“Sharon proofread over 2,000 pages of my four-volume study, Opening the Ozarks 1835-1839. She not only caught the typos and grammatical mistakes, but problems such as children born too close together, marriages within nine months of the first child and mothers possibly too young to be giving birth. Bringing these to my attention so that I could recheck records and explain inconsistencies, kept me from making embarrassing mistakes.” —Marsha Hoffman Rising, CG, FASG, President, American Society of Genealogists (read more)

You’ve put a tremendous amount of work into researching and writing your family history. Now you’re ready to publish it online or as a book. Don’t overlook or underestimate the importance of the final step: having it proofread by a skilled and experienced genealogist and proofreader before you make it available to the world.

Proofreading a genealogy involves more than checking your final pages for typographical errors, misplaced punctuation, or formatting problems. I bring the same genealogical research skill and expertise to my proofreading projects as I bring to research, writing, and content/copy editing projects. Here are areas I check when I proof a genealogy:

• Are names consistently spelled throughout the book?
• Do the dates make sense? Did you accidentally type 1966 when you meant 1866?
• Does the chronology for each family group make sense? Is a mom giving birth too young or too old? Is a male marrying at age 12? Are children born at least nine months apart? Is a child being born after the mother is dead?
• Is the chosen numbering system used correctly?
• When the child is listed with his parents, then carried forward as an adult, does the information in the child listing match that of the adult listing?
• If your table of contents says generation three starts on page 178, does it start on that page?
• Are your source citations consistently and properly cited?
• Did you accidentally inject typos into a transcription or a quoted passage?
• If you transcribed a document and are including a reproduction of the document in the book, is it transcribed correctly? (You may also want to supply me with copies of documents so I can verify the transcriptions.)

When I am proofreading, I am not checking for sound genealogical research and arguments, accuracy of historical context, or grammar and sentence structure problems.

These fall under content and copy editing and should be checked before you have the final pages proofread; however, if something jumps out at me, I will bring it to your attention.

Proofing a genealogy is tedious and time consuming, and each genealogy is different. Depending on your project’s scope and length, as well as how “clean” the final pages are, I can typically proof around 12 to 15 camera-ready pages per hour. But I will send you a progress report after three to five hours to give you a more accurate estimate for your book.

In addition, I will make a style sheet to ensure that your manuscript is consistent throughout. For example, is it your style to abbreviate months? If so, I’ll make sure months are always abbreviated. Is it your style to upper case “Web”? Then I’ll make sure it’s upper cased throughout.

Recent major projects I’ve proofread:

The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England 1634-1635, Volume IV, I-L, by Robert Charles Anderson, FASG (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society Press, 2005)
The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony, 1620-1633, by Robert Charles Anderson, FASG (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society Press, 2005)
Opening the Ozarks, 1835-1839, 4 vols., by Marsha Hoffman Rising, CG, FASG (Saline, Mich.: McNaughton-Gunn, 2006)
Elder Bethuel Riggs (1757-1835) of Morris County, New Jersey, and His Family Through Five Generations, by Alvy Ray Smith (Boston, New England Historic Genealogical Society Press, 2006)

E-mail Sharon for more information, rates, and her availability to proofread your family history and genealogy.