h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you can help proof read, I'd be most grateful. There are two things that need proofreading, one is the Great Big Document which evolves over time, and I've not yet changed it this weekend. It's not super-critical to get it right.

The other is the collection of entries I am putting together. This isn't secret squirrel (I've been posting about it all over the site) but it is ... furtive ferret shall we say.

How do you want to do this? At the moment it runs to 100+ pages and is available in MS Word (2002) or as a PDF. It will eventually be 42 entries, but I've only got half of them in so far.

So.... I could let you have it as it stands and you could work on it in Word with Track Changes on. Since there's so much of it, you might like to divide it up between you - pages 1-25, 26-50 and so on.

Or I can let you have the PDF and you can print it out. But I'm not sure how you'd get the changes back to me. Email them, I guess.

What do you think? Bearing in mind only about half of it's there already.

Ben

Word docs would work for me. My PC's on 24/7 so I can pick up and leave as and when, really.

Happy to help with proof-reading. Either WORD or pdf is fine for me.

Hi, Ben.

I read most of the Great Big Document the other day, and was impressed with its lack of errors. I didn't see anything that needed correction. There might be things I missed, though. A more careful reading might catch some things.

What I propose is to read the document (any document) on my computer, and only note the things I think need work.

I proofread some fanfics for my sister, so I'd be willing to have a go. The way I normally do it for her is that she sends me the Word doc, and I edit it in a different font colour, so she can see what I've changed. I would like to think she looks at the two versions side by side to see the changes in detail, but I don't think she does.
I find documents of more than half-a-dozen pages can start to get time-consuming, so I would suggest farming it out in chunks of this size.

I totally agree, Bob. Dividing it up among different people makes a lot of sense.

Okie dokie

At present it runs at over 100 pages!

I hope to have the whole thing planned later this week, I've already got about 20 entries in, and a long list of about another 30 or so. The final number will of course be whittled down to 42!

What I suggest is that when I've got the full list of guide entries for it, I'll divvy it up. I'll chop it up into bite size chunks of - say - three entries, and farm them out. I'll also need a couple of pairs of eyes over the stuff that comes before the entries and the cover. 3 entries per chunk would be 14 chunks plus the bit at the beginning is 15. Three volunteers - five chunks each. More volunteers, fewer chunks per person?

I don't think I need to wait until I've got all the entries in, just until I've got them selected. At that point I can start handing out what's already in there for proofreading. I don't want to use up my proofreading tickets on entries that don't make it into the collection in the end.

Ben

Just registering a willingness to assist with proofreading

Send word file when you need this help.

Good plan, Ben. Holler when you're ready.

I'm not that good at proof reading but I'll have a look at the whole big lump when available.

I could tackle a section...

If you end up with a not-too-wildlymany pages thing that needs to be looked at, by All means do send it

OK, who stole that space?

*hides the < > behind the potted palm*

hi you can count me in

i have a macpro snowleopard and not sure if word works on it
but pdf is fine
plus i think i can rewrite pdf
or if not i believe its easy to get the software for it
maybe i have it via adobe

arrrrgggghh not sure not sure erase erase

i
can
proofread
you
can
count
on
me

also... something my first editor told me about proofreading:

a good proofreader doesnt necessarily know how to punctuate, spell or grammatize correctly
a good proofreader just needs to be able to recognize when it doesnt look right
and know where to look it up to find out how to do it right

i think looking it up is crucial

No, I'm afraid a good proofreader *does* need to know how to do all of those things. Otherwise it might still "look right" to them (but only to them).

Yes, I'll be able to take a section.

I can do all of those things, KB.