What Is Proofreading And Why It Matters Before You Publish

Gary Smailes | 5 November 2025

Where Proofreading Fits in the Editing Process

Proofreading sits at the end of the line. Real pages, not a Word doc. After layout, you mark a PDF or print galley. Final check before upload. Different job from copy editing or line editing. Different skill. Different brief.

Line editing works on voice and rhythm. Copy editing enforces grammar, usage, and style decisions. Proofreading hunts surface errors on the page you will print or ship. Think page furniture, spacing, and tiny gremlins that slip through earlier passes.

The order, step by step

• Developmental edit shapes structure and content.
• Line edit tunes sentences and tone.
• Copy edit cleans grammar, usage, and style.
• Typesetting and layout create pages in InDesign, Vellum, or similar.
• Proofreading checks those pages for mechanical and layout faults.
• Final export or upload sends the approved files to print and retail.

Skip steps, and trouble multiplies. Do steps out of order, and you chase your tail.

What sits inside the scope

A proofreader fixes small, objective problems on a fixed page. Examples help.

• Typos and spelling errors per your dictionary.
• Punctuation slips, including missing periods and comma hiccups.
• Spacing faults, double spaces, stray tabs, ragged word spaces.
• Bad line and page breaks, widows and orphans, awkward hyphenation.
• Scene break symbols missing or inconsistent.
• Running heads and folios wrong or misaligned.
• TOC entries that do not match page numbers.
• Italics, bold, and quotation mark consistency across the book.

No rewriting. No new sentences. No moving paragraphs around. Every fresh word risks reflow, new line breaks, new hyphenations, and a fresh crop of errors.

A quick story. An author added one sentence on page 9. Page numbers shifted through chapter six. The TOC went off by two pages. A widow appeared on page 143. A figure caption drifted to the next page. All from one sentence. Save new content for a later edition.

Lock files before you proof

Freeze design, fonts, margins, and pagination before the proof stage. One source of truth only. No dueling PDFs. Give your proofreader the copy editor’s style sheet, so decisions on hyphenation, numbers, and capitalization run through the full book without wobble.

If you need to tweak design, do it before proofreading begins. If a fix forces a global reflow, stop, regenerate proofs, and restart the proof pass. Painful, yes, but cheaper than chasing ghosts.

How to think while you proof

Treat this like a safety inspection, not a remodel.

• Ask one question on each mark. Objective error or preference. If preference, leave it.
• Query meaning only when clarity feels at risk. Better to flag than to guess.
• Use standard PDF markup or BSI/CMOS symbols on paper. Clear marks save time for your designer.

A small exercise

• Print ten pages from the middle. Mark only concrete faults. Typos, spacing, breaks. If you itch to rewrite a line, circle it and write “future revision.” Notice how fast your eye shifts from style to mechanics once you set a rule.

Proofreading protects your reputation at the moment readers sample the book. Keep the scope tight, the files locked, and the process sane. Do that, and you reach the finish with clean pages and your sanity intact.

What Proofreaders Actually Check

Proofreaders read the file you plan to ship. Not taste. Not voice. Mechanical accuracy on a fixed page. Here is what gets checked, and how it looks in practice.

Words and style on the page

Proofreaders enforce the dictionary and style guide you chose, often Chicago Manual of Style.

• Spelling and usage. One book, one spelling of email or e-mail. Healthcare or health care. Toward or towards. Pick once, hold steady.
• Hyphenation. Decision making or decision-making. Copyediting or copy editing. Compound modifiers before a noun usually take a hyphen if clarity wobbles.
• Capitalization. Internet or internet. Chapter 5 or chapter 5. Job titles upper or lower in your system, then consistent.
• Punctuation. Serial comma on or off per the style sheet. Periods inside or outside quotes, depending on locale. Spaced ellipses or tight ellipses, again per the sheet.

Anecdote. A business book landed with three versions of health care across four chapters. A proofreader circled twenty-three instances and set one form. No reader noticed, which is the point.

