Proofreading

Proofreading

Our main mission
Proofreading

The proofreader’s eye

A spelling and grammar proofreader checker is not content with a perfect command of the rules governing his or her language. The professional proofreader has a faculty of concentration that allows him/her to systematically dissociate the meaning of words. Produced by a firm specializing in measuring eye movement – eyetracking – the video that follows reveals the rigor and precision of the eye of the professional proofreader at work.

Comparative study of two approaches to correction
of a text produced by eyetracking

Proofreading

The benefits of proofreading a text

Agent of value

The information shared by your company contributes greatly to its image. And the amount of information is constantly increasing. Faced with the continuous flow of information produced and shared by your company, it has become more common to let spelling mistakes or syntactic inconsistencies, for example, slip through. Mistakes left in a document can tarnish that image and, when added together, can damage your reputation.
Using a professional proofreader gives you greater security than having your texts proofread internally by someone with proven spelling skills. Indeed, a good command of spelling and grammatical rules does not guarantee perfect correction of mistakes. Entrusting your documents to the expert eye of a professional proofreader is a guarantee of quality that will enhance your image.

Agent of comfort

Reading documents on screen requires greater effort than reading them on paper (25% slower on screen).
Every spelling mistake the reader encounters distracts his or her attention. This cumulative effect of discomfort undermines the efforts made to attract and retain readers.
The respect of the typographic conventions is no exception to this rule. The proper use of spaces, capital letters, hyphens, etc. is often unknown to occasional writers. The final readers then suffer from not being able to find on screen the rules applied in the printed edition. Even they are often unaware of the existence of this code, which they come into contact with on a daily basis, each failure to follow this writing standard contributes to making reading more uncomfortable.

An unavoidable agent of the attention economy

The production of written documents is undergoing considerable development. Every day, we find ourselves more and more overwhelmed by a mass of information that is bound to keep growing. Faced with this overabundance, our attention is a limited resource that can easily be diverted.
Thus, a wobbly turn of phrase or a simple typo can divert our attention. They can distract us from the most promising readings. The economy of attention that know today gives online proofreading a new responsibility: to maintain the reader's attention and interest in any written document.

Additional human expertise

Human proofreading lies on the proofreader’s judgement, experience and critical sense. The proofreader’s eyes isolates and corrects what the spell checker (automatic correction software) ignores.
Each of our corrections offers a chance to avoid the contradictions, misinterpretations and errors that are so common in so many texts. Our interventions include recommendations and advice that go far beyond correcting spelling and grammar mistakes.