It is important for you to clarify your role with the author or supervisor assigning the proofreading tasks. You must not act outside of your role without clearing the action with the author or supervisor.
Writer
The writer produces the manuscript. The distinction between your role and the writer's role is clear. The distinction is less clear for the other roles you might assume.
Co-author
The co-author alters the writer's manuscript to create a blend of the two writers' styles and content preferences. A co-author is usually free to add, modify, or delete at will, noting the changes so the original author is able to approve or not approve the changes.
Editor
The editor receives the manuscript from the author or co-authors and rewrites as necessary to make the manuscript clearer and more mechanically correct. An editor has some latitude, but cannot change content or make alterations that depart notably from the original text.
Proofreader
The proofreader usually checks the document for mechanical errors, inconsistencies, and publishing errors. As such, the proofreader limits his or her actions to marking specific errors. The proofreader does not normally suggest changes in style or meaning. In this lesson, you will learn the proofreader's marks. The marks all pertain to mechanical errors (capitalization, punctuation, spacing, and so forth). There are no proofreader's marks for "reorganize this paragraph," or "delete this nonsensical phrase."
Most authors will expect you to limit your activity to marking mechanical errors and may be very put off if you change their text. You must clarify your role with the client before you begin so that you don't overstep your bounds. You may discover that the author really does want you to edit, or even co-author. However, always assume that your role is to mark errors unless the author specifies otherwise.
Examples:
This is the author's original text:
"Though we have hinted at it; we have never formally explained a general method of organizing your time as a supervisor which we recommend for your work with individual teachers."
The co-author could rewrite it to be this:
"We have been meaning to explain how we suggest that you organize your time so you can work more successfully with teachers."
Notice that the meaning has changed and words have been added, changed, and deleted. Only a co-author has that latitude.
The editor could rewrite it to be this:
"We have hinted at a general method of organizing your supervision time that we recommend for your work with teachers, but have not explained it."
The editor has reworded the sentence to make it clearer, but has not altered the meaning.
The proofreader could mark the following errors:
"Though we have hinted at it; [comma, not semicolon] we have never [not] formally explained a general method of organizing your time as a supervisor which [that] we recommend for your work with individual teachers."
Proofreaders are, by nature, good writers. They want to rewrite awkward text. However, you must clarify your role with the client to see whether he/she wants you to be involved at that level. If you co-author or edit text, you may make your client very angry.
In this course, we do permit some minor editing. In the diagnostics, we mark those as "editing" changes to make it clear that the client may not want you to work that extensively with the document. We also believe that very bad sentences and superfluous or redundant words are errors that the proofreader may correct.