Quick drill

• Open your manuscript. Search for e-mail, email, E-mail. Pick one, mark it on the style sheet. Repeat for start-up and startup, website and web site.

Layout faults

Once text hits pages, new problems appear.

• Rivers. Visible white streams in justified text where word spacing balloons. Often a byproduct of narrow measures or tight hyphenation rules.
• Stacks. The same word or syllable repeating at the start or end of adjacent lines, which draws the eye.
• Ladders. Several hyphenated line breaks piling up in a paragraph.
• Widows and orphans. A widow, a short line ending a paragraph at the top of a page. An orphan, the first line of a paragraph stranded at the bottom of a page. Both weaken rhythm.
• Awkward hyphenation. Ther-apist or re-sign where reassign was meant. Breaks must obey syllable logic and clarity.
• Scene breaks. Missing symbols or inconsistent spacing above and below the glyph.
• Lists and indents. Bullets misaligned, numbers skipping, hanging indents off by a hair.

How to spot them. Lean back and squint. Do you see white channels across a spread. Do list bullets step neatly down the margin. Does a chapter opener sit where you expect, with the same spacing as the others.

Mini-exercise

• Print two pages. With a pencil, draw a light line through any river you notice. Mark any lone line at the top or bottom of a page. Circle three awkward hyphenations. You will start seeing patterns.

Page furniture and navigation

Proofreaders check the map readers use, not only the sentences.

• Running heads. Book title on even pages, author name on odd, or chapter title per your design. No heads on chapter openers.
• Folios. Page numbers where they belong, aligned, right typeface.
• TOC. Entries match chapter titles and page numbers, including punctuation and case.
• Chapter openers. Consistent placement, drop caps handled the same way, spacing above and below.
• Recto and verso conventions. Main chapters start on recto, the right-hand page with an odd number, unless your design says otherwise.
• Numbering sequences. Front matter in roman numerals, body in arabic. No jumps or repeats.

Common snag. A late change to acknowledgments pushes the whole book by two pages, which throws off the TOC and index. A proofreader compares every locator to the final pagination.

Cross-references and apparatus

References break easily once pages move. They need a hard check.

• Figures and tables. Numbers in order. Captions correct. Cross-references match, for example see figure 3.2 on page 47.
• Footnotes and endnotes. Numbering sequence set per the style sheet, either continuous or per chapter. Symbols in front matter handled consistently.
• Citations. Format per style, spacing, punctuation, and italics consistent across references.
• Bibliography. Alphabetized and styled per the sheet, with hanging indents aligned.
• Index locators. Page numbers match final layout. Errant ranges corrected.

Tip for authors. Do not change any heading text after indexing. Rebuilding the index costs time and introduces fresh errors.

Format integrity

Typography must hold together across the book.

• Italics and bold. Intended emphasis preserved through layout. No missing italics after font substitution.
• Quotes and apostrophes. Smart quotes in place, no straight ticks. Correct apostrophes in rock ’n’ roll and in ’90s.
• Dashes and hyphens. Hyphen, en dash, and em dash used per style. Spacing around each per the sheet. No double hyphens sneaking through.
• Ellipses. Tight or spaced, consistent throughout. No stray period before an ellipsis unless a sentence ends.
• Nonbreaking spaces. Used in Mr. Smith, in 10 kg, and between numbers and units where separation would mislead.
• Embedded fonts. Properly licensed fonts embedded for print PDFs and EPUBs, so special characters and ligatures render.

Small test

• Search for "1960's." Replace with 1960s. Then search for 5 kg on a line break. Insert a nonbreaking space.

Digital specifics

Proofreading for screens adds a few traps.

• Hyperlinks. Live, correct, and styled consistently. Internal anchors jump to the right spot.
• Images. Scale cleanly on phones and tablets. Alt text in place for accessibility.
• CSS quirks. Drop caps not crushing lines on small screens. Margins not collapsing. Lists and block quotes styled legibly in dark mode.
• Reflow. Headings separate from body text correctly. No stuck hard line breaks. No forced hyphens from the print file lingering in EPUB.

