HypnoHub - Looking for a proofreader.

T323

04/07/17 04:11PM

Looking for a proofreader.

Hello. I was recommended many times to find myself a proofreader. You see, English is not my native language and, despite the fact that I am slowly improving, quality of the text could have been way better.
(You probably already noticed that.)
So, who wants to volunteer?
(I am sorry if I am being rude.)

Lord_Derik

04/07/17 06:24PM

not at all T3, it's admirable that you want to improve the quality of your manips and while the mistakes aren't too glaring in my eyes, I'd definitely volunteer reading over anything you come up with.

Anon_3.141

04/07/17 06:56PM

Lord_Derik said:
not at all T3, it's admirable that you want to improve the quality of your manips and while the mistakes aren't too glaring in my eyes, I'd definitely volunteer reading over anything you come up with.

Agreed. Also, I'd like to volunteer as well.
[spoiler=My Qualifications as a proofreader.] I used to proofread essays for coursemates who wanted the help back when I was in college. (I provided basic grammar and spelling assistance for them. (Usually the ones that asked for help weren't native speakers of the English language.) Due to the fact that it wasn't me who had written the "backbone" of any of the essays, I would always try to leave their verbatim as unchanged as possible, which is why I stuck to basic spelling and grammatical alterations. If you change the word order too much, you end up changing the message the words are trying to put across. Also, because I worked with people who had learned English as a second language, I had to learn the basic conversational aspects of a fair few different languages, with Spanish being the one I ended up teaching myself to speak as fluently as I speak English. (The other major languages I ended up learning the basics of were French, Italian, and German, because those were the only ones my college offered besides Spanish (Which I also took.) and Latin (Which I'd already taken because I was working towards a degree in Physics, and Latin is useful in any of the Sciences.). I've been considering going back and taking the Russian and Japanese language courses that they're offering now, but I don't really have the time anymore to learn new languages via a college course... [/spoiler]

Lord_Derik

04/07/17 07:02PM

Anon_3.141 said:
Agreed. Also, I'd like to volunteer as well.
[spoiler=My Qualifications as a proofreader.] I used to proofread essays for coursemates who wanted the help back when I was in college. (I provided basic grammar and spelling assistance for them. (Usually the ones that asked for help weren't native speakers of the English language.) Due to the fact that it wasn't me who had written the "backbone" of any of the essays, I would always try to leave their verbatim as unchanged as possible, which is why I stuck to basic spelling and grammatical alterations. If you change the word order too much, you end up changing the message the words are trying to put across. Also, because I worked with people who had learned English as a second language, I had to learn the basic conversational aspects of a fair few different languages, with Spanish being the one I ended up teaching myself to speak as fluently as I speak English. (The other major languages I ended up learning the basics of were French, Italian, and German, because those were the only ones my college offered besides Spanish (Which I also took.) and Latin (Which I'd already taken because I was working towards a degree in Physics, and Latin is useful in any of the Sciences.). I've been considering going back and taking the Russian and Japanese language courses that they're offering now, but I don't really have the time anymore to learn new languages via a college course... [/spoiler]

O-O

well, that's an extensive resume there

Anon_3.141

04/07/17 07:06PM

Lord_Derik said:
O-O

well, that's an extensive resume there

Well, as a Theoretical Physicist, it's useful to have an extensive resumé. It means you're more likely to be hired when you have others competing against you for a position in the field. It was actually the fluency in Spanish that got me my position, funnily enough.

T323

04/07/17 08:04PM

Anon_3.141 said:
Agreed. Also, I'd like to volunteer as well.
[spoiler=My Qualifications as a proofreader.] I used to proofread essays for coursemates who wanted the help back when I was in college. (I provided basic grammar and spelling assistance for them. (Usually the ones that asked for help weren't native speakers of the English language.) Due to the fact that it wasn't me who had written the "backbone" of any of the essays, I would always try to leave their verbatim as unchanged as possible, which is why I stuck to basic spelling and grammatical alterations. If you change the word order too much, you end up changing the message the words are trying to put across. Also, because I worked with people who had learned English as a second language, I had to learn the basic conversational aspects of a fair few different languages, with Spanish being the one I ended up teaching myself to speak as fluently as I speak English. (The other major languages I ended up learning the basics of were French, Italian, and German, because those were the only ones my college offered besides Spanish (Which I also took.) and Latin (Which I'd already taken because I was working towards a degree in Physics, and Latin is useful in any of the Sciences.). I've been considering going back and taking the Russian and Japanese language courses that they're offering now, but I don't really have the time anymore to learn new languages via a college course... [/spoiler]

That's... impressive. Well, let's see. I think that my 'lazy manips' (small amount of text on the pic) are not that bad, so, if you don't want to, I will not send you their text.
Let's do it like this - I will send you text without picture, so you can proofread it. I am open to any ideas, though.

