User:Zoeannl/Project guideline/Proofreader’s Guide/The Primary Rule

"Don't change what the author wrote!"

The electronic book should accurately convey the intent of the author. If the author spelled words oddly, we leave them spelled that way. If the author wrote outrageous racist or biased statements, we leave them that way. If the author put commas, superscripts, or footnotes every third word, we keep the commas, superscripts, or footnotes. We are proofreaders, not editors; if something in the text does not match the original page image, you should change the text so that it does match. (See Printer's Errors for proper handling of obvious misprints.)

We do change minor typographical conventions that don't affect the sense of what the author wrote. For example, we rejoin words that were broken at the end of a line (End-of-line Hyphenation) and we close some abbreviations e.g. i. e. --> i.e. Changes such as these help us produce a consistently formed version of the book. The proofreading rules we follow are designed to achieve this result. Please carefully read the rest of the Proofreading Guidelines with this concept in mind.

To proofread a page, you should edit the text so that it matches the scan as much as possible.

You do not have to make an identical, photographic copy of the scan. Wikisource is a website, not a book and the text is more important than the typography. You should just try to get as close as possible. Some things work in books but do not work on Wikisource. For example, columns of text are not necessary and do not work well on Wikisource; they should be ignored during proofreading. Remember that several pages will be added together in the main namespace when proofreading is finished. To assist the validater, the transcluder, and any subsequent editing, we also preserve line breaks. This allows them to easily compare the lines in the text to the lines in the image.