Device check

• Load the EPUB on a Kindle and on your phone. Rotate the device. Tap every link in the TOC. Zoom an image. Note any overlap, truncation, or broken anchors.

Make consistency possible

Give your proofreader two things at the start.

• The copy editor’s style sheet. Dictionary choice, hyphenation list, numbers policy, capitalization rules, citation style. Proofreaders enforce decisions, not reset them.
• One source-of-truth PDF, not multiple versions. If you re-export after a design tweak, rename the file and confirm version history. Everyone works from the latest set.

Do this, and the last pass becomes what it should be, a precise sweep for small, objective faults. Your pages read clean. Your book feels built, not thrown together.

Why Proofreading Matters Before You Publish

Your book meets readers in the sample. That first page sets trust. A typo in line one whispers amateur. A doubled word in the first paragraph shouts it. Shoppers click away. Reviews mention errors more than nuance. You wrote a book, not a resume, yet the same rule applies. Surface mistakes break confidence faster than weak ideas.

I have watched launch plans wobble from three small slips in a “Look Inside.” One missing period. One mis-capitalized brand. One wrong homophone. Conversion on the sample fell. Ads spent money to push readers to a page that turned them off in fifteen seconds. A proofread would have paid for itself in a day.

The bill for late fixes

Corrections after release cost money and time. Print needs new files, fresh checks, and often a new ISBN if changes count as a new edition. For offset runs, unsold copies sit in boxes while you wait on a reprint. For print on demand, the update pauses sales and requires a new proof cycle. Either way, the clock runs.

Text moves when you fix errors. A few added characters push lines, lines push pages, pages push chapter openers. Now the table of contents disagrees with pagination. An index falls out of sync. Footnotes break order. One patch spawns five more, each billed by someone else. Fix it before you upload. You keep cash, and you keep your week.

Quick check

• Count the people who would touch a post-release fix. You, a proofreader, a designer, a distributor. Multiply by their minimum fee. Compare with one proofread before launch.

Passing retailer and library checks

Retailers and libraries run quality checks. They flag typos, broken links, bad page numbers, and file issues. Enough flags, and your book slows in distribution or returns to you for changes.

Examples

• KDP issues Quality Notices for repeated errors reported by readers. Too many, and a warning label appears on your detail page until you correct the file.
• Apple Books rejects EPUBs for bad links, wrong metadata, or layout glitches that impede reading.
• Library platforms prefer clean, accessible files and consistent metadata. Sloppy proofs raise support tickets and delay ingestion.

A smooth pass through these gates protects momentum. You launch on time. Your book shows up where readers expect it.

Accessibility and clarity help every reader

Screen readers use punctuation, headings, and structural cues to voice your work. Fixing quotes, dashes, and spacing improves rhythm for anyone using audio. Consistent heading levels help navigation. Correct character encoding prevents odd glyphs where quotes or em dashes should be. Clean tables read in order. Footnotes announce and return without confusion.

These choices help more than blind or low-vision readers. They lift readability for everyone. Fewer distractions, better flow, longer sessions. That means more readers finish, then recommend.

Simple wins

• Use smart quotes and true apostrophes throughout.
• Keep a clear heading hierarchy. No skipping from H2 to H4.
• Join numbers and units with a nonbreaking space, 10 kg, so units do not split across lines.

Your brand on the line

A sloppy release follows you. Early reviews stick to the top of the list and shape buyer behavior for months. Retail pages remember. Typos mentioned in the first ten reviews scare off later buyers even after you fix the file. Some readers forgive. Many do not.

Agents and editors search your name before saying yes to book two. Bloggers scroll sample pages. Librarians flip through the print copy they plan to order for a branch. You want the page to feel solid, not lucky. A proofread supports your reputation more than a new logo, more than a glossy cover finish.

