Digital Proofreading
With the continued growth of web-based projects and e-books – which include digital elements such as PDFs, CDs, DVDs and PowerPoint presentations, the need for content to be wholly accurate and consistent remains a foremost priority for today’s publishers. This course is designed to enable delegates to understand the purpose and methods of proofreading on-screen, and to gain knowledge of what to look for in the online, on-screen environment.
Programme
- Introduction
- Digital and web-based product and project elements
- Hard versus soft proofs: pros and cons of paper versus on-screen
- Differences between editing and proofreading
- On-screen proofreading: proofreading with extras
- Improving accuracy and consistency
- Proofreading 'blind' versus against copy
- Transferring (some) traditional working methods on-screen
- Towards more accurate on-screen reading
- Importance of style sheets
- Checklists for proofreading
- Working methods
- Spellchecking and electronic mark up in MS Office
- Marking up PDFs on-screen
- Proofreading e-books
- Methods for proofreading websites
- Checking metatags and XML coding
- Handling non-text elements: interactive, still images, animation, simulation, video, audio
- Working within content management systems
- Pros and cons of proprietary proofreading software
- Common problems
- Easily missed mistakes
- Special characters: common mistakes & display problems
- Style issues: spacing, alignment and position; dashes and hyphens; capitalisation; numbers
- Some words about grammar and punctuation
- Dealing with technical language
- The human element
- Handling author queries
- Collating changes: what to do when amendments conflict
- Preparing a brief for an on-screen proofreader
- Resources
- Glossary
- Reference works and further reading
- Internet resources.
