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My friend Elizabeth (no, not that one) sent me a proofreading test about a month ago, for the company she works for. It came with a cover letter designed to look daunting, and I'd put it off for a while. Yesterday morning, I took out the purple pencils (my default copyediting/proofreading tools) when Andy started to shave.
I'd finished the thing by the time he was done showering. Two pages, and the errors were all realistic--"separate" misspelled, repeated words, a couple of places where the copyediting markup wasn't followed (I queried one of those, because I think the typesetter was right, and the instructions were to query anything we thought was a copyediting error).
Then I called Elizabeth, to say I was done with it, apologize for the delay, and ask whether I should send the cover instructions and "manuscript" back. She commented on how tricky it was.
Conclusion: either I'm damned good at this, or I missed a bunch of stuff. I think I'm damned good, but I'll know when/if they offer me work.
I'd finished the thing by the time he was done showering. Two pages, and the errors were all realistic--"separate" misspelled, repeated words, a couple of places where the copyediting markup wasn't followed (I queried one of those, because I think the typesetter was right, and the instructions were to query anything we thought was a copyediting error).
Then I called Elizabeth, to say I was done with it, apologize for the delay, and ask whether I should send the cover instructions and "manuscript" back. She commented on how tricky it was.
Conclusion: either I'm damned good at this, or I missed a bunch of stuff. I think I'm damned good, but I'll know when/if they offer me work.