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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