Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lanl.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!houxm!whuxl!whuxlm!akgua!sdcsvax!dcdwest!ittvax!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!cmcl2!lanl!djw From: djw@lanl.ARPA Newsgroups: net.books Subject: How do you proofread electronically? Message-ID: <22428@lanl.ARPA> Date: Tue, 26-Feb-85 14:46:11 EST Article-I.D.: lanl.22428 Posted: Tue Feb 26 14:46:11 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 2-Mar-85 05:39:20 EST References:Sender: newsreader@lanl.ARPA Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory Lines: 31 I proofread many of our articles for the "C-Division News" by stealing an online copy of the article, fixing it with my favorite editor, then mailing the thing back to the author. People so far have been astounded that anyone "cares" enough to read the articles before publication that they have accepted the changes they liked and gone on about their business. However; I finally did this to someone who didn't care about what I was doing. He may even have felt just the tiniest bit of resentment. And furthermore, he couldn't easily see my changes. How do you people who do these things do them? I was a writer/editor for ~7-8 years, so I'm reasonably good at it, but I don't feel that marking up a paper copy is productive. I type well and am quite capable of fixing these articles to improve their readability, so what tools do you use if both copies look like disk files? I suggested that he "diff" the files and check the results but he said that that doesn't give him a feel for the context; and besides, that's too much trouble... If I had just given him a paper copy marked up as other people do (assuming he had gotten any other comments) he would have known what to do with it. I suggested that he print the one I "mailed" him and do whatever he wanted to with it. :<)* These articles are less than 300 words long, so I felt that his objections were directed more at my temerity than my style; but, what tools are available on a plain vanilla UNIX(tm) system? Avoiding the issue has never been my style. But if I am truly making his work inordinately hard, then I am wrong. What else could I have done? Thanks in advance. David Wade Los Alamos National Laboratories Consulting Office