Does anyone have an opinion about hiring a non-American proofreader? My book is about American (high-school) basketball but I am reticent to hire overseas. There is so much slang, idioms, acceptable grammatical shortcuts in writing about sports, just look at the typical newspaper article about last night's basketball game and how that article might violate many rules of "good grammar" or Chicago Manual of Style. But 90% of offers I get on proofreading or copy-editing come from overseas.
Most Americans can't recognize proper grammar, so I wouldn't expect foreign proofreaders to be very good. That said, my best proofreader is a friend in Greece. He's Greek but he learned English (British) young and went to university in England. He's better at proofing my articles than several American editors have proven to be -- but it means that both he and I have to always be aware that there are differences in spelling between British usage and American. And, of course, there's that Oxford comma thing ... Can you ask prospective candidates to send you samples of their work? Or provide references?
When I got married, my wife was delivered fresh from Philippines. One time, she looked over something I wrote and said that I had misspelled "Attornies". I didn't think much of her suggestion, after all I had scored in the 99% percentile on the SAT's. When I deigned to look, it turned out she was right. The plural of attorney is attorneys. Her English spelling, taught on a remote island in the Philippines, was actually better than mine. And she was the valedictorian of her college class. I had found a proofreader. Oxford comma, the original copy editor (for this book I am hopeful to get out on the marketplace in a couple of months) drove me up the wall. He used Oxford comma 100% of the time. I rarely like to use it, as it seems to drag down the pace of my fast-moving narrative. I don;t want the reader to think I am pedantic. Then the copy editor removed many of the other commas I had written. he seemed to want to slow down the pace when I wanted it to go fast, and the speed it up when I wanted to slow something down for emphasis. In future, one thing I will never do is use a copy editor unless I am in good communication with him/her. This company took my $, did not allow contact with copy editor, and returned my manuscript 3 months later with 9,336 "corrections". Well over 90% of the "corrections" were style alterations, not valid writing mistakes or grammatical errors. He did find some a few spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, but these were balanced by his changing correct usage to incorrect. My distrust of copy editors is now at a point where I am thinking to do the copy editing and proofreading myself.
If looking only for proof reading, which is usually just checking for spelling, inconsistencies (tense, etc.), punctuation and other mechanical issues, there should be no reason to limit the search to any specific nationality. Many non-American-English speakers use the language much better than a huge chunk of Americans because their book learning was not adulterated and ruined by day-to-day speech that surrounds them. On the other hand, if looking for an editor, maybe disregard nationality for the same reason and concentrate on finding one whose interest in the sport matches yours.
I’ve used Reedsy. I will caution though sometimes proofreaders don’t have a good sense of voice, they will ruthlessly remove any attempts at asyndeton, so be careful about accepting all their changes.
