Proofreading, part 14

Proofreading also picks up on things which are technically kosher and wouldn’t make the reader confused, but just aren’t very pretty.

This stage is a tricky one, because there’s always, always going to be stuff you could have done better, and if you’re not careful you’ll drive yourself into a frenzy of ever more microscopic tweaking, far beyond the point where it could possibly make a difference. Balancing artistic integrity and realism is a skill that has application beyond Torah proofreading, though, so it’s a good skill to learn regardless.

Here’s an example. That mem could be prettier.

This is a level of detail I think you can only apply to yourself or your student. Applying it to someone else’s writing is just wrong on so many levels – pragmatically idiotic and technically unrealistic, as well as being an exercise in fantastic subjectivity, hyper-criticism, and wishful thinking.

For instance, if you have a Torah that’s getting on in years, some of its letters are not going to be as pretty as they once were. Fact of life. You could spend months going over it and restoring each letter to perfection, but like any invasive cosmetic procedure, there’s only so much that’s going to help; at some point it’s better to accept it as is.

But this is a new Torah and I wrote it, so if I want to make that mem prettier, I will.

Mirrored from hasoferet.com.

(no subject)

No cats featured in today's epic rearranging of Jen's Library. Bookshelves have been emptied, cleaned, and moved about so that the one matching the aron kodesh is next to the aron kodesh and not over by the couch. The Talmud volumes are finally all sharing a shelf (except for that one enormous Steinsaltz Moed-Katan-Hagigah, would anyone like it? Free to good home). The fiction is alphabetised, Adams (Douglas then Richard) over by the door, Wyndham butting up against the Ran and the klaf stash.

The library has been needing that for a while; too long 100 English Folksongs has been cheek by jowl with Pratchett, the Oz ve-Hadar Eruvin, Murder Must Advertise and Kim. It got ridiculous the other day when I couldn't find Jo Returns to the Chalet School (shutup) and, hunting through all the books, realised that No Order Governs These Realms.

Yes I did write some Torah, thanks. The usual amount.

Jo Returns to the Chalet School turned out to be under the bed. This is why it is good to do laundry periodically.