An applicant for a position in a laboratory wrote: "My colleagues consider me a carefull researcher." Will the director of the laboratory believe the applicant? Why should he? If the writer did not care enough to spell "careful" correctly, how can the director trust the researcher to measure chemicals and follow safety procedures carefully? The letter should have been proofread.
A proofreader finds and corrects errors in a text: errors in typing, spelling, spacing, punctuation, and simple grammatical irregularities. I use the term editing for dealing with issues of style, such as faulty sentence construction, inconsistency of tone, and poorly managed paragraphs. In 1907, The Daily Chronicle (London) explained that "proof-reader" was "the American equivalent of our 'corrector to the Press' or 'printer's reader'" – that meant correcting the errors the printer made rather than the errors the writer made. The proofreading I'm talking about deals with the errors we allow to remain in our manuscripts.Correcting errors is not as difficult as finding them. They are not hiding. But when we proofread our own work, we often get trapped in reading the content and overlook the incorrect comma, the missing word, or a misspelling. It's difficult to go over your own text in a cold, clinical manner – and if you think "careful" is spelled "carefull," it's highly unlikely that you will suddenly notice the misspelling. So, because proofreading your own work is difficult and usually unsatisfactory, many writers have friends proofread their texts. The responsibility for a correct text, however, remains with the author.
Here I am, going on and on about proofreading when I know from experience that not everyone considers it important. Some readers say they're only interested in the content, the facts. They seem willing to accept the facts and figures as correctly stated when the paper is filled with typographical errors. To me, that is like trusting a salesman of acne medicine when his face is covered with pimples. And then, some people don't notice errors; frequent exposure may have immunized them. Others lean back calmly and claim that these are trivial problems, minor transgressions, because "they are, after all is said and done, minor errors."
And yet, these niggling errors can disappoint readers, irritate some, and infuriate others. These readers might question the validity of the text: if the writer allowed this error to remain, what other errors have escaped detection? While careless errors disappoint me, I am pleased and amazed to read a novel without stumbling over a typographical error – pleased that the text was professionally presented, and amazed that the author and editor could do it. It's not easy.
One reason it might not be easy is the infectious style of emails and SMSs. Somehow, folks started to believe that since an email could shoot across space quickly, it should be written quickly. Errors sink to secondary importance. SMSs exaggerate the problem. "C U B4 mtg" is an acceptable, if not fashionable, code for "I'll see you before the meeting."
If we rely on a computer's "automatic corrector" to eliminate errors, we soon learn that a computer's assistance is limited, at least today's computers. My students often present papers with "then" and "than" confused. The computer is not confused. Each is a word, so each is correct – that's the computer's assistance.
Proofreading is not easy, but it is not as difficult as it is tedious. It would also become easier if it were considered important. The acne medicine salesman with pimples is not simply a joke. And the applicant saying he was a carefull researcher would be funny if it were not also a bit sad. When errors slip out of our mouths, we cannot retrieve them, so we must correct them with an accompanying apology and embarrassment. When we make an error in our writing, we have the chance to correct it with neither apology nor embarrassment. Why shouldn't we? I know people who will not leave the house without putting a shine to their shoes. It's a part of their presentation to the world, and it's important to them because they judge people by similar outward appearances. To them, a trivial smudge on their shoes might say something about them as people; that smudge might make others judge them incorrectly. A silly error in our texts can say something about us as writers, as scholars, or as scientists. It's worth considering. So be carefull.
RICHARD HAAS,
Oddělení studia jazyků ÚJČ AV ČR
English