A quick story. A debut novelist rushed to hit a holiday window. Skipped the proofread. Week one reviews praised the plot and hammered the errors. Sales fell off a cliff after a promising start. We fixed the file, then waited six months for new reviews to bury the old. The author learned the hard way. You do not need that lesson.

Budget for the last mile

Leave room for one full proofread and a short verification pass after corrections. Two line items, both essential.

• Proofread. A cover-to-cover sweep of the laid-out pages. Expect one to two weeks, depending on length and complexity.
• Verification pass. A fast check on the revised PDF to confirm every change went in and nothing else broke. Half a day to two days.

Plan the money and the calendar. Book your proofreader before typesetting starts so the slot exists when you need it. Share the style sheet and the final PDF. Fewer surprises, fewer emails, a cleaner result.

Think of this as production insurance. Readers judge in seconds. Retailers judge in minutes. Your future self will thank you for making the last step count.

Workflow, Tools, and Deliverables

Proofreading runs on clear files, clear marks, and clear handoffs. Get those right, and the last mile feels calm. Miss them, and your team chases ghosts across versions.

Tools of the trade

Most proofs move as PDFs. Your proofreader uses standard commenting tools with highlights, strikeouts, and sticky notes. Expect brief, direct comments. Example, “comma splice,” “align bullet,” “wrong folio,” or “use small caps per style.”

On hard copy, you get ink. BSI and CMOS marks indicate inserts, deletes, transpose, close up, new paragraph, and so on. The symbols look odd on day one. By page five, you read them like traffic signs. If your proofreader works on paper, ask for a legend on page one.

Helpful extras

• Acrobat or PDF-XChange, with a single set of stamps and colors.
• A style sheet at hand, so “US spelling” or “headline caps” comments stay consistent.
• A single source PDF, locked for pagination. No parallel files.

What you get back

Expect three things.

• A marked-up PDF or printed set. Every change tied to a page and line.
• A corrections list. A simple table, page and line, issue, fix. Example, “123:14 tavern to inn per style.” This list lets a designer work fast without digging through every note.
• Queries. Short questions on ambiguous items. Example, “Chapter 7 opener drops running head, confirm.” Treat queries as decisions, not suggestions. Answer once, in writing.

If your book has notes, figures, or tables, the list should group those items. Keep index and TOC fixes separate. Clarity speeds layout.

How the collaboration works

A smooth proof cycle has three stages.

1. Consolidate. Author and proofreader resolve conflicts before the file goes to layout. If you and a coauthor both leave notes, agree on a single answer. The worst error is a tie.
2. Implement. The designer or typesetter enters changes in the layout file. They work from the PDF markup and the corrections list, then output a new PDF.
3. Verify. A short pass checks the revised PDF. Did every fix go in. Did any line break shift create a new widow. Did the TOC, running heads, folios, and cross-references stay in sync. This is not a second proofread. It is a quality check on production.

Tiny exercise

• Pick one chapter. Write three sample corrections in the page:line format. Hand it to a friend. If they can apply fixes without questions, your format works.

Version control that keeps you sane

Name files like you plan to defend them in court.

• Title_Proofs_RC1.pdf, then RC2, RC3 as needed. The RC tag stands for Revision Cycle.
• Title_Proofs_RC1_Corrections.xlsx for the list. Date-stamp in the file header.
• A one-page change log. “RC2, applied all RC1, fixed new widows on 44 and 97, updated TOC page refs, answered 3 queries.”

Rules to live by

• One current file. Retire old PDFs into an Archive folder.
• No edits on screenshots or photos of pages. Only the live PDF.
• Never mix versions in one list. If a fix did not stick, flag it as “Repeat from RC1.”

A quick cautionary tale. A team sent RC2 to the designer, then proofed RC1 by mistake. Half the fixes vanished. We burned three days untangling the mess. Clean names would have saved the week.

