Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
The entire run of the report had to be destroyed before it was distributed, and a new run printed.
Yep, consequences indeed.
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Dennis
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I'm a lawyer and we also produce documents for public consumption. In addition to the 24 lawyers doing the legal work, we also have 3 legal editors (who are also lawyers) and 4-5 full time proofreaders/nonlegal editors. During our busy season (which is sometimes 6 months long), we hire 5-6 additional proofreaders.
All of this is absolutely vital to producing documents that are not only free of egregious errors, but which are also clearly written. (Staffing levels could be lower if there weren't a certain amount of time pressure).
I don't think we've ever had a mistake on a print run, but a preliminary copy of a doc once had to be rerun because of a small error in the abstract (not even in the doc itself) and the extra photocopying cost was over $3,000.
Leaving aside proofreading, it's vital to have an editor because they can tell you whether something is really coherent - because I know what I'm trying to say, I will sometimes assume that what I've written says this...but that's often not the case. And this is as important in my work as it is in fiction writing.