Design & Services
PROOFREADING
Your signature to authorize printing is required before we will send your job to the Print Shop or an outside vendor. When we consider your job ready to print we will send a proof with our blue proof approval form.
Check to be sure everything is in the right place, nothing has been omitted, and the copy is in the right order. You probably did a great job editing, but check once again for spelling, punctuation, capitalization, hyphenation, paragraph breaks, headlines, etc. We occasionally have to rekey a section, or something may have been missed in the manuscript. Now is better than after.
If more than one proof is necessary, each subsequent proof will be accompanied by the previous proof to facilitate checking. It is important that you return all materials that are attached to the blue slip. It's also very important to return the blue slip! Without a signed slip, your job cannot go to print.
If you make copies of the proof for others to review, please consolidate all corrections or changes onto our original proof.
Use proofreaders marks for clarity. They can be found on the back of our blue proof slips, and appear in this guide in APPENDIX F*. Other marks are open to interpretation, and misread intstructions end up requiring additional corrections on proofs.
Proofreading tips:
Use spell check.‡
Check for one thing at a time.
Read the copy aloud.
Read the copy backwards (right to left, bottom to top)‡
‡ Do not rely on this alone, because context is often missed (e.g. there/their). Spell check may also miss keystroking errors such as: He went tot he game.
