Job Discussion Forums

[sista.ris]

Hi,
Can anyone suggest what I should be charging for website and academic document proofreading and correcting? I've been doing this for free but its occurred to me I may well charge for this. Is it a rate per page? per character? What are peoples experiences with supplementing their income this way? thanks!

[Harry from NWE]

25zl per 1,800 character page is about right. More if they want stuff done over the weekend or there is more than eight hours' worth (i.e. more than 32 pages) in one 24 hour period.

[maniak]

For free?

Well, it really depends who it is, timeframe, and the quality of the original work (since someimes its so bad it requires a rewrite), but anywhere from 11.50zl to 20zl a page.

Its decent if mindnumbing work.

[sista.ris]

[Jack Walker]

Sounds like you're being used!

[JPM]

Here in Krakow I used to charge 20zl gross per 1800 characters (industry standard number, and spaces between words count as characters). Sometimes a client will want you to quote per hour worked, rather than number of characters. If so, it really depends on you what value you put on your 60 minutes.

This year, what with business getting a little tight, I've reduced my rates a little. It's much easier to keep a client than to find a new one (although the work can be mindnumbing, it's comparatively easy, home-based work and makes a change from teaching).

Few proofreaders have regular work (i.e. a set of amount of pages per week/month) and it's hard to get a new, regular client although very easy to lose one (as I found when I spent two months in Asia last year).

And editing is entirely different from proofreading: editing demands very different skills and more of your time. I recommend agreeing a separate price for editing.

Hope this helps.

[dynow]

I have recently been offered some proofreading work. Pretty straight forward, a PhD student has about a 160 page paper that needs proofreading. She passed her CAE a few years back, her english is very strong (I've already seen two pages of her project, it's good) but I can see that at times I will need to restructure a sentence a tiny bit, things like that.

I need to come up with a price for her. I've never done proofreading work before, always kinda steered away from it, but it's August, work is slow, and after my 4 week vacation in the states, I could use the money.

JPM, you say 20zl. per 1800 characters. The 2 pages she sent me came to around 5500 characters. if her paper was 160 pages, she's looking at a 4800zl bill from me, which seems like too much money to ask. i calculated that the entire job would take me about 40 hours, which comes out to 120zl. per hour, which again seems too high considering i charge less than that for a private lesson but i really can't say how accurate 40 hours of work will be considering i don't have much experience with proofreading.

[Blasphemer]

[dynow]

blasphemer, yeah, i recently checked with a licensed translator on the matter and i got the same reply. her rate was 25-30zl. per 1500 characters, spaces included.

it's a shame, but i'll never get the job. the avg. pole doesn't have 4,000zl. laying around to pay for something like this.

[simon_porter00]

If her English is good (and I'd read the first 10 pages or so before accepting the job) then this is a very long boring weekend's work. Tell her what the market rate is - 4000zł, get her to check it out, and then charge her 1000zł.
Simples.
I'd do that only if level of writing was very high. Also make sure she's on the end of the phone at your disposal in case you've got any queries.

[dynow]

damn. 150 pages in a weekend? i could never do it, at least not well, in a weekend. this is her PhD final paper, I'm sure she wants it to be spotless.

1000 zl.??? if the market standard is over 4500+, wouldn't that be like doing private lessons for 15 zl. an hour?

idk. i knew my quote was going to give her a good laugh, I haven't gotten a return email nor do i expect to, but i guess i was just afraid of asking too little for the job and then having it turn into something much more involved than I had expected, i.e., return emails from her with all these questions about the paper, asking "why is this", "why is that", "can I write this", and "why did you change that".......it could turn into several hours of correspondence time. also, if the paper required editing, which I know it will require at least some, I would have to be writing to her with questions, making sure I'm not changing the meaning of sentences, etc.

Relying on someone to be near a phone and ready to answer questions, not to mention having the 150 page paper in front of them when I call, is unrealistic.

Basically, I figured going a little below industry standard would cover me if the job turned out to be more than it appeared to be.

[dynow]

i have a few questions for all the veteran proofreaders out there.

turns out, i got the job.

basically i would like to ask for some tips for making the proofreading go faster/smoother. it's 150 pages and it will be sent to me electronically, the girl doesn't live in Poland. when i correct written assignments from my students, i always ask them to print it out double spaced, it makes it much easier to correct/leave comments on the pages. i think i would much rather be looking at and correcting a hardcopy rather than trying to do all the corrections on the laptop. i've done it before on a computer and it's a total pain in the A$$. just going through text and marking it up with a pencil is far easier and more comfortable for me. the trouble with this obviously is that i would then have to send the hard copy by mail to this woman, and that's just scary.

anyway, i'd appreciate any advice on how to do this.

thanks y'all.

[hrvatski]

I'm no veteran but I would imagine what she wants is the file sent back to her all fixed up and ready to print, not to get the 150 pages back from you then have to go through every pencil-marked page herself and correct the file, possibly making more mistakes along the way.

I am aware there is some function in Microsoft word which can show what parts of a document you have changed and what was written there originally in a margin, I don't know how you turn it on though.

[Kofola]

Hi,

The easiest way to do it in Microsoft Word is to use the tracking device (on the drop down menu in tools). This allows you to change the text as much as you like and redo and undo corrections - the changes are shown in another colour of ink. (Particularly useful for editing paragraphs with major word order/syntax problems.) The author then simply chooses whether to accept or reject your suggestions. You can also write comments that appear in balloons in the margin if you wish to query anything. For the final read through, you can then select 'final' as opposed to 'final showing mark up', which allows you to read the final copy as it would look were the author to accept all your changes. Much easier than working on hard copy - works well for me.

I proofread/'rewrite' on a weekly basis, so happy to answer any more questions.

[dynow]

great advice Kofola. thank you.