Not everyone was an English major. Me included. So, often when I’m working through content edits on a project, I’ll encounter a mark that simple doesn’t compute. To me, a proofreader’s marks = a secret language of sorts, like the shared speak of twins, the lost language of Latin, or that glorious dialect known affectionately as… Pig Latin. I won’t tell which of these I know, but let’s just say I don’t have a twin.
In a world where the handwritten word is a rarity, where edits are often given in Dropbox comments, a thread in your project management software, or “Track Changes” in Microsoft Word…I find these marks rare, elegant, and dare I say …sophisticated.
And, I figure I can’t be the only person who forgets what the transpose sign is every once and while. So here is a reference I created with my take on the marks for not just me, but also my fellow creatives & colleagues in the event any of us have the luck and pleasure of working with English majors.
Period 
Space 
Delete aka a nice way of saying— get rid of this immediately… 
Paragraph 
Lowercase 
Spelling 
Capitalize 
Superscript aka make these characters tiny and above the others. 
Subscript aka make these characters tiny and below the baseline of the others. 
Italics 
Bold 
Comma 
Remove Space 
Transpose aka Swap these! 
Nevermind! Leave it! aka Stet 
Em dash aka quit being lazy and expecting the computer to make a long dash for you.
It’s shift + option and the dash sign in case you forgot. 
Spell out 
Align 
Back to all posts
