Does a brief really matter?, or How to brief a proofreader

Briefs are a pain in the neck. The more detailed they are, the longer they take to put together. A good proofreader will know what to do, right? So dispensing with the brief, or making it really basic, should be fine. Right?

It's true a good proofreader will know how to handle the lack of a good brief – it's quite common, after all. But a proofreader who gets a good brief will spend their time on the things you actually want done – rather than doing their best to reverse-engineer the text to work out what the style decisions made by the editor were – or just doing a general check of things in the hope that they'll identify the weak areas as they go.

As a freelancer who previously worked in-house at an educational publisher for more than 20 years leading an editorial team and commissioning a range of authors and freelancers, I'm always surprised by the things that publishers don't do when briefing me as a proofreader.

1 No style sheet: A good editor will use a style sheet to record the decisions they've taken as they work through their edit. Learnt or learned? Ice-cream or icecream? Comma-separated thousands (1,000) or space-separated thousands (1 000)? And hundreds, literally hundreds, more. A good editor should give the publisher their style sheet at the end of the edit, when they hand over the edited text. So if the publisher has the style sheet, why don't they hand it over to the proofreader? Equipped with the style sheet, a proofreader can proofread in line with these style decisions – rather than wondering whether one instance of icecream is a mistake or the intended style.

Style sheet I received from an editor that I then marked up as I proofread: clearly not everything was covered by the style sheet, but it was a good start

2 Not specifying UK or US English: In South Africa, most publishers use UK English (favour, not favor), but there are texts that need to use US English. The proofreader can again work out what's been done, but why not be clear and upfront and eliminate unfortunate muddles? The same may go for people working in other languages with prominent regional variants (French, Spanish, Portuguese). 

3 Not specifying a dictionary as a reference point: I spent 15 years leading the team making dictionaries at Oxford University Press Southern Africa, so I realise I'm biased. But this is another quick win. Say which dictionary (online, or print) you expect your proofreader to use. A good proofreader should know that the Merriam-Webster is an unsuitable reference point if you're working with UK English (the M-W is good for US English), but they may not know that the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Cambridge English dictionary online are not identical in spelling (or meanings or pronunciations). If you're wanting consistency (which is what proofreading is all about), then the proofreader should be referring to the same dictionary as the editor and should be referring to the same dictionary throughout their proofread.*

A good brief tells a proofreader what you expect and what you want. It sets the standard for their work. Bearing in mind that a good proofreader will know how long they aim to spend on the project (in order to keep their hourly rate at a level they're happy with), a good brief allows them to make best use of that time, instead of dribbling it away trying to work out what the editor working on the project already decided.

* Oh, they're using Google. Well, Google currently uses data from Oxford Languages, part of Oxford University Press. If you're in the US (or enter a word spelt in US English), it will serve you the US version of Oxford Languages' lexical data. If not, it will be UK English.