What a rat! Boy, we've really gotta watch out for the snakes in the grass, don't we?

Just noticed that if you look on the right side of your home page, there's a section called "Got Scopist?" and the first option to click on is "Catalyst Scopist." I went there, and many list themselves as "scopist, proofreader." Dang, this place makes it too easy!!

Sent you some leads on scopists/proofers. Most of them are listed as scopists, but if you contact them you may find that they also do proofing. My proofer is also a scopist, and I think that's why she's so good. Good luck!

I know EXACTLY what you mean! I didn't use a proofer regularly for the first 8 months or so that I was working, and that may have been the stupidest thing I did. I killed myself by poring over every little detail, looking up everything under the sun, stressing about the small stuff. I highly recommend that you don't put yourself through the same torture.

The first few times that I tried a proofer, I used a legal service that just looked over the ASCII and then sent back an errata sheet, a list of page and line numbers with their suggestions as to where to insert commas and so forth. I felt that was more trouble than it was worth, so I went back to doing it myself.

Finally, I started using a proofer that uses my software so I could send her my file straight from my software and she could make the corrections right there instead of giving me a list of corrections to go back and make myself. I pay my proofer $.35 a page, and it is so worth it. If you use Eclipse, I will give you her info. If you're on Case, you can find a proofer here on csrnation or scopists.com.

If you're thinking you don't want to anyone to see the utter crap you're writing, call me and I'll talk some sense into you. :) They don't care about your slop strokes or drops. That was the bigges deal to me and took me a long time to get over. Learn from my mistakes! Lol

I'm not sure. To be honest, I would flag it and leave it for my proofer. :)

But if I had to make the decision myself....let me think.....I've had that come up several times in transcripts in Palm Springs, Palm Desert, etc. and they're referring to the Coachella Valley. Other times they've been referring to Temecula Valley. I oftentimes hear people refer to the Hemet-San Jacinto Valley. That makes me think that I would leave it uncapped and leave it to the reader to determine which valley is being referred to based on the context of the entire transcript.

It's probably not wrong either way, and I'm POSITIVE that no one but you will ever pause and say, "Hey, why isn't this capitalized?" Lol In fact, if you think of it from the reader's perspective, if it's capped, they may stop to think why it's capped, but if it's not capped, they'll read right over it. One thing I've learned from my proofer is that our job is to make things read clearly and smoothly and not stop the reader's eye. That's the best I can do! Let me know what you decided :)

Yes, there's a lot to learn, but take comfort in the fact that it's that way for EVERY new reporter. That's why we have to stick together! :) Glad you're on here. That will help you a lot as you're just starting out. Every question that I've posted here has been answered right away, faster than you'll hear back from an agency or even a fellow CR friend. I wish I'd had that when I started, but I'm just grateful to have it now. I've found it especially helpful to read some of the blogs and discussions. I've gotten answers to questions I didn't even know I had yet...lol! There's a blog by a user named Kyung that's AWESOME. She has a whole series of posts on what she wishes she knew her first year out, and now she's posted one on what she wishes she knew her second year. It's definitely worth looking at when you have the time.

I'm glad to hear that you're ready to get out there and just take anything! You're awesome! Sorry your first one cancelled. Are you signed on with any one agency in particular, or do you have your name out there with several places as a freelancer?

Things are going well for me. I've had a streak of good luck lately, meaning that I've been getting longer jobs with higher page counts and copy orders rather than taking lots of smaller jobs. Today my big thing is that I'm considering using a scopist rather than a proofer, so I'm just trying to weigh out the pros and cons of that and see if it will allow me to work more and make more with less stress. That's the goal, right?