[bksvol-discuss] Re: proofreading questions

Hi Reggie,
 
Oh no!  You either need to leave the em dash, or replace it with two hyphens, 
not one hyphen.  One hyphen creats a compound word such as counter-top, or 
short-haired.  The em dash indicates a pause in thought such as She sat on the 
rock--thinking and wondering.  
 
Not beautiful examples, but they'll make the point.
 
Please ask if you have any questions about the use of em dashes.
 
Sorry if I have misunderstood what you are saying, as I think, rereading, that 
I did.
 
And you are correct that we are supposed to not have spaces surrounding em 
dashes or two hyphens, just smashed between the words they separate.
 
Sorry if I misunderstood what you said!  Please forgive me.
 
Mayrie
 
 


  _____  

From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Regina Alvarado
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2012 1:45 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: proofreading questions



Hmmmm! There was a decision made a while ago that – (M dashes) did not need the 
2 dashes, just one.  Perhaps someone took it to heart, not on this list I would 
bet, and took both dashes out.  I tend to believe it was the proofer.  The way 
I handle – is I put them up against the word before and after with only one 
hyphen/dash.  Many, many times I have seen spaces around the 2 dashes.  I do 
not know if that is scanning or books are being written that way now, but it 
helps with reading continuity in Braille to have the spaces taken out. 

Reggie

 

  _____  

From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Judy s.
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2012 9:04 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: proofreading questions

 

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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