A Very Mysterious Proofreader's Mark

I believe that means "is my pen out of ink?"

That (according to my mother) is the 'no such word as can't' irony mark.

Kitty Pryde said:

I believe that means "is my pen out of ink?"

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I second this translation. While it's entirely possible that there's a proofreader's mark I haven't seen in the past dozen or so years, this looks more like "I started to say something but then decided not to and scratched it out." Or perhaps it's very pointy-topped mountains. A worm crawling up grass?

An asterisk attempt eight Riojas in?

"My interrobang just exploded"?

It's a bat.

That one? You're supposed to scull a drink any time it appears ...

aadams73 said:

I'm stumped!

I have this proofing mark on my manuscript and...I have NO idea what it means. My editor is on vacation at the moment, so calling her for clarity isn't possible.

Any ideas, folks?

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Would it be possible to give us the mark in context?

I suspect it's not a proofing mark, but a copy editor's mark—they aren't the same.

Do your notes normally have a "<" next to a comment about a particular sentence? It looks like one of those was scribbled out.

The two pointy things could be the "t"s in a "stet", if there were other corrections on this line?

I think it might be: "editor practices signing initials"

"Let's see if we can get the author to post this on AW"

$5 says the editor replies with "Don't mind me. I'm not sure what I was doing there."

Could you perhaps need an em dash in the sentence? It looks like an M with < over it. The copyeditor mark for inserting an em dash looks like 1/M but with the / horizontal and the 1 on top. Perhaps he/she thought an em dash was needed but decided otherwise?

Looks like 'Oh, actually, I've changed my mind, I prefer it the way you wrote it in the first place. Don't bother to make any changes here'

The reason you don't recognise it is because it very very very rarely (if ever) gets used (an editor change their mind? Surely not!)

aadams73 said:

I think they're testing my sanity.

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This. What are edits without a little mischief in them?

If that's a capital A and a small a, it might mean "Author's alteration". This is the only such double a mark I use as an editor, but it's intended for the typesetter, not the writer.

It tells him to pay attention because the writer has changed something after that part of the manuscript was copy-edited. I usually use this only at the galley stage, so it seems odd that it would be in your manuscript.

Other than this, I have no clue what it could be.

When I read the title of this thread, I thought it would make for a great short story. The Mysterious Proofreader's Mark. The plot would revolve around a writer who can't decipher an editor's mark, so he does a little digging, but to no avail. Meanwhile, the editor disappears and when the writer pays a visit to the editor's house, he finds the same symbol etched thousands of times in every room of the house--as if the editor had gone mad and carved it into the walls, the tables, the TV screen, even the floors, and then disappeared.

The writer's quest to discover the meaning of this curious symbol takes him on an adventure full of action, intrigue, suspense, danger, and maybe even some romance. Will the writer find the missing editor? Will he discover the meaning of the mysterious symbol? What will he do when he unearths a global conspiracy? Oh man, this is going to be such a great story.


...I'm sorry, what was the question again?

Could it just be their initials to mark the job as done?

What are your editor's initials? Could it be that she made a mark then crossed it out and initialled it or something odd?

elae said:

Do your notes normally have a "<" next to a comment about a particular sentence? It looks like one of those was scribbled out.

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This is what my eyeballs see.