June 28, 2007

• It’s All in the Words!

  I am proof reading a medical dictionary for Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins. Actually, I am proof reading just a part of it, and a small part at that. It’s been an interesting experience.

  The process has two stages. In the first stage, I was provided with a stack of galley proofs and was free to rewrite, add words, and delete words. That was fun and challenging. I did not intend to add words when I started, but I found that as I progressed, I did feel the need to do that because there seemed to be some holes to fill. I also rewrote many definitions fairly extensively. As an example, I removed the word antithetical from a definition. That word is not in common usage anymore and would not be familiar to most students. Looking it up would require the use of a standard dictionary because it is not a medical term and would not be in a medical dictionary. My experience with students is that if they encounter a definition with a lot of multisyllabic words that they don’t understand, they are going to write that definition down and move on without looking up the big words, especially if it requires the use of a second dictionary. That means that they do not really know the meaning of the word that they have defined and they are unable to use it correctly. I drive my students nuts asking them to define the words in definitions because I can see no point to learning a term if that term is not understood. To me, that is an exercise in futility. I spent a lot of time simplifying the definitions on my proofs. It was my contribution to better learning.

  Now, in stage two, I have another set of proofs to read. This time, my task is not to rewrite. In fact, my instructions are not to rewrite unless absolutely necessary because rewriting can change page length. I am to look for certain specific types of errors in form and to check to be sure that the pronunciations for all the words are written correctly. This part of the job is not as interesting. In fact, it’s rather tedious. This is a different set of pages than the one that I had before. It is easy to see that the person who had these words in round one was not interested in simplification. I can see the value in having more than one person look at a particular page set, though. It’s bound to reduce the number of errors.

  I mail my proofs back tomorrow. I’ll be glad to be finished. I can feel the strain on my eyes from looking at the small print for hours at a time. I’m really glad that I have had this opportunity, though. I think that I have learned quite a bit from it.

  • 8:26 am
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