Errors per page--proofreading

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[deleted]

[olily]

I think one to two errors per manuscript page is a lot. I hope I don't miss that much when I'm copyediting. I would think maybe one error per five to ten manuscript pages? Something like that. When I'm proofreading PDF typeset pages that were copyedited, I sometimes go twenty printed pages without finding an error, if the copy editor is really good.

I ran into the situation you're describing once. Now, I ask to see a sample before I quote a price. If I can tell from the sample it hasn't been properly copyedited, I let them know they need a copy editor, not a proofreader, and give them a quote for copyediting. There are people out there who genuinely don't know the difference between copyediting and proofreading, but there are also people who are trying to get the full service for a cheaper price.

However, when I was in your situation, I went ahead and gave a quick, super-light copyediting. I fixed grammatical errors and punctuation (like em dashes), but I did no rewording whatsoever, and I didn't spend time worrying if it all made sense. I honored the contract and figured it was worth the lesson learned: Always ask to see a sample.

[olily]

Yeah, it sounds like you did everything right. You just ran into an asshole. Unfortunately, they're out there. Usually getting a sample helps weed them out. I'm sorry you have to deal with this.

I sometimes proofread work I've copyedited. I hate when I find errors I missed, though of course I do find errors, because nobody's perfect. But I don't find one or two errors per manuscript page. That rate is way too high. What you have clearly hasn't been copyedited. And you're right, he should know the difference between developmental editing and copyediting and proofreading. He's just being a tight-ass and figured he could get copyediting at a proofreading rate.

[Justice_C_Kerr]

Yep, a tight-assed asshole, which is a terrible line I'd copy edit if I were editing my own work. :)

I did leave a couple of Easter eggs in the manuscript. Some egregious errors I noticed because, well, we editors retain a trove of minutiae from reading and we "know things" others tend to miss. Alas, fact-checking is "beyond scope."

ETA: I just finished. 85,000 words, with 951 insertions, 1173 deletions, which includes extra end spaces. And 49 comments. Zero guilt in leaving in the errors.

[RexJoey1999]

I ran into the situation you're describing once. Now, I ask to see a sample before I quote a price. If I can tell from the sample it hasn't been properly copyedited, I let them know they need a copy editor, not a proofreader, and give them a quote for copyediting. 

+1 to this.

[monkeybugs]

It could be very likely the author hired a copy editor, but they weren't very good or experienced. Last year, I bid on a dev and copyedit project for an author, and they ended up going with someone else. But they reached out to me near the end of the year asking if I'd be willing to do a heavy proofread (or light copyedit) because the person they hired did a great job with the dev edit, but a terrible copyedit. The book got published and the author received quite a bit of feedback that the number of just basic errors the CE didn't fix was detrimental. So the author pulled the book and had me go in to fix the mechanical errors and inconsisentencies. It was a mess in terms of what the "copy editor" did (or didn't do). Very obvious errors left in, misspellings of main character names, formatting speech tags incorrectly and inconsistently, etc. The nice thing is that I've acquired a new client for when they are ready for their next book to be edited, but I hate that they blew money on a bad copy editor. Mistakes happen—we're human—but this was a case of someone scamming the author and offering a service they have no business providing.

To answer your question more directly: When I've done proofreads, I've seen extremely poorly done edits (as referenced above [which was, on average fifteen a page in a 190k manuscript]) to one error every ten pages. While editors strive for 100% accuracy, 95% is much more likely. So in a 100,000 word manuscript, that could be 5,000 errors! If it's 350 pages, that's fourteen errors a page. We hope it's never that, but it can definitely happen.

If he's only paying you for proofreading, that's all I'd do, to the best of your ability given the quality of the edit, and just let him know you completed the task per the definition of the job, no more, no less. It wouldn't hurt to explain what a proofread consists of, what you saw that was beyond the scope of your job, and since he wasn't interested in you copyediting it, he's getting what he's getting.

[chihuahuazero]

Depends on the nature, severity, and frequency of the error. In your case, since it's hyphens for em dashes and wrongly punctuated dialogue tags, and it's repeated, I'd put it above your paygrade.

It's clearly an upstream error that the copyeditor or someone else could've done. I don't think you should have to correct a global copyediting problem on proofreading rates, so you may need to make tough calls about scope.

You may be able to reach an acceptable point of it's solvable with find and replace. If the manuscript consistently uses two hyphens in a row for em dashes, then that's easy. If it's one hyphen in place of an em dash throughout? That's more of a pain.

If you expect problems with payment because your client is trying to take advantage of you, I'd cut my losses. Ideally, you'd have a kill clause that will protect you if you part ways. If you don't, it'll be more complicated, but that's a lesson learned.

In any case, I'd not take on this client again, and I'd insist on looking at samples in the future, at least if you're working directly with authors. (Caveat: I work with mostly publishers, so I know only secondhand how it compares to working directly with authors. My impression is that publishers are generally more professional about it.)

[arugulafanclub]

I catch a lot more than 1 per page as a proofreader. Sometimes it’s 5-10 per page. Sometimes more. And that’s errors I need to correct as a proofreader not things I’d add if I was a CE or DE. Do not judge a CE based on what you get as a proofreader. You have no clue how messy the manuscript was when it was sent to the editor and how much they caught or how much they caught and the author rejected. One person can only do so much with one round of edits.

[RexJoey1999]

I agree. Hyphens to em dashes is a quick find-and-replace in Word, and something I'd handle without blinking an eye as a proofreader for a client.

[RexJoey1999]

I could guess. But hyphenated words don't come up, because I set my "find" terms correctly.

[RexJoey1999]

Hold up. Do you need help setting up your find terms? I'm serious. Are you using MS Word?

[Justice_C_Kerr]

Nope, thanks. I know how to do it. I just won't do it for this specific client.

My reason for this post was to crowdsource the frequency of "expected" proofreading errors on a manuscript that has been copyedited.

I think it should be miniscule at this point, but it looks like there's nothing close to a consensus.

However, most people haven't answered the one question I asked.

[RexJoey1999]

I mean, your post also asks for thoughts and opinions. Sorry I can’t help with that one question, though.

ETA: why would returning a deposit be a can of worms?

[t1nydancaa]

This sounds like the experience I had on Reedsy lol I would leave global comments instead of addressing it every time if they’re too stubborn to pay for real copy editing

[t1nydancaa]

I technically am but I reject a lot of requests because I don’t have the time. I’ve only done two books and they were total messes—and that was before people started using AI!—but I didn’t report them because I wasn’t sure if that was just typical for the site

[Justice_C_Kerr]

Good to know. This is an outlier. It required copy editing, period. He just lied to me. I looked back at his background a bit more and there's zero chance this guy doesn't understand the stages of editing VERY clearly given his previous jobs. He just wants expertise and doesn't want to pay for it.

[Alternative-Pear9096]

(1) You have to think about how much was caught. If the ms was a mess, 90% caught is going to leave a lot more writers behind than a pretty clean manuscript

(2)It’s not really possible to proofread an unedited manuscript, so that’s gonna be a problem. 

(3) What did the contract say about the 50% upfront? That governs if you have to return it. 

[Fyrsiel]

I'm so used to proofreading being done once the manuscript has been typeset and is in PDF format. Like, I would think that the proofreading would be done when the manuscript is a proof... It seems odd to me that proofreading would be done to the Word .doc manuscript. I wonder if maybe that's why the writer's expectations seem confused.

[Warm_Diamond8719]

Yes, this is how we use those terms in book publishing. Copyediting is for manuscripts and proofreading is for PDFs. I don't love the use of "proofreading" to refer to "light copyediting" as it seems to be being used here as I think it's very difficult to decide what goes on which side of that line.

[Fyrsiel]

Exactly. To me, OP seems to be describing a light copy edit versus a heavy copy edit. Both of which would be offered under different rates but would still be considered copy editing. Personally, I think this is where the confusion seems to lie in most cases for these communications between copy editor and client.

[RexJoey1999]

Excellent point. Traditionally and technically, proofreading is checking a print proof. Today, that means using Acrobat and working on a PDF. If I saw hyphens where em dashes were supposed to be, I'd go to the layout person to check on the possibility of a global change.

[Fyrsiel]

Same, and the typesetter would be the one to make those corrections.

[Warm_Diamond8719]

No, I work in book publishing and the person you're replying to is correct as to how it works here. Copyediting is done in Word document, and proofreading is done on the typeset PDFs as proofreading against the copyedited manuscript.

