My employer recently asked me to proof read our annual property review, which I did, but was chastised for not using the correct marks and symbols. Please could you explain what these are?
In order to simplify and standardise corrections to printers’ proofs prior to final printing it is now customary to use the approved symbols. This process is two fold: any alteration needed in the text must be marked in the text and the printer’s attention drawn to it in the margin of the text. The two together should leave the printer or compositor in no doubt as to the change, correction or alteration required by the author or client. One can imagine the problems for the printers if there was no standard procedure and everyone developed their own system.
Learning and using the standard should be part of a surveyor’s training because the same system should be used for correcting draft reports and all other printed or typed material.
The following represent the most frequently used marks:
“Marks for copy and proof correction” (BS5261C: 1976, published by the British Standards Institution) contains variations on some of the marks shown here and was intended to be the internationally accepted system. In practice, however, most publishers in the UK still use the traditional marks:
These paragraphs illustrate how some of the marks would be used in practice.
It is important to remember that printed material becomes increasingly more expensive to correct the closer one gets to the final print process. Where the error is attributable to the printer, his agent or his compositor, where material is reset, the cost will be met by the printer. Corrections by the author will be free up to an amount usually limited to 10% of the cost of composition. From a printer’s point of view authors’ corrections are strictly defined. If an author decides to rewrite a whole chapter of a book or a page of a brochure then they are likely to be viewed as changes, not corrections. An acceptable author’s correction would be, for example, where typed material sent to the printer contained a reference to the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 Part I and the author in fact meant to say Part II.
Material that is to be printed will usually be forwarded to the client or author in the form of galley proofs or page proofs which will either have already been corrected by the printer or will contain the printer’s own correction statements. It is essential, from a first point of view, to see that when these are returned to the printer they contain all corrections.
The next stage is a machine proof which is indicative of the final quality of the printing. Correction at this point of the text, particularly if colour printing is involved, can be very costly. For very short print runs publishers may request print ready material. Here the printer will reproduce exactly the material with which he has been provided. In-house printing usually requires the surveyor to provide the print room with the material in print form and the young surveyor is well advised to try to achieve that perfect standard with everything that he or she handles.