Hold the line on scope

Proofs are not the place to rewrite. Moving phrases and swapping sentences triggers reflow. Reflow shifts page breaks, line breaks, and figure positions. Every shift spawns new risks, and more cost. If you see a sentence you hate, park it on a list for the next edition.

Scope at proof stage

• Fix typos, spacing, punctuation slips.
• Correct layout faults, ladders, stacks, rivers, widows, orphans.
• Standardize hyphenation and capitalization per the style sheet.
• Flag true errors in cross-references, notes, captions, and page furniture.

Out of scope

• New paragraphs, cut passages, added scenes.
• Shifts in emphasis or tone.
• New figures, tables, or sidebars.

If a fix is urgent and touches text flow, ask your proofreader to mark “AA” for author alteration. Your designer will treat it as a change with ripple effects. Expect extra time.

Set the schedule and rules

Bring your typesetter and proofreader into the calendar early. Agree on three dates. Proof start. Proof handoff to layout. Verification pass.

Spell out how you will answer queries. One email thread. Or one shared doc, comments resolved in order. No replies buried in Slack or text threads.

Define “stet.” It means leave as set. Use it when you reject a suggested change or revert to the previous state. Example, a proofreader changes “startup” to “start-up,” but your style sheet says closed form. Reply “stet per style.” Clear, final.

Agree on style-sheet deviations. Sometimes the book needs a house-rule exception, perhaps for a series voice. Mark these as “Style override” in the list, so they do not get “fixed” later.

A simple service-level plan helps too.

• Response time for queries, within 24 hours.
• Batch size for changes, no trickle of micro updates.
• Who signs off on RC2 and triggers upload.

Do this once, and you will never want to wing a proof again. The work feels lighter. The files behave. You reach upload day with a clean book and a clear head.

DIY Proofreading Techniques That Actually Work

You wrote the book. Your eyes know every line. That is the problem. You stop seeing small slips. So you cheat. Change the way you look, and the misses pop.

Change the medium

Your brain adapts to your screen. Break the pattern.

• Print the pages. Use a pen and slow down. A ruler under each line helps.
• Switch fonts and size. Go from Garamond 11 to Arial 13. Ugly is good. The change forces attention.
• View at 125 or 150 percent in a PDF. Then pull back to 90 percent. Different zooms reveal different flaws.
• Use an e‑ink device. The slower refresh and different rendering catch hyphenation and spacing problems.
• Read in two-page view for print books. You will see rivers, ladders, and odd page turns.

Mini test: print two pages and read them aloud in a different room. You will find at least one thing you missed at your desk.

Read aloud or use text‑to‑speech

Your ear hears what your eye skips.

• Read to yourself at a steady pace. Tap the table at each comma. Drop your voice at periods. Where you run out of breath, fix the sentence or the punctuation.
• Use text‑to‑speech at a slow speed. Follow along with a finger or cursor. Stop when the voice stumbles, repeats, or glides past a missing word.
• Record one page on your phone. Play it back. You will hear doubles and clunky rhythm.

What to listen for

• Doubled words. “The the” hides in plain sight.
• Missing small words. “He went store.”
• Quote and dialogue hiccups. Are closing quotes in place. Do commas sit inside the quote per your style.

Run targeted passes

Do not try to catch everything in one go. Short, focused laps beat a long slog.

Suggested passes

• Punctuation and quotation marks. Commas, periods, serial commas, quote placement, ellipses spacing.
• Numerals and units. 1990s not 1990’s. Consistent units and abbreviations. mph vs km/h. Ranges use en dash, not a hyphen.
• Proper nouns. Character names, place names, product names, chapter titles. Build a quick list and check each instance.
• Page furniture. TOC page numbers, running heads, folios, chapter openers, recto and verso conventions.
• Captions and callouts. Figure numbers match captions. Table references match labels in text.

Tiny exercise: take one chapter and do only quotation marks. Nothing else. You will finish faster and flag more errors.

Search systematically

Let your tools help. Use Find across the whole file.

