Proofreading Quotes

And last but not least, reflecting my feelings on proofreading ... excuse any pages on my websites that have misspelled words or grammatical errors ... I'm not a proofreader of any great merit. ~ Mark Twain

In twenty-four years of proofreading, flocks of words flew into my head through the windows of my soul. Some of them stayed on and built nests in there. Why should I not speak like a poet, with a commonwealth of language at my disposal, constantly invigorated by new arrivals? ~ Rohinton Mistry

Maybe I don't think I'm touching people, but I am. Sometimes I'm sitting there at three in the morning, proofreading something, and I'm thinking, Is this really worth it? Or am I doing this only because my mother taught me never to give up? Then you realize, no, even if it doesn't come back to you, you are touching people. ~ Micah Lexier

Self publishing' is not as easy as it is portrayed! When you think you have finished your book, proof read, proof read again, and again, and again. Don't believe it is ready until you have a hard copy proofed! ~ Phil Simpkin

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.
[ ... ]
The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon. ~ Billy Collins

I love drafting like I love eating ice cream or having sex; I love revising like I love doing logic puzzles; I love line-editing like I love perfectly organizing a bookshelf; I hate reviewing copyedits and the second round of proofreading because, by then, I'm getting pretty tired of my own words. They all have their own challenges, though. ~ Tim Pratt

I should mention something that nobody ever thinks about, but proofreading takes a lot of time. After you write something, there are these proofs that keep coming, and there's this panicky feeling that 'This is me and I must make it better.' ~ John Updike

You're never "keeping it real" with your lack of punctuation and proofreading, you're keeping it unintelligible. ~ Austin Kleon

Good first impressions....are good for business. ~ CS-Edit

I couldn't follow the events of September 11 because I was proofreading a novel I'd just completed - on Islam and its quarrel with the West - that I'd promised, six months earlier, to deliver to my editor on September 12, 2001. ~ Pico Iyer

What I wanted, after several years of staying at home, alternating freelance proofreading jobs with trips to the toddler playground, was a little more structure, a little more sense of purpose, and some acknowledgement from somewhere that I was important. I had not ceased to be a member of society just because I no longer applied a swoop of eyeliner each morning before I went out into the world and sat around conference tables where other people could see me. ~ Mary Laura Philpott

My children used to occasionally ask me to proofread English papers for them. The difficulty, for me, was in just proofreading. I could see all kinds of ways they could make the paper better. But I didn't volunteer my ideas, because I was afraid that then they would lose the self-confidence and sense of accomplishment they had gotten from writing the paper. Better to let their teacher make the suggestions, if she was so inclined, since kids expect English teachers to make suggestions. You need to keep your long-term goals firmly in mind. Children who are enthusiastic about working will, sooner or later, do much better work than kids who just grind out assignments because someone is standing over them. ~ Mary Leonhardt

He was distinguished by a red eye that had hemorrhaged while proofreading unsolicited manuscripts. ~ Robert Klose

Muphry's Law: "If you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written. ~ Mary Norris

Read your paper backward, sentence by sentence, as a final proofreading step. This technique isolates each sentence and makes it easier to spot errors you may have overlooked in previous readings. ~ Claire B. May Gordon S. May