[Abi Knauf]

Good evening,

I have some Assignment 5 Questions that I couldn’t find similar questions asked before in the forum…so hopefully, these questions help future student proofreaders too (well that is what I am justifying for myself so I don’t feel bad for this big post haha).

I am struggling with the consistency of the paragraphing for ‘There’s Nothing There.”

I am struggling to see how it should be laid out, as the first two pages are inconsistent with the last three pages. Do I, therefore, mark it up to be consistent with the last three pages as that is the dominant consistency and reduce the space between all paragraphs in the first two pages? If that makes sense…

Secondly, I have used a lot of r/o’s to show the flow that should be there where the lines are not running together (page 5 specifically), but I have used so many that I wonder if I should be rather using some kind of margin alignment.

Lastly, how can you insert two changes in the margin using one insert mark? For example, on page 8, it says ‘Silence”See, bach…’ So I would like to insert both a full stop and a space after the word Silence e.g. ‘Silence. “See, bach…’  Would I, in the margin, put a full stop circled and next to it a # before showing a correction is concluded mark? e.g.  (.)#/

Unless I am wrong and the text should actually read “Silence, see bach…”

Oh dear… my brain. I hope my queries make sense to the amazing person that will decipher my internal conflictions.

On a positive note… I really enjoyed this text and wonder if Dick left it as is – for the audience to speculate, or if he provided an ending.

 

[Contact NZIBS]

Hi Abi

A brief reply by Socratic method:

1. What pages look best to you?

2. What would the result of ‘alignment’ be?

3. How would you choose to communicate what you want to an experienced typesetter?

Best wishes, John

 

[Abi Knauf]

Thank you, John,

I suppose if I aligned the text, then I would still need to r/o because the sentence below would still leave a space that shouldn’t be there. It seems there is often more than one way of marking up, which in itself gets me in a tizzy because I want to do it accurately.

I am stuck on figuring out an example like below. I would have initially marked it up with r/o’s but then would margin alignment work too? And if it did work, would I still need to do a r/o below to reduce the space? I hope this makes sense.  By the way… true story!

She was so tired. She could not think clearly and her brain was turning to custard. She’d never                                                                                           experienced such exhaustion before. Who said having toddlers was a good idea. She loved                                                                                                  her son, but sometimes she wished he would just go to sleep

and sleep through the night. 

 

 

 

[Contact NZIBS]

Hi Abi,

I think I can see how the dilemma has arisen in your mind. This is my interpretation only, but to me, r/o tells the typesetter that the only thing needed is to remove space and that margins are fine. It is true that alignment may cause space to be removed and may lead to words moving from one line to another, but it is also saying that there is a problem with the margin of a line or block of type.

If I have misunderstood then please, anyone correct me.

To me your example is in need of r/0’s only and it is only unwanted space that needs to be removed. And I remember those days too!

[Dick Ward]

Hi,

Without the text in front of me the answer would be to use run on to get rid of unnecessary spaces within paragraphs. There is no need to worry about the margins.

If two corrections are needed for one space then show them, e.g. ‘ .#’.

The ending is as i wrote it. there isn’t any more. It’s left to the reader’s imagination as that is often more scary than anything specific.

 

[Rosemary Bamola]

Thank you Abi for your post and everyone’s comments. I had wondered about all the run ons and also the two corrections with one insert mark.

However, I am still unsure about the answer to your question about spacing inconsistencies between the paragraphs in the first two pages versus the remaining pages.  I think the last few pages look better so do I correct the first two pages to match?

Thanks,

Rosie

 

[Dick Ward]

Hi Abi,

Sorry for a delayed response but we have been hosting our son on holiday from the UK! In the assignments, especially regarding layout, look for the most consistent format and use this as your standard, e.g. are the majority of paragraph first lines indented or not, what is the spacing between paragraphs, is the text justified and so forth? In ass 5 there is some inconsistent spacing on the first page.