Very interesting post by WebRover, a volunteer at Distributed Proofreaders.
At Distributed Proofreaders, we are all volunteers. We are under no time pressure to proof a certain number of pages, lines or characters. When we check out a page, we can take our careful time to complete it.
We can choose a character-dense page of mind-numbing lists of soldier’s names, ship’s crews, or index pages. We are free to select character-light pages of poetry, children’s tales or plays. Of course these come with their own challenges such as punctuation, dialogue with matching quotes or stage directions. We can pick technical manuals with footnotes, history with side notes, or science with Latin biology names. We can switch back and forth to chip away at a tedious book interspersed with pages from a comedy or travelogue.
Every so often though, I stop and think about the original typesetters.
They didn’t get to pick their subject material, their deadline or their quota. They…
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Vauquer Boarding House 
Loved reading this, and I take off my hat to all of you for the wonderful work you do in bringing us these old texts:)
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Letting imagination run riot leaves lot of mess around. Proof reader’s service only add to the inspiration of the author and not what he had to do to achieve that.
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Proof-reading is very challenging! Interesting post.
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I can’t take credit for the post as I only re-blogged it. But I’ve proofread a lot in the past for Project Gutenberg.
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Oh I love this post, especially love the image you used, I am a huge fan of the work the monks did in preserving ancient texts. well done.
Live long and prosper
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Thank you, Joanne. No credit to me for the post or the image. I reblogged it from Distributed Proofreaders. (Another Spock fan here.)
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