visible in your domain name bothers you, you can very easily upgrade to a paid plan with all of these free website providers. In doing so, you will remove the name of the host from your website title. In the case of Wix.com, upgrading to a paid plan, for a small monthly premium, allows you to add your own domain name, thereby removing ‘wixsite’ from your site name and giving you the desired professional look for your proofreading business. This principle of having the webhosts name visible in the website url is more or less universal amongst all webhosts offering ‘free website creation’ but can almost always be dropped by upgrading to their paid plans. In fact, I’m happy to reveal that this was the very evolution of this website https://www.proofreading-course.com/ It started life as a free website on Weebly, and was upgraded to a paid plan at a later date and remains a Weebly powered site today. The bottom line is that you can have a very professional website to promote your proofreading business for absolutely no cost whatsoever. And all of the free website builders listed above are very scalable too once your proofreading business grows, and most are very intuitive and easy to use even for beginners. Finally, a little bit about WordPress… I may have placed it at the bottom of the list above, and mentioning it at the end of this article, but WordPress is by no means a last choice, far from it. Of the entire internet, WordPress powers over a third of it, with approximately 455,000,000 websites built on a WordPress platform right now. Don’t be fooled in to thinking that it’s just a blogging platform because that would be to overlook one of the best website builders out there, and they too have both free and paid plans. Having created websites with WordPress, Shopify and Weebly my own preference is WordPress without a doubt. However, depending on how much functionality you want on your website, it’s probably fair to say that you’ll have a steeper learning curve with WordPress if you’re a beginner. As ever, the choice is yours but go ahead and get stuck in, you won’t regret it, and once you do, you’ll be the proud owner of a proofreading business website much sooner than you think. Coming soon… Step 3. Sign up with every appropriate social media channel. Bye for now. Jeff Full disclosure & disclaimer… Mike and I are not affiliated in any way with the free website building sites listed above, though we do have first-hand knowledge of Weebly, Shopify & WordPress. This information is presented without condition or for personal profit in the hope that, having bought The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course you can make money proofreading without delay.  A Proofreader’s Guide to the Semicolon Last week we looked at precisely what I meant by ‘a proofreader’s perspective’ on grammar. You can read that post here. If time’s a little tight, here’s the ‘nutshell’ version. A proofreader should only concern themselves with the correct/incorrect uses of grammar, language and punctuation. You are not trying to improve a piece of writing – that would be an editor’s task – you are there to highlight errors and give instructions as to how they should be corrected. We’re looking at the semicolon today. We’re going to be considering it objectively. Wrong and right. If we were to bring our subjective opinion to bear on a piece of writing containing a semicolon, we could find ourselves in the middle of a heated debate that’s been raging for decades. For example, this is what the great novelist Kurt Vonnegut had to say about semicolons in his 2005 memoir ‘A Man Without a Country’: “Here is a lesson in creative writing. The first rule: do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” The crime writer Donald Westlake (who, under the pseudonym Richard Stark, penned the incomparable ‘Parker’ novels) is a keen advocate of the semicolon. However, in defending his use of the semicolon in ‘The Man with the Getaway Face’, he acknowledges that its use is more as a stylistic device than as a grammatical necessity. In response to an editor removing the semicolon from a sentence, he says, “Breaking the offending sentence into two sentences is grammatically correct but… rhythmically wrong.”
Two exceptional writers. Two completely different views on the value of the semicolon. If, as a proofreader, you get yourself in the middle of that little debate, you’re going to lose a lot of valuable proofreading time! So, we’re going to be looking at how to spot:
Let’s start with the first of those: the inaccurately employed semicolon. Before we can do that, we need to be clear about the purpose and ‘correct’ use of the semicolon. A semicolon is used to connect two related but independent clauses. In other words, two clauses that can stand alone, separated by a period but that are so closely related there’s an almost intuitive urge to reduce the length of the pause between them. Examples of Semicolon Usage I hate ice cream. It makes my brain hurt. I hate ice cream; it makes my brain hurt. Both of the above are correct. There is an argument to be had about which is better, but that’s someone else’s problem. The following, however, is incorrect: I hate ice cream; because it makes my brain hurt. The use of a conjunction and a semicolon is plain wrong. Put your red pen to work. There is no debate to be had. If you see a semicolon immediately followed by and, but, or, nor, for, so or yet, it's wrong. The following is also incorrect: I hate ice cream; elephants are my favourite mammal. There is no connection at all between these two clauses, beyond the notion of likes and dislikes. That being said, if this is a work of fiction and the writer is trying to demonstrate the character’s terrible concentration span, it might actually be a very effective device! This is why proofreading fiction or, worse, poetry can be a bit of a nightmare. The following is… debatable: I hate ice cream; my favourite food is bananas. In this case, I would argue the two clauses are not closely enough related to warrant a semicolon. The writer might argue otherwise (she’s talking about food likes and dislikes). In this case, we move on. There’s no error here (no conjunction for example) and the clauses are sort of related. It’s for the writer and editor to fight this one out. Now let’s look at where the absence of a semicolon can be problematic. We’re talking about lists here. Or, more to the point, lists which containing additional information that requires the use of a comma. Examples of Semicolon Usage in Lists My favourite writers are Alan Moore, the author of the Swamp Thing comics and the novels Voice of the Fire and Jerusalem, Stephen King, whose written too many books to mention and William Blake, English poet, painter, engraver and visionary. Now, this sentence can be read and easily understood but it’s grammatically problematic. It should read: My favourite writers are Alan Moore, the author of the Swamp Thing comics and the novels Voice of the Fire and Jerusalem; Stephen King, whose written too many books to mention; and William Blake, English poet, painter, engraver and visionary. In other words, if we’re listing things and at the same time using commas to insert additional information, the semicolon comes into play as a kind of ‘super-comma’. Also, it’s worth noting that when being employed as a super-comma, the semicolon can precede a conjunction. Another example J.K. Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter Farewell Tour’ will visit the following cities: Louisville, Kentucky; Huntsville, Alabama; Columbia, South Carolina; Wilmington, North Carolina; and Atlanta, Georgia. Takeaway As a proofreader, you will need to make for deletion:
You will need to add a semicolon:
And that’s it, other than to say: I’m not a fan of semicolons; they’re a pain the backside. See you next time. If you liked this article, please share! |
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