Correctors of style: the trade of the word workers

“In a way we are very anonymous, we are discreet. We appear less and less, even than translators, because a recognized translator even appears on the cover page. Not us. In good words, and I am pleased to feel that way, we are workers of the word,” says Fernando Alviar Restrepo, president of the Colombian Association of Style Correctors (Correcta), which had its third convention within the framework of the Bogotá International Book Fair.

The style checker is the person who reviews a text before their actual readers do. It is a silent and lonely work: it makes adjustments to make the text as clear as possible, amends mistakes that the author accidentally made, checks that the print is pleasing to the eye and does not omit paragraphs from the original manuscript, adjusts bibliographic references and a thousand other things.

Sometimes, the work of the proofreader is recognized in a line on the legal page of books or in a brief mention of the team of a publisher. In others, his work is only recognized with money and a handshake. However, being a word worker, as Alviar says, is a comforting job in more ways than one: in addition to leaving valuable knowledge on various subjects and satisfying the human need to share a job well done, style correction is often the first step to building a fulfilling life.

This was the case of Samuel Currea, who is a literary by profession and began his professional life as a teacher of basic education. Believing that he would dedicate his entire life to teaching, he went on to take postgraduate studies in education. A decision by his employer made him change his path.

“I got to style correction because I was a school teacher and I left because of staff cuts. Many of us arrived a little by coincidence, but we moved on because most of us like it a lot,” says Currea.

In the case of Fernando Alviar, his professional training meant him to be a translator, but he confesses that he has never practiced that trade. A university journal of public health from the University of Antioquia, his alma mater, was his first step towards correction as a life profession.

The two proofreaders point out that they began to learn empirically the minutiae of the trade. Like most word workers, the beginning of their journey was lonely. Being part of Correcta, a trade union association with approximately eighty members, has allowed them to share experiences on tools, risks and vulnerabilities.

“We are part of an invisible trade. That leads us to think we're kind of self-conscious. Perhaps so, but it is very important to recognize that, like every union, there are needs to define policies, to defend the trade. As we have traditionally worked - especially in recent times - independently, at home, where he works very alone, he sometimes forgets”, says Alviar.

“We formed this group because we want those of us who arrived by coincidence and have some vocation, some interest in continuing to train as proofreaders, to have this space. It is a support, we exchange knowledge: the most experienced ones help those who are newcomers and there is a lot of diversity of knowledge”, says Currea, who is today the treasurer of the association.

The group of professionals dedicated to proofreading is quite heterogeneous: in addition to people trained in various disciplines of the human sciences, there are scientists, health professionals, engineers and lawyers, among other professions.

“With enough preparation, it should and should be done by anyone. I am not saying that anyone will do it, but that this is a profession that needs many fields of knowledge. We need people who know medicine, who know engineering, who know library science. So, it's not that anyone can do it, but we need people from all areas to give us a taste of every knowledge, because you can't write and correct without having that technical knowledge,” says Currea.

Of course, the guild insists that correction should not be taken as a ravine. “We have just mentioned a case from Argentina: last year a very big controversy was created because they invited, in the context of the pandemic, that if you were stranded from work, you start correcting. No, no, no, no, no!” , says the director of Correcta.

For those who do not feel a passion for texts and their forms, proofreading can be an eleven stick shirt: in few universities they teach how much to charge for that work and the large publishing industry takes advantage of the professional's ignorance to pay less and less.

Style correction also forever changes the experience of approaching any text, even those that are read for personal taste:

On the other hand, it can be a sedentary trade and there is no way to do it perfectly. “No text is perfect and we know what we're in between, but the audience isn't and the bosses don't either. So, many times a mistake escaped him and it's just where he puts the eye or the boss or the public,” says Alviar.

More experienced proofreaders are not afraid of the future, because they have already experienced other scenarios in which they were threatened to be replaced by technology and it did not pass. In the case of Alviar, he experienced the transition between paper correction and the leap to technology.

“At first I didn't want to move on to Word, but now I teach Word courses almost as an expert. I resisted a lot because digital intimidates me, because I preferred to correct on paper. Now I am defending Word: it is a machine that, due to the development it has and the amount of tools it offers, makes the work of the proofreader much faster. The world evolves and you have to be in tune with that,” says the experienced proofreader.

He assures that the proofreader is no longer limited to books and his services become increasingly necessary: “We are no longer just running books. Corrected reports of successful companies, the largest in the country, asking for style correction. Those reports are now books, well printed, well edited, well diagrammed. In addition, with the web, with digital formats, a lot has opened up to us as a field of work.”

KEEP READING: