Someone I know thinks being a proofreader could be a very nice job, if it can be had.
Is proofreading a thing, like, where you can say, “I’m going to be a proofreader,” and get a degree appropriate to the subject, and go out and get a job as a proofreader? Or is it something you fall into instead?
How’s the job market for proofreading? Growth industry? The opposite? Neither? Something else?
Can there be a career in proofreading? Or is it something starving grad students and authors do for extra money?
Is there advancement in proofreading? Is there entry-level and non-entry level work in the field? Can you go from being a proofreader to some kind of proofreader-supervisor and you know, on up to CEO?
Or is it all freelance work?
Hopefully you have a general idea of the kinds of questions I’m asking?
Not exactly my expertise, but here’s some general comments.
Nobody sets out to become a proofreader. It’s something that happens along the way to another goal. All large publishers used to have house proofreaders but I’m fairly sure that almost all jobs are freelanced these days. Of course, the joke among writers is that nobody proofs or copyedits or edits these days. Fill in the blank. My guess is that you don’t apply for such a job today but take an assignment by knowing somebody who needs one and then it make grow to being more or less steady.
It’s a horrible job. I’ve heard several say that they read books backwards so they don’t miss things because the brain fills in gaps and mistakes when things make sense. Try that sometime and see how long you last.
I couldn’t do it, myself. But the person who expressed interest finds the notion of reading a text, not for content, but for detailed standards compliance, to be–I don’t even know how this is possible–fun.
ETA: But in any case, what you said about the nature of the job about matches what I was expecting (but hoping I was wrong about). It sounds like it’s not a good prospect to go after even if you would enjoy it.
As so often…you have to show you have experience before you can get the job.
(So how the blazes does anyone ever get the initial experience?)
I know a bloke who does this for scientific journals, and makes a paltry living at it. And, yeah, it’s all about exacting details, standards, formats, etc. He spends a hell of a lot of time altering the generic “he” to “they,” a grammatical solecism that makes his teeth hurt.
From what I know about it, which is only the passing acquaintance of two people who worked as proofreaders, first you get a job for a publisher, then you demonstrate your ability to proofread by finding mistakes in text, then you get called on to do it occasionally, then when one of the current proofreaders goes mad, you get a promotion.
Pick up any big city newspaper and you can answer your own question.
In fact the recent brouhaha over the Newsweek cover story was interesting only because it ended up disclosing the fact that Newsweek has no fact checking department. If they can’t spend the money to get their facts staight what chance is there for someone to get paid to correct their grammar?
As do the thousands of people volunteering at Distributed Proofreading. Suggest to your friend that he (they) drop in there and try it out. It’s donated volunteer work rather than paid, but has been used as a way of showing experience at proofreading on resumes.
Just to support all that others have said. Almost all proofreading is freelance work these days and it is not easy or “fun”. Mrs Marcus did a few years of this as it was work she could do from home when the kids were young. Started with no experience but recommended by another freelance as someone conscientious and literate, same person gave her some basic coaching.
As noted, law journals - for obvious reasons - are hot on proofing as are science and other academic works. Mrs M got a lot of work from the Oxford University Press. Apparent pay rates are pretty good for home based work but entirely dependent on meeting the estimated time per page - not easy when there are multiple mistakes introduced by printers whose first language is not English and academic authors making last minute changes! Also a severe danger of your head exploding or the brain shutting down entirely as you try to remain focussed on the text…
Don’t think there is realy a career structure but some proofreaders may move on the copy editing but this seemed to be more in house, less freelance.
(Should say this is all based on experience of a few years back - may well have changed by now.)
Many newspapers do no or minimal fact-checking these days. (Something that seems to have escaped the attention of those who edit Wikipedia, who think that a fact appearing in a newspaper makes it reliable… regardless of the fact that the newspaper probably got it from Wikipedia in the first place. )
I’m a subeditor for a newspaper that does still aspire to a decent level of accuracy. A big part of the job is proofreading, as well as fact-checking, but with job cuts over the years the role has expanded to include initial copy-editing, page layout, graphics and conversion of content to digital platforms.
I don’t think many people earn a living solely as proofreaders these days. Print media is dying, so I think the future for people who enjoy spotting and correcting mistakes (as I do) lies in online content management. Having said that, I am somewhat stumped by what to do next.
I did a ton of proofreading for my law journal. It’s awful work. Our method was primarily a two person job, with one person reading aloud and the other reading along. The person reading aloud pronounces the italics, capitalization, punctuation, indentation, etc. So it would sound like:
“Capital I did a ton of proofreading for my law journal period double space capital I t apostrophe s begin italicies awful end italicies work period”
Now just imagine doing that for 2-4 hours at a time, about 20 times per year and you know what it’s like to join one of the most prestigious organizations in academia…
Hmm. Subediting is a lot less awful than that. You get to come up with awful puns for headlines, for one thing.
However, it is a job where the only feedback you’ll ever get (with very rare exceptions) is negative. If you do a perfect job, you are invisible and nobody comments on it. If you screw up, everyone notices.
As bad as the proofreading was, I thought the cite-checking was about a thousand times worse. Oh, sorry professor xyz from Harvard, but I’m pretty sure you’ve wildly misinterpreted this case…
Almost all, maybe, but not all. Large law firms have proofreaders on staff, 24 hours a day. They make a decent living, with benefits.
Of course, there aren’t many of them (I think we have two proofreaders at any given time, around the clock, and that’s at a 2,000 lawyer firm), and these jobs are generally only located in big cities. But they exist.
I am a sort of “proofreader-supervisor,” as you say, that moved into that position from being a proofreader. I was hired as a part-time remote copyeditor for a company that publishes scholarly journals. I worked on a particular client’s accounts for a couple of years, and my supervisor noticed that I was good at detailed work, but also good at communicating with authors and the journal client, especially at smoothing out angry people. When she left, she recommended me for her job.
I do a lot of article tracking (Why has it been with the copyeditor XX days? Nagging e-mail ensues.) and reporting, and spend time talking to the journal clients. I do the initial reviews for copyeditors new to our account, and determine whether they’re appropriate for the work. I also do spot checks on articles to make sure quality hasn’t declined. I do a lot of communication facilitation between other production workers (coding, page layout, etc.) and the authors and journal clients. I don’t expect to be upwardly mobile from this position, at least in this company, and while I need to work remotely.
We no longer have in-house copyeditors, and use only freelancers. It’s just the way the industry has gone. I do have a couple of starving grad students on my editing team, and one newly minted professor picking up extra work for extra money, but in fact a lot of my editors are parents of young children. It’s a job that allows one parent to be at home with the kids and still make a buck or two. it’s the situation I’m in myself.
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