[bksvol-discuss] Tip for proofreading

  • From: "Chancey S. Fleet" <csflee@xxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 23:06:27 -0500

I just wanted to share a minor discovery I made tonight, that's helpful if 
you're print-disabled or just don't have the hard copy book you're trying to 
validate.

    As you may know, Google just doubled its page index, bringing in material 
from a bunch of new file types.  This makes it increasingly likely that if you 
Google a line from a book you're working with, in quotations, you'll get back 
either an excerpt from the book or the whole thing.  Out of five books I tried, 
I got two incidences of no luck, two full books online, and one excerpt with 
the text surrounding the line I Googled.  the online text enabled me to find 
out the chapter numbers and titles for a book that had garbled chapter headings 
but was otherwise of excellent quality.  I don't know if these online copies 
are legal so I won't mention the books by name, and please, please use this as 
a proofreading tool rather than a way to yoink texts that you didn't really 
scan (I'm sure these documents have fingerprints of some kind, and you can't 
ever be 100% sure that the online text is complete).  But if you're lucky 
enough to discover an online paralel to the book you're scanning or validating, 
it can definitely take some of the guesswork and headache out of proofing.

    Best,
    Chancey Fleet

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