Proofreading marks

[Schnicklefritz]

Does anyone in the printing industry ever use proofreading marks? I used them often in the early 1980’s for a print shop that typeset galleys for Silicon Valley technical manuals. They were very useful in getting edits done correctly. The marks were shorthand for insert, move text, align, indent, delete, transpose, etc. I searched the web for a list of the marks and what I found was quite a bit different than those I learned 38 years ago.

One example I found was http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/help-tools/proofreading-marks.html

These days I find myself using some of these marks in my prepress job, but am alone in doing so. But they do seem to get the message across and can save a lot of writing.

 

[gordo]

That made sense when the specifier (e.g. graphic designer, editorial dept) didn't format the document themselves - i.e. someone else did the document formatting. That's probably very rare occurrence now, well since the 90s anyway.

 

[Schnicklefritz]

That's true. Back then there was a formatter position that communicated edits (ACs or PEs) to typesetters either in the original manuscript or corrected galleys. I still like the marks and find them handy, even if I need to explain them once in a while.