Proofreading by definition comes at the end of most publishing projects, and for that reason is the part of the process most frequently put off or even ignored. One of the most thankless aspects of the proofreader’s job is to have a job cancelled by clients who decide at the last moment to make do with what they have.
The problem is that proofing is not built in to most project managers’ timetables. It becomes an add-on, and therefore an after-thought. Which is a bit of a surprise, given that project pipelines are built precisely to be testable for weaknesses at multiple points in the process.
Imagine that the shirt you bought turned out to be lacking a button, or that your new screen had some broken pixels; or that the self-assembly furniture pack was missing one screw. Twenty years ago, perhaps. But now, quality control is so good that these things simply never happen. And as a result, the companies do very well who churn these products out day after day to satisfy the demand of their millions of customers.
Missing components, incorrectly fitted parts, poor quality manufacture; in the world of engineering, such errors are picked out by rigorous quality control at every stage. These days QC is invariably a blend of the automated and the human, but the fact is that it happens at every stage, from planning to dispatch.
With written text, however, it is a whole different story. It seems that people are content to put up with failure, not just in the writing itself (which often defies the rules of anybody’s grammar, let alone agreed standards) but also in terms of quality control, be that fact-checking or correcting misplaced commas, dashes or brackets.
Failure to pick up a tiny error at the start of a process can lead to it becoming embedded, like a splinter, at all subsequent stages of the process: once the initial pain has worn off, it’s less likely that anyone will notice it… until infection sets in.
So, here’s a plea to all clients, past, present and potential. Please build in proofreading from the very start. Budget for it — just a small amount at a time is fine — and you will save yourself a lot of effort and cost further down the line.