Anon_3.141

04/07/17 08:36PM

T323 said:
That's... impressive. Well, let's see. I think that my 'lazy manips' (small amount of text on the pic) are not that bad, so, if you don't want to, I will not send you their text.
Let's do it like this - I will send you text without picture, so you can proofread it. I am open to any ideas, though.

That sounds fine to me. And as for the point about "small amounts of text", it's easier to keep the original verbatim the same when there's less words to check. I accept the fact that I'm very likely guilty of accidentally altering some of the verbatim of a few of the 50+ page essays that I proofread for my coursemates. I know for certain that I accidentally changed the verbatim of at least one of the Psychology dissertations of a coursemate while proofreading it back in my Freshman year of college.

[spoiler=Regarding the images.]Being sent the picture(s) would actually help me for contextual purposes, because I can look at it to get an idea of what path your mind took to reach the "story" you want proofread (Which is something that will help me with keeping verbatim the same.). If your worry was that I'd be stressed from being bombarded by too much information, I'm going to say right now that I have to keep track of up to 7 different experiments at any given time while at work, and on average the minimum is 2. (I'm rarely only keeping track of a single experiment.) As such, there's no need to worry about me being overwhelmed. [/spoiler]

JksAccount

04/07/17 11:48PM

Anon_3.141 said:
(I provided basic grammar and spelling assistance for them. (Usually the ones that asked for help weren't native speakers of the English language.)

(The other major languages I ended up learning the basics of were French, Italian, and German, because those were the only ones my college offered besides Spanish (Which I also took.) and Latin (Which I'd already taken because I was working towards a degree in Physics, and Latin is useful in any of the Sciences.)

On one hand, you claim to be a master proofreader and a physicist. On the other hand, you don't close all of your brackets. Seems suspicious...

Anon_3.141

04/08/17 12:02AM

JksAccount said:
On one hand, you claim to be a master proofreader and a physicist. On the other hand, you don't close all of your brackets. Seems suspicious...

My keyboard is finicky, and I was having to keep an eye on a Discord chat to make sure I could still follow along with that conversation. I think I can be excused for missing a couple of parenthesis.

JksAccount

04/08/17 12:14AM

Anon_3.141 said:
My keyboard is finicky, and I was having to keep an eye on a Discord chat to make sure I could still follow along with that conversation. I think I can be excused for missing a couple of parenthesis.

Don't worry, I'm joking.

Friye

04/08/17 04:51AM

While Anon seems quite (over)qualified, I'd like to offer my services as well! I'm afraid I can only do so for British English however, even though English is not my native language either. I did successfully complete my first bachelor year for English grammar in university (dropped out after for different courses and reasons) and am a bit of a grammar- and spelling nazi ^^

I try not to let it show too much because it's not really polite to correct people and all that.

If you were to pick me for any of your projects, I'd like to ask - would you mind if I just sent you back corrected versions instead of pointing out what was wrong and why? Less back-and-forth that way and well... I try not to be rude, but I tend to get quite overzealous when it comes to correcting things.

Anon_3.141

04/08/17 07:49AM

Friye said:
While Anon seems quite (over)qualified [...]

And I'm not even an English Major. I'm a Theoretical Physics Major.

T323

04/08/17 11:27AM

Friye said:

That's actually an interesting idea. But... I am already working with Anon. Although, I must admit, sometimes it's good to work with a command of people.
I will think about this.

Zermelane

04/08/17 01:41PM

JksAccount said:
On one hand, you claim to be a master proofreader and a physicist. On the other hand, you don't close all of your brackets. Seems suspicious...

Maybe they're a quantum physicist. Those people seem to love unbalanced brackets (or bra-kets, as they like to pun them).

Anon_3.141

04/08/17 11:50PM

Zermelane said:
Maybe they're a quantum physicist. Those people seem to love unbalanced brackets (or bra-kets, as they like to pun them).

I'm a Theoretical Physicist. I did take courses in Quantum Physics while working on my degree, though, so the lack of closed brackets might have in part been subconsciously influenced by that.

T323 said:
That's actually an interesting idea. But... I am already working with Anon. Although, I must admit, sometimes it's good to work with a command of people.
I will think about this.

It might be a good idea to allow others to help as well. I'm not always going to be on here when you are (Some days I might not even be on here at all...), so having multiple proofreaders will more or less guarantee that your work gets proofread quickly. Sure, I might seem like the best out of the people who have volunteered, but sometimes "the best" simply isn't available for a few days.