Proofreaders

Joyce Jones

Shortly after moving to Chapel Hill, I was attending services at the Chapel of the Cross and looking over Crossings and the service leaflet when a typo (that's short-speak for typographical error) flew up and hit me in the face. It was a three-letter word; and there were five different letters, any of which, when used as the last letter, spelled a word. Four were ordinary words and the last was one not normally found in a church bulletin. (You guess!)

That motivated me to volunteer my services as a proofreader.

Typos are one of the numerous hazards faced by publishers of printed materials. They are one of the reasons that a number of unnamed, unseen volunteer proofreaders are regularly checking the various publications at the Chapel of the Cross.

For example, each Thursday morning, volunteers come to the parish office and get print-outs of the two already prepared Sunday bulletins, along with the original items submitted for inclusion. Also needed are a Book of Common Prayer, a Bible and a Hymnal for liturgical reference. After the volunteers finish making changes and corrections, the papers are turned over to staff members for final proofing before printing.

The same procedure is followed monthly with Cross Roads as well as variously weekly, monthly, annual, or occasional Chapel of the Cross publications.

Proofreaders check for typos, misspelled words and names, errors in grammar and punctuation, coherency of writing and overall clarity of the items. But despite all the efforts of numerous proofreaders, you'll still see an occasional goof in our parish publications.