March 8 is National Proofreading Day. What does proofreading have to do with engineering?

Quite a lot for engineers who want to avoid situations like those reported in CR4’s OH CR4P! blog. Over the last six months, this blog has published the sad stories of overweight Spanish submarines, a passenger jet cum glider and the end of a space shuttle replacement program. Each of these posts demonstrated to readers the sort of mistakes that a heads-up proofreader would have caught.

Mistakes that do not snowball into a disaster can still have a negative impact on readers.

Misspellings, misplaced punctuation and incorrect grammar can affect the meaning of a piece of an engineering report. A sloppily written technical memo or email leaves a poor impression on the reader.

Writers can proofread their own everyday writing to catch and fix general mistakes. A proofreader that regularly works with technical information will notice errors like mismatched units, an error that is known to have caused several OH CR4P! disasters.

What does a proofreader do?

Many folks confuse copy editing and proofreading. Copy editors address a document’s composition by considering organization, continuity, consistency, completeness and diction, among other elements. The proofreader’s job derives from the days when the proofreader literally compared a proof — a typeset version of a document — with the final version of an author’s manuscript. A proofreader corrected any deviance in the printed proof and the author’s manuscript.

Proofreading for an online publication like Engineering360 covers punctuation, spelling, capitalization, numbers and formatting, as well as checking for correct sentence structure and grammar. Since the proofreader is the last person to see a document prior to publication, their role can overlap with that of a copy editor. Occasionally, new errors creep in during copy editing; the proofreader’s final pass ensures that a manuscript’s final version is the best it can be.

Can an online tool replace a human proofreader?

An Engineering360 article looked at spell checkers and grammar checkers. Both tools continue to improve so that error checkers commit fewer mundane errors like accepting “two” when “too” is correct. Most readers have chortled at smartphone type ahead bloopers, but this kind of error is also partly the fault of speedy or clumsy typing, not the underlying software.

And such tools are proliferating. Capterra recently listed 17 online tools, one creatively named Proofreading Tool. Different applications offer different functions, ranging from simple grammar, punctuation and spelling checks to more complex functions like style checks and plagiarism detection.

Most of the applications on Capterra’s list had few or no reviews. Traffic Crow offers a list of 15 free proofreading applications, some of which, like Grammarly, WhiteSmoke, Ginger and AfterTheDeadline appear on the Capterra list as well. Some software claims to specialize in particular kinds of writing, such as Atomic Reach for marketing copy.

To decide if any of these tools are worth using, a writer needs to test likely candidates against the kind of prose the software is going to proofread. Feed the software some documents with known issues and see whether the result meets personal or corporate standards for accuracy and clarity. The standard might not be perfection but rather elimination of specific kinds of errors that machines are good at finding, leaving a final review for human eyes.

Do it the old-fashioned way

Many engineering schools require undergraduates to complete coursework in technical writing or offer a technical writing track as an optional track to satisfy freshman English requirements. For engineers that have not flexed their writing and editing muscles in a while, the lure of editing and proofreading software can be tempting. Human proofreading does not have to be difficult, provided the reader knows what to look for and pays attention to details.

Plenty of helpful resources are offered online. This list of proofreading techniques is a good roadmap. The University of Toronto’s Engineering Communication Program presents additional advice clearly and succinctly.

Can a good proofreader stop looking for mistakes? Probably not. The author of this article found a glaring error while doing research. One blog writer wrote the following about Atomic Reach in a post about AI proofreading services (emphasis added):

With more than three articles already in its database, and more being added all the time, Atomic Reach is getting smarter all the time.

Hmm. More than three articles in an AI training database? Most knowledgeable readers would not be impressed. The correct figure in 2017, when the post appeared, was three million. An error like this in the blog for a company that offers proofreading services does not inspire confidence, especially since the blogger has had two years to make a correction.

The National Day Calendar website suggests proofreading one’s writing and posting #NationalProofreadingDay on social media. A better way to celebrate would be to proofread every day, even, and especially, email. The next celebration for grammar aficionados is National Punctuation Day, September 24.