The Best Way to Proofread a Web Site
Increasingly, proofreaders are expected to proofread web sites and other electronic documents as well as conventional printed books.
The most important advice is to avoid proofreading a web site solely on a computer screen. For some reason working on screen makes it far more likely that you will miss some mistakes.
It's best to print out the web site page by page and check each one on paper, where mistakes are much easier to spot. You can then send corrections back to your client's web site programmer in the form of a list of corrections, identifying each page of the site clearly by its URL. Alternatively, you could mark up corrections on the printed-out pages and submit them to your client in this form.
Another alternative, if you have the technical knowledge -- and the trust of your client -- is to get the necessary details from your client to access the site and make any corrections directly. To do this you will need an FTP (file transfer protocol) program, such as the free FileZilla program which can be downloaded from http://filezilla-project.org.
You will need to visit your client's server and download the HTML pages for the site, and then correct the source code on your own machine (be sure to keep a copy of the original code before you start making changes, in case it has to be restored later). Note that clicking 'View Source' in your web browser and getting the code that way isn't always possible, as web sites often include 'hidden' pages which won't appear in 'View Source', or else pages that aren't part of the proper source code will appear.
Once you have downloaded the files on to your own computer, you can simply correct the text in the normal way. A little experience of HTML programming might be necessary in order to avoid altering the critical functions of the site, but the parts you should and should not amend will generally be obvious. Note that unless your client has complete faith in you and your abilities, however, he is unlikely to authorize this method, as you could maliciously or mistakenly cause expensive damage to his web site.
About the Author: John Hamilton is Course Leader for the Professional Proofreading & Editing Course, the leading correspondence course for freelance proofreaders and editors, run by Maple Academy (UK). For full details see http://www.mapleacademy.com/maple.nsf/Courses/Professional+Proofreading+Course
More articles by John Hamilton
Print Article | Download PDF | 30 views | Jun 23 2008
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