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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