The Proof

I finished proofing Next Time this weekend and I’m glad I did. As I mentioned in the previous post, the eBook will be read by more people than the hard copy. Sad to say, I found two errors that needed correction. Sure, I contemplated leaving them since both were very minor, but putting out a product with known flaws would gnaw at me. The first was a similar error I found in the First manuscript, which makes me think I need to be sure and check for this situation next time around: an extra space after a period at the end of a paragraph, causing the closing quote mark to drop to a line by itself. I totally missed it during my numerous manuscript reviews and even in the print copy proof, probably because the human eye and brain are in a conspiracy. The second error I found was a complete miss of a possessive, another instance where my brain filled in the missing apostrophe-s. I’ll feel better getting these errors fixed. Can I guarantee the book is now completely free from errors? Goodness, no. It’s about as close as you can get without paying someone to proofread your book, though. I know, all the experts say to not do it yourself, but I have a feeling I read through my manuscripts more times than a lot of other authors, including reading it aloud at least once. That seems to do the proofreading trick.