Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
Things like its instead of it's (and vice versa), double/repeated words — he then he, and and then, etc, sometimes even the wrong character name. One even said "the new priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe told Daryl that the priest had requested ???" and I had to email the writer to find out what it was supposed to say ("a transfer to another parish" in case anyone is interested).
What would you call someone who can find mistakes like the ones above, plus punctuation abuse, overly repeated phrases, and also plot holes/inconsistencies? And more to the point, how much should someone like that charge per 1,000 words?  |
The repeated words are the province of both a proofreader and an editor. The missing material (the ???) is the province of the editor. It is the editor who is responsible for "punctuation abuse" (I'm not really sure what that is but those are editorial, not proofreading, decisions.)
Repeated phrases and plot problems are editorial, not proofreading, problems.
(BTW, by province, I mean primary responsibility. A proofreader should not focus on what are the editor's responsibility. This is not to say that if somethine as glaring as the the ??? is spotted during proofreading that it shouldn't be noted, just that the fixing of the problem should have been done by the editor.)
As for charge per 1000 words, I have no idea. I don't work on fiction and I don't charge by the 1000 words criterion for the work that I do. I would think that the amount to be charged depends on many factors, not least of which is exactly what the editor or proofreader is being hired to do and how experienced the editor/proofreader is?