There are many stories on the archive that have good characters, and ideas etc. but have bad or even terrible spelling, punctuation and grammar.

I have volunteered to edit stories involving minors who are penectomized or nullified but I have gotten no response.

I think we should have several different volunteers, each editing their favorite type of story. This way we could have readable stories without any one person having to spend too much time editing.

If anyone ever wanted to seriously pursue this idea, I'd be glad to help And any type of story is fine with me.

I sure agree that some "proof-reading", at least, is really needed. I am willing to act as 'editor' for any story and would find some enjoyment in being so useful! What's the requirement for such consideration?

For those who are thinking of offering themselves as proof readers I can only offer the following tips:

1/. If you have Word, try to get the Author to send the text in that format and use 'Track Changes' (on the Tools menu). If you do not have the same WP then you will have to use Notepad and highlight any changes you make manually.

2/. Do not rely too much on spell checkers they cannot tell the difference between 'waste' and 'waist' or 'waive' and 'wave'. There are too many 'proof readers' who will quite happily accept: "he put is arm around his waste" - that is fine if you are into scatology (shit).

3/. Put plenty of 'comments' into the amended text to explain why you are changing it. An author, if he is really interested, will appreciate the explanation, even if he does not agree with your opinion may modify the way he writes.

4/. Beware of changing dialogue. Unless you speak exactly the same dialect as the author, try not to change it. Speech patterns are very personal. The first story which I started attempting to 'proof read' was Waddie Greywolf's, 'The ties that bind' (on the archive). He is Texan and I am British, 'nuf said?

5/. DO point out where improvements in formatting could be made (with examples). If it is hard for you to read, then it probably will be difficult for most readers. Remember, the Author knows what he meant to say and doesn't always realise that it doesn't reflect this. This is how I started with Waddie and if you read the story you can definite see the improvement - in fact, Waddie eventually wrote the FAQ regarding stories and formatting them.

6/. Try to be diplomatic. It is very difficult to tell an Author that what he has written is crap, but sometimes it is necessary. If the story is reasonably good, but is confused in places then it is worth your while explaining this. If the story is crap from start to finish, diplomatically decline to continue with the Author.

7/. The story is the Author's baby and sometimes the birth is traumatic. Be prepared for the Author not to appreciate your efforts.

Finally, I wish you a lot of luck - you will need it.

Regards,

Colin

curious_guy (imported) wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2006 7:47 am There are many stories on the archive that have good characters, and ideas etc. but have bad or even terrible spelling, punctuation and grammar.

I have volunteered to edit stories involving minors who are penectomized or nullified but I have gotten no response.

I think we should have several different volunteers, each editing their favorite type of story. This way we could have readable stories without any one person having to spend too much time editing.

I've also offered to edit, but no-one is interested, it seems

colin (imported) wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2006 12:39 am For those who are thinking of offering themselves as proof readers I can only offer the following tips:

1/. If you have Word, try to get the Author to send the text in that format and use 'Track Changes' (on the Tools menu). If you do not have the same WP then you will have to use Notepad and highlight any changes you make manually.

Regards,

Colin

You can do something very similar with WordPerfect. This is from the WordPerfect 12 help:

Tracking document changes

Question

Can I use the WordPerfect document review functionality to track changes the way I would in Microsoft Word?

Answer

Yes, you can use document review functionality in WordPerfect to track changes in your documents.

Using WordPerfect, you can send a document to a reviewer, or multiple reviewers, to add comments or make revisions to the document. These revisions are also referred to as annotations. If you authored the document, you can open it to accept or reject the annotations.

If you send the document to multiple reviewers, the annotations of each reviewer are displayed in a unique color. All revisions display as strikeout text, and comments are displayed as red text. You can, however, modify the way annotations are displayed.

You are unable, however, to import revisions that were created in a Microsoft Word document.

I bought a copy of WordPerfect 12 from Surpluscomputers.com for $10 and it has a grammar checker which often makes some strange suggestions but it has spotted many places where I left out commas and quotation marks.