Manuscript proofreading: a guide for novelists

i. What a proofread covers

A proofread is a surface pass, and it should be the last one. Developmental editing settles structure; a line or copy edit settles rhythm, repetition and continuity. Only when the words have stopped moving is there any point checking them letter by letter. Proofread earlier and you will do it twice.

• — Spelling, including proper nouns and invented names.
• — Grammar: agreement, tense drift, dangling and misplaced modifiers.
• — Punctuation: comma splices, dialogue punctuation, apostrophes, dashes and ellipses.
• — Hyphenation and compound words, applied consistently across the book.
• — Consistency: character and place names, capitalisation, numerals, dates and times.
• — Word choice where a word is plainly the wrong one, not merely a weaker one.

What it does not cover: voice, pacing, whether a scene works. Deliberate fragments, dialect and unconventional punctuation in a distinctive narrator are style, and a good proofread leaves them alone.

ii. UK Oxford rules versus US conventions

Pick the variant of the market you are submitting to and hold to it for the whole manuscript. Mixing the two is one of the most common things a first reader notices.

Consistency matters more than the choice itself.

iii. A chapter-by-chapter method

1. 1. Freeze the draft. Save a dated copy. Every correction from here is recorded against that file.
2. 2. Set your variant. Decide UK Oxford or US and set your word processor's language to match, for the whole document rather than the selection.
3. 3. Build a style sheet. One page listing character and place spellings, invented terms, numerals versus words, and your hyphenation choices. Every later decision is checked against it.
4. 4. Work one chapter at a time. Read for error, not for story. If you find yourself enjoying it, you have stopped proofreading.
5. 5. Change the presentation. A different font, a narrower column, or read-aloud will surface errors your eye has learned to skip.
6. 6. Log, then apply. Collect notes with the quoted text and the fix, then apply them in one pass so you can see the shape of your habitual mistakes.
7. 7. Re-check what you touched. Corrections introduce corrections. Reread each amended sentence in full.

iv. Errors particular to fiction

• — Dialogue punctuation. A speech tag takes a comma and a lower-case tag: “I know,” she said. An action beat takes a full stop: “I know.” She turned away.
• — Interrupted speech. A dash for an interruption, an ellipsis for a trailing off. Choose one convention and keep it.
• — Tense drift. Past-tense narration slipping into present for a paragraph of interiority.
• — Name and place consistency. Names acquire variant spellings over a long draft, especially invented ones.
• — Thought formatting. Italics, quotes or neither, applied the same way in chapter one and chapter thirty.
• — Numbers and time. Spelled out in narration, numerals in headings and documents, decided once.

v. Where automated proofreading helps

An automated pass is not a replacement for a good human eye, but it is tireless in the way a human at chapter thirty-one is not. It reads the last page with the same attention as the first, holds the whole book's spellings in view at once, and returns a list you can work through rather than a marked-up file you have to interpret.

That is how Marginalia works. You upload a .docx or .pdf, choose UK English on Oxford rules or US English, and the manuscript is read chapter by chapter. Each note carries the chapter, a verbatim quotation, the issue and a suggested fix, so nothing is invented and nothing is applied without your say-so. Accept the notes you agree with and download a corrected .docx, or take the PDF report to your own edit pass. The first chapter of every manuscript is proofread free.

vi. Questions

What is the difference between proofreading and copy-editing?

Copy-editing reshapes sentences, tightens repetition and queries continuity. Proofreading is the final pass: spelling, grammar, punctuation, hyphenation and consistency, with the prose otherwise left alone. Proofread after your last structural edit, not before.

Should I use UK or US English in my novel?

Use the variant of the market you are submitting to, and apply it consistently. UK English on Oxford rules uses -ise or -ize consistently, single quotation marks for speech in many house styles, and full stops outside quotation marks where the quoted matter is a fragment. US English uses -ize, double quotation marks, and commas and full stops inside the quotation marks.

How long does it take to proofread a manuscript?

A human proofreader typically covers 3,000 to 5,000 words an hour, so a 90,000-word novel is roughly three working days. An automated pass over the same manuscript completes in minutes and gives you a note list to work from before or instead of a human pass.

Can automated proofreading invent errors?

It can, which is why every Marginalia note is anchored to a verbatim quotation from your own manuscript. If the quoted passage is not in your book, the note is discarded before it reaches your report.