I was in the office for nine hours today, working on that second manuscript (the writing workbook that is a companion to the textbook I finished proofreading on Friday). I did manage to get through five of the ten chapters, and the remaining five ought to go by fast tomorrow. I don't expect the remaining proofreading to take more than three hours.
Today, there was a lot of "front-loaded" work to do. This first meant comparing the reading passages of the first and second manuscripts* and making corrections to the second manuscript (abbreviated "ms" in the printing/publishing world) based on the corrections I'd made in the first ms. So instead of plowing through each chapter from the first to the last page, I checked only the reading passages at the beginnings of every chapter, 1 through 10. I then returned to the second ms's Unit 1 (i.e., Chapter 1), and every time I found the type of error that I knew would be repeated in every chapter (this happens quite often when the same chapter template is applied over and over again), I would correct that error in every chapter of the ms. When all the repeated errors had been corrected, I was finally able to proceed through the ms from Unit 1 to Unit 10, proofreading and correcting any unique errors that were left over. For that last part, I got only through Unit 5, and I'll finish the rest Sunday afternoon. That shouldn't take more than three hours because there's actually very little left to do.
That's good because I need to visit the local John Cook Deli Meats to see whether they're carrying any legit mortadella. John Cook has a nasty habit of closing early. Online resources say they close at 9, but I've arrived around 8 p.m. to find them already closed. Don't trust online resources in Korea when it comes to any establishment's business hours. Unless it's a huge business like Costco. Even then, verify. Western expats learn quickly not to take things as literal truth on the peninsula.
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*The reading passages are basically identical, so whatever mistakes I found while correcting the reading passages in the first ms would, in principle, also be in the second ms. That was the theory, anyway. In reality, I was puzzled to see that, in some cases, errors had already been corrected in the second ms. Fascinating, Captain.
Here’s an off topic question for you: Where online can I buy a basic Italian language learning textbook for speakers of Korean? Needs to be sourced from or shipped to the US.
ReplyDeleteDo you have someone close who can read and speak Korean? If so, there are plenty of search results if you type in search terms like
ReplyDelete이태리어 교과서
이태리어 교재
Italian-language textbook
이태리어 배우기
Italian-language learning
These will probably lead to Korean websites, which is another reason to have a Korean-competent friend handy. Or I can do the research, run some textbooks by you, then order a set to go to your home, no charge to you. Is this supposed to be a surprise gift? Lemme know what works.
I can also just go up the street to the local Gyobo bookstore (we have a huge branch right here in Gangnam; it's practically a landmark) and physically pick up an Italian-learning textbook to mail to you or to an address you specify (with an explanatory note, of course).
ReplyDelete