Proofreading symbols

Most of the marks the editors cover your work with are pretty self-explanatory. But in case you can’t understand the scribbles, here are the basic marks and what they mean.
Delete – the bit you need to delete will have a line through it.
Insert something. The ‘something’ will be written in the margin next to the mark.
Put in a space.
Mind the gap – and close it up.
Make it lower case.
Make it upper case.
Change to italics.
Change to not-italics (or Roman as it’s called in the trade).
Change to bold.
Get rid of bold (Roman again).
Stick in a line space.
Put in a full stop. (We sometimes call them full points. Because that’s what they’re called in book publishing. And we like to confuse people.) All punctuation (apart from commas – see the next box down) will be circled so you can’t mistake it for a blob on the paper.
Put in a comma (it has a little hat on it so it’s clear that it’s definitely a comma).
There are lots more we might throw in occasionally so if you’re not sure please ask.
And here they are in action...