• Double spaces. Search for two spaces. Replace with one, but confirm on each hit.
• Straight quotes. Search for " and ' to find uncurly quotes. Fix to smart quotes per style.
• Spacing around em and en dashes. Search for space-hyphen-hyphen or spaced dashes if your style requires tight dashes.
• Inconsistent hyphenation. Search for key terms both open and hyphenated. Example, “email” and “e-mail.” Decide and standardize.
• Ellipses. Search for three periods. Replace with the ellipsis character and correct spacing per style.
• Tabs and stray returns. Turn on hidden characters. In Word, show nonprinting characters. In InDesign, toggle invisibles. Clean extra tabs, extra paragraph marks, and soft returns where they do not belong.
• Italics that run on. Search for the closing tag in your layout tool, or scan for long spans of italics that cross sentences. Fix the boundary.

Wildcard trick in Word

• Use Find for space-capital letter A, then each letter through Z. You will catch words that begin sentences after a stray extra space.

Do a final search for TK or xx. Those placeholders love to survive.

Test on real devices

Digital files behave on their own terms. Proof where readers read.

• Load the EPUB on a Kindle and on a phone. Change font size three steps up and down. Watch line breaks, scene break symbols, and image scaling.
• Tap every hyperlink. Internal links should land on the right heading. External links should open in a browser.
• Switch to dark mode if your app supports it. Check figure transparency, rule lines, and link color contrast.
• Rotate the device. Landscape can expose tables that break or captions that wander.
• If you have a screen reader, try it. Listen for gibberish from glyphs, all-caps acronyms, and decorative small caps. Fix with proper encoding and markup.

For print, flip through a paper proof fast, then slow. Fast shows patterns, like stacked hyphenations. Slow catches single blips.

Build a short checklist and a sane schedule

Accuracy drops when you marathon. Plan sprints.

Sample checklist

• Confirm style sheet is open.
• Run searches: double spaces, straight quotes, ellipses, tabs.
• Pass 1: punctuation and quotes.
• Pass 2: numerals, units, and ranges.
• Pass 3: proper nouns.
• Pass 4: page furniture, TOC, running heads, folios.
• Device check: Kindle and phone. Test links and images.
• Final skim with a ruler on the printed pages.

Work rhythm

• Set 25-minute blocks. Stand up for five minutes between blocks.
• Stop after three blocks. Come back later. Fresh eyes win.
• Keep a parking lot for nonproof ideas. If you spot a line you want to rewrite, note it for the next edition. Do not tinker now.

One last trick. Read the final chapter first, then work backward by chapter. You break the story flow on purpose, which stops your brain from filling in missing pieces. The typos lose their hiding place.

Choosing and Working with a Professional Proofreader

You want a pro who fits your book and your workflow. Not a generalist. Not a fixer of prose. A finisher. The person who spots small leaks before launch.

Start with fit

Match experience to the project.

• Genre. Memoir, fantasy, academic history, business, each one has different conventions. A romance series needs clean scene breaks and tight dialogue punctuation. A technical manual needs stable tables and number formats.
• Workflow. InDesign, Vellum, Google Docs to InDesign, EPUB/KF8. Pick someone who knows your toolchain and common failure points.
• Style guide. Chicago Manual of Style, New Hart’s, APA. Confirm the dictionary used for spelling and hyphenation.

Questions to ask

• What genres land on your desk most often.
• Which tools do you work in, and how are annotations delivered.
• Which style guide and dictionary do you follow by default.

A quick anecdote. A thriller author hired a brilliant copy editor, then brought in a proofreader who mainly handled academic journals. Running heads looked fine to that proofreader, but chapter opener spacing felt off for trade fiction. The author swapped to a trade specialist and headaches stopped.

Run a small test

Request a 5 to 10 page sample. Include a chapter opener, some dialogue, a list, a figure caption, and a few numerals. Make the sample reflect the whole book.

