If you have a proofreading service and are looking for more proofreading jobs, ever thought of hitting up court reporting firms? Court reporters desperately need a good proofreading service for their deposition and trial transcripts. And there are tons of court reporters in sue-happy America. If your proofreading service already includes court reporters for clients, here are proofreading tips on how to dramatically improve your product.
These proofreading tips assume that you do proofreading of the court reporters’ transcripts right off the computer screen. In fact, if you’re proofreading hardcopy, this is wasting a ton of paper and ink, not to mention time with the printing process; some court reporter transcripts can be up to 300 pages.
Ever calculate the money spent on all that paper and ink? When this is factored into your pay-per-page rate, the difference this makes becomes unpleasantly clear.
When proofreading off of hardcopy, your seating position is limited. When I do proofreading off the screen, I can lean back and put my arms and hands just about anywhere. This is better ergonomically.
When you’re proofreading off hardcopy, your flagging system is impaired. When I proof off the screen and a proper name doesn’t look right, and I know that somewhere else in the transcript, that name came up, I will flag it so that at the end, I can reference it. I flag anything that doesn’t seem right. Use any symbol for flagging, then do a FIND on that symbol when finished proofreading. What a quick, efficient way to check things I’m not sure of.
This cannot be done if proofreading off of hardcopy. It is said that more errors will be caught off of a hardcopy read. Sez whom? If proofreading off the screen, think of how quickly and efficiently the proofreader can scroll back every time there’s a need to refer to something that popped up maybe eight, 15, 22 or 70 pages ago.
Of course, on the screen, the proofreader can do a spell check, which will pick up only spelling errors, not steno errors. After that, do a FIND on the following common steno errors, which are transposed words:
would have you
would do you
did do you
do have you
did have you
what do to
ask to you
while were you
to you do
The FIND will eliminate the need to carefully read through similarly-phrased words while proofreading, saving time. The proofreader can easily miss “Did do you” if he or she is drowsy, but the FIND will take care of that.
Do a FIND on “whose” and “who’s” because these are often transcribed incorrectly.
If an attorney is female, do a FIND on “Mr.” before her last name! It’s amazing how common it is for the court reporter to insert “Mr.” before a female attorney’s name.
Do a FIND on “anyway” and “any way” as well, because often, court reporters will transcribe these incorrectly.
