Hire the Right People

Never ask me to proofread my own work. I'm a terrible proofreader.

I learned that the hard way. I proofed a book for US schools about the start of World War II. I sent it to print with the wrong date for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

It was NOT December 7, 1942. It was a whole year earlier.

That was clearly a calamitous error. The book had to be withdrawn and pulped.

It wasn't that I didn't *know* the correct date. It was that I didn't notice it was wrong.

It was an expensive mistake for the publisher. And it was highly embarrassing for me, given that history was my editing specialty.

Since then, I've never trusted myself to check my own work and nor should you.

People working on a book have different priorities.
🧠 A writer thinks about how words go together to communicate meaning.
🧠 A fact-checker thinks about accuracy of information.
🧠 A copy editor thinks about structure, consistency, and polish.
🧠 A line editor thinks about spellings
🧠 A proofreader thinks about checking everything is alright.

Asking anyone to fulfil more than one of those roles is asking for disaster.