Home    Proofreading    Proofreading for International Students    Editing    Rewriting    Copywriting    E-book conversion   
Enquiry Form    Testimonials    Blogspot    UK–US English    Contact Us   

WriteItClearly.com

We make words work for you

Call: +44(0)1483 836124
Email: enquiries@writeitclearly.com

 WriteItClearly.com writing, editing and proofreading services

BlogSpot

BlogSpot List

OCR is good - but it's not perfect

by: Garry Pierrepont (18 March 2014)

I thought of my own experiences of proofreading books produced by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software when I read an article written by a colleague of mine recently: Why Writers Need a Fresh Pair of Eyes.

I have proofread a fair few books now out of print and re-produced as Word documents by OCR software. Books by John Creasey - creator of The Baron, The Toff and Gideon of the Yard, Inspector Roger West - represent many of those books.

OCR software is good, but it's not perfect, and that is why proofreaders are needed to correct errors that creep in.

Here are some examples:

  • Hyphens normally removed from line