The Perils of Proofreading
Or should that be proof-reading? You'll see both, and sometimes also 'proof reading' as two words. My 1984 Oxford dictionary favours the hyphen, though most people these days seem to use 'proofreading' as a single word (I suspect it has become a single word in later editions of many dictionaries). So why does it matter? You all know what it means, right? Or maybe what it used to mean. My dictionary defines proof-reader as "person employed in reading and correcting proofs". (Proofs being the printer's proofs ready for publication, exactly as the reader will see them - the word comes from a bygone age when printers had to set type before printing.) A better explanation in our digital age might be this from scribbr.com : "Proofreading means carefully checking for errors in a text before it is published or shared. It is the very last stage of the writing process, when you fix minor spelling and punctuation mistakes, typos, formatting issues and inco
