[bksvol-discuss] Re: proofreading questions
- From: "Judy s." <cherryjam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:03:51 -0500
Hi John,
I can answer the bit about books.google.com. It's unlikely that you
would want to change your page breaks in the scanned version .rtf to
match the Google copy. Your edition is probably a totally different
edition than the one that is on google books. I run into this all the
time. Books can have 20 or 30 different editions, or even more, and the
pagination will be different on each edition.
The missing dash problem could have from a whole bunch of causes. I
don't have a fix for you as a proofreader to handle that easily, unless
there is a specific consistent pattern you can use to do a 'search and
replace' for the missing em dashes. One idea from the pattern you are
seeing is to just do a search for space space and then replace each of
these that appear to be a missing em dash with a hyphen hypen, Someone
else here may have a better idea, though.
I'm also a sighted volunteer with limitations that don't allow me to
manipulate a print book. There are a few of us in that boat that are
volunteers here. I use google book and amazon peek both when available,
and when I can't get an answer I need there or from the person who
scanned the book I ask on the list if someone can find the book and scan
the page and send it to me.
Hope that helps,
Judy s.
On 7/26/2012 7:06 PM, John Simpson wrote:
I have several questions about the book that I am currently proofing.
First off, words that are followed by an "'s" have the apostrsphe over
the penultimate letter (e.g. Martin̓s). While this is not a
showstopper, it does require a fair amount of corrections. I guess my
question is what causes this kind of construction? Is it a function of
the scan volunteer, the scanner hardware, or the OCR software?
Secondly, I have gone to books.google.com to take a look at this book.
My question here is whether Google has a fair representation of the
book. I know that all but one page are present, but within the first
several chapters, the page breaks in the scanned version .rtf are not
in the same place as they are in Google's copy. I certainly don't want
to have to go through the entire book changing pagination based on
Google. I do have a hold at my local library for the print copy that
will help answer this question. Any other advice would be greatly
appreciated.
The third question is that in the scanned version that I have from
BookShare there are frequent instances of two spaces, rather than one.
The sense of the book is that there should be a comma where the first
space is. However, when looking at the Google version, this separator
is an m dash surrounded by spaces. All of these dashes have been
removed. Again, my question is whether this is a function of the scan
volunteer the scanner hardware or the OCR software. Again, I do not
wish to go through the entire print book looking for dashes that I
need to replace, or even to do a find on two spaces and see if the
meeting indicates a dash.
I am a sighted volunteer with physical limitations that do not allow
me to manipulate a print book. While I don't mind getting occasional
assistance to go to a specific page to verify my proofreading, I'm not
able to scan a print book and compare my scan to the BookShare .rtf
version. If the Google representation is accurate relative to the
print book, I will be happy to use that as a resource wherever possible.
Thanks for any and all suggestions.
John Simpson
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