What proofreading is

Proofreading helps to ensure that a text is ready for its intended audience. You can think of it as the final quality check.

Because proofreading happens near the end of the publication process, I am usually looking for remaining errors that must be corrected. These could include:

• spelling errors
• errors of punctuation, especially where they allow ambiguity or obscure the meaning
• inconsistently spelt or hyphenated names
• incorrect text headings (checked against the contents list if there is one)
• incorrect page numbers and cross-references
• missing text
• repeated text
• wrongly placed or incorrect captions and annotations.

Unless we have specifically agreed otherwise, I will not be rewording sentences, making larger structural interventions such as reordering blocks of text or inserting headings, or fact-checking (but I may raise a query about anything that seems wrong).