Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!laura From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.books Subject: Re: How do you proofread electronically? Message-ID: <5146@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Sat, 2-Mar-85 09:08:13 EST Article-I.D.: utzoo.5146 Posted: Sat Mar 2 09:08:13 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 2-Mar-85 09:08:13 EST References:, <22428@lanl.ARPA> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 24 The person whose work you proofread may be uninterested in your help. I guarantee that if you had an account on utzoo and started proofreading ~laura/mem/fiction and ~laura/mem/poetry you would get a very hostile reaction from me -- especially since they are not publicly readable. If I am writing anything that is not code I have to revise it on paper and then put the changes into my text. Proofreading is simply something that I do with a pen in one hand. If the pen isn't there, I read for pleasure rather than critically, which is not the idea. (It works in reverse, as well -- if I have a pen in my hand I mark up the fiction I am reading...). Such habits are hard to break. It took me years before I could type my first draft at all -- before then I had to write the first draft in longhand. I know people who can type the first draft, but only on a typewriter -- a terminal doesn't feel the same and the words don't come. There is lots about writing which nobody, even writers themselves, understand. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura