Massive job

First Proof of Four

I just finished first proof read of the first of seven chapters of a massive report.  The current job consists of seven chapters, plus a prècis and a combination of all seven.

This project will require four proof reads and edits. The second will be on formatting because each chapter is a compiled effort by several contributors, each of whom have used different formatting, different versions of Word and even other word processing applications.

Second Language Authors

Much of the report was written by contributors with English as a second language (their first language is mainly Zulu or Afrikaans) making the proofing more difficult. The challenge is to re-write the somewhat strange use of English to produce a result that written in consistent English, ‘translating’ the idiosyncrasies without modifying the intended meaning.

Unfinished sentences hanging in midair, extra words that serve no purpose left over from a cut and paste, misuse of language, “Afr- is  Eng- are”, “Afr- of  Eng- from”, and all the oddities in between are some of the issues needing correction. Not that simple!

And then people like my mom and Tertia say “Oh, I could do that…” No, they couldn’t!