Proofreading Quotes

I spent the entire morning inserting a comma; I spent the whole afternoon removing it again.

My mother worked for a woman, Maria Ley-Piscator, who with her husband founded the Dramatic Workshop, which was connected to the New School. My mother did proofreading and typing and stuff or her, and as part of her payment, I was able to take acting classes there on Saturdays when I was 10.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.

Creating a book and creating a collection involve a lot of editing.

I always read what I write out loud, and I did that long before any radio thing. My editor finds that unusual.

If you have to go back and spell-check the text you're about to send, you're saying too much.

I've had editors over the years who couldn't find a clue if it was stapled to their butt.

There is no urge so great as for one man to edit another man's work.

I come out of journalism, and then book writing. There, it's just you and your editor and maybe a copy desk, looking over your editor's shoulder, and that's the story. It's right there. I can show it to you because it's on paper.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.

Everybody needs an editor.

All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!

Every book has mistakes in them, every one. There's never been a book published without mistakes.

I didn't have a lot of great jobs. I was a third-shift legal proofreader. I did office work for people where a friend might say, 'Hey, we need someone,' in his office, and then I will have a month or two weeks or whatever somewhere. I was - I taught fiction workshops.

No excuse for those mechanical errors to be happening.

And the most important thing you can do is learn to edit yourself. And then go back and rewrite.

I was 15 when I got my first job as a proofreader for an advertising agency in the City, earning £12 a week. But by then, I was already playing darts tournaments every weekend, regularly winning the £50 first prize. By the time I was 16 and winning two or three contests a weekend, I ditched the agency job and concentrated on darts.

My only claim to fame, if I have one, is that I'm an editor.

... the fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading.

Which editor? I can't think of one editor I worked with as an editor. The various companies did have editors but we always acted as our own editor, so the question has no answer.

It's funny because you know the novel process: you get the drafts, you get the galley, and then you get the galley proofs. You have opportunities to change things all along. But the further along in the process you go, the more careful you have to be in making those changes, and the smaller the changes have to be.

Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.

A very good editor is almost a collaborator.

There was a part of me that always wanted to be an editor.