What to look for

• Clear markup. Comments make sense. Symbols or stamps match BSI or CMOS standards.
• Precision. Missed doubled words or straight quotes in the sample point to trouble later.
• Style grip. Hyphenation and capitalization decisions line up with your style sheet.
• Queries. Polite, specific, and rare. A query should ask for a decision only where rules do not cover the case.

Simple test prompt to send with the sample

• “Please enforce CMOS 17 and Merriam-Webster. Serial comma on. En dashes for ranges. Scene break symbol: three spaced asterisks. Running heads: author name on verso, title on recto. Mark on PDF and supply a short errata list.”

Set scope and deliverables

Keep the brief tight. Proofreading is mechanical and layout focused.

In scope

• Typos, punctuation slips, spacing, bad line or page breaks, awkward hyphenation.
• Page furniture. TOC alignment, running heads, folios, chapter opener placement.
• Numbering. Figures, tables, notes, references, cross-references.
• Format integrity. Smart quotes, italics, bold, dashes, ellipses spacing, nonbreaking spaces, embedded fonts.

Out of scope

• Rewriting sentences, restructuring paragraphs, or moving chunks of text.
• New content, new figures, new references.

Deliverables to request

• Marked-up PDF or marked-up print proofs.
• A consolidated corrections list. Format example: page:line, issue, fix.
• Queries for ambiguous cases.
• A short verification pass after corrections are applied.

Phrase that in your agreement. No surprises later.

Align on logistics

Nail the boring stuff early.

• Schedule. Send date for proofs. Return date for marked files. Window for verification.
• Rates. Per word, per page, or per hour. Ask for a range and a not-to-exceed number tied to page count.
• Support hours. Time zone, typical response window for queries, emergency contact during upload week.
• Dispute handling. If a copy edit choice clashes with proof standards, who decides. Set a tie-breaker rule using the style sheet.

Red flags

• Pressure to rewrite at proof stage.
• Vague rates with no estimate.
• No sample offered and no references.
• Annotations that feel messy or hard to follow.

Good signs

• Requests for your style sheet, previous editor’s notes, and design specs.
• A clear workflow for versions and file names.
• A default set of proof marks that match publishing norms.
• A promised verification pass.

Share the right files at the right time

Send everything a proofreader needs to enforce consistency.

• Final copy-edited manuscript in PDF or laid-out pages.
• The copy editor’s style sheet. If none exists, draft a one-page list with spelling decisions, hyphenation choices, numbers, and treatment for lists and headings.
• Design specs. Fonts, sizes, leading, margins, running head rules, scene break symbol, recto and verso plan.
• Any special elements. Foreign terms, code blocks, endnote style, image credits, permissions language.

Book the proofreader before typesetting starts. Slots fill fast. Getting on the calendar avoids a scramble.

Working together without friction

A simple flow keeps errors from creeping back in.

1. Proofreader delivers marked PDF and a corrections list.
2. You review queries. Answer in comments or in a short memo. Avoid new prose.
3. Designer or typesetter applies fixes and returns revised proofs.
4. Proofreader runs a verification pass. Anything missed gets flagged.
5. You sign off and export for print or digital.

Keep version control tight. File names like Title_Proofs_RC1 and Title_Proofs_RC2 prevent old problems from returning. A one-line change log per round helps everyone track decisions.

A short outreach email you can borrow

Subject: Proofreading sample request for [Book Title]

Hi [Name],

I am preparing [Book Title] for [print, EPUB, or both]. Genre: [genre]. Word count: [count]. Workflow: [InDesign or Vellum]. Style: CMOS 17 with Merriam-Webster.

Would you review a 5–10 page sample and share a quote. I am looking for a marked PDF, an errata list, and a brief verification pass after corrections. Target dates: page proofs on [date], corrections due [date].

Please share rates, availability, and two references.

Thanks,
[Your Name]

Treat this relationship like any professional hire. Respect the schedule, answer queries fast, and resist late changes. A steady partnership here saves money, protects reader trust, and keeps your book looking sharp.

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