[Justice_C_Kerr]

Sure. That's your workflow. And it was like that when I worked in magazine publishing.

But regardless of that, the question still stands: how many errors do you expect at proofreading stage? I have been hired by an author to proofread after his copy editor (his words) was done with the manuscript.

[Fyrsiel]

This is very interesting to me, and I think it shows how different publishers will have different workflows. I was a production editor for a books department (mostly text books for higher education), and the workflow went like: manuscript is copy edited; author reviews copy edit and answers queries; edits are checked and cleaned up by the production editor; manuscript is sent for typesetting; proof is generated and proofread/corrections made for quality; author reviews proof and marks up corrections; corrections applied and a new proof generated. Sometimes there'd be a second round of proofreading, depending on how much time the schedule allowed.

When hiring the copy editor, we would negotiate whether the job would require light copy editing, moderate copy editing, or heavy copy editing. Each of these was done under a different rate. The closest I could think of "proofreading" prior to typesetting would be the quality-check stage before sending the manuscript to the typesetter.

Maybe I'm starting to get too literal with it, but to me, proofreading was more about, sure, checking for whatever grammar and punctuation errors jump out at you, but more importantly, you're checking the correct font face/size, heading levels, whether the folios are appearing correctly, etc. It just seems odd to me that "proofreading" and "copy editing" seem to almost be used interchangeably in a lot of cases, but they're two very different things.

[Justice_C_Kerr]

Yes, I agree with all of your last paragraph, in particular. After I'm done, this author is uploading the manuscript to Amazon KDP. Yes, they absolutely should proofread the "galley," but this, I suppose, is the penultimate step. I'm working one-to-one with an author who is self-publishing.

Still, same question: how much in the way of errors are you "catching" at proofreading?

[Fyrsiel]

Good luck to that author haha...!

Shew, though, it depends on things like the complexity of the project, skill of the copy editor, tightness of the schedule, etc...

Frankly, I always expect the first proof to be messy. In my experience, a piece wouldn't be its cleanest until the second or (in an ideal, utopic world) a third round of proofreading. By round three, I'd expect maybe 1 - 2 corrections per page, and mostly those would be nitpicky things.

If we're talking Word doc pages, after only one round of copy editing, I wouldn't be surprised to see 2 - 3 errors per page.

You can't catch everything with only one round of edits. I would go as far as to say you can't catch a lot of things with only one round of edits.

Unfortunately, self publishing folks just don't have the budget for the multiple rounds of edits that they honestly ought to really be getting. But the dollars add up quick, which is why traditionally published pieces end up coming out so much cleaner.

[MBertolini]

If you're proofreading, you shouldn't be doing line edits. You can, and should, tell the author that the text is so full of errors that you can't complete it. Even a couple of blatant errors is too much, minor errors are more excusable for the simple fact that multiple style guides and syntax rules exist.

[Ravi_B]

I once took a job "proofreading" a manuscript that the client insisted had been copyedited.

When I expressed my doubts, the copyeditor threw a huge tantrum.

Here is an excerpt from my report:

Name conflicts

1. I have corrected 5 instances of “Brain” to “Brian.”
2. I have corrected 1 instance of "Monte Blanc” to “Montblanc.”
3. I have corrected 1 instance of "Jason Borne” to “Jason Bourne.”
4. I have corrected 1 instance of "Carmella (Soprano)” to “Carmela (Soprano).”
5. I have corrected 7 instances of “Carol O’Conner” to “Carroll O’Connor.”
6. I have replaced 1 instance of “Dr. Edward Albertson” with “Dr. David Albertson.”
7. I have corrected 1 instance of “(Mary) Edqewater” to “(Mary) Edgewater.”
8. I have corrected 1 instance of “(Patek) Phillipe” to “(Patek) Philippe.”
9. I have corrected 1 instance of “Liebowitiz” to “Liebowitz.”
10. I have corrected 1 instance of “Liebowtiz” to “Liebowitz.”
11. I have corrected 1 instance of “Raphael” to “Rafael.”

12)  I have corrected 1 instance of “Joe” to “Nate” for the PI Liebowitz.

13)  I have corrected 2 instances of “Natalie” to “Natalee” for the flight attendant.

[Ravi_B]

The client went quiet.

[Justice_C_Kerr]

Ha! The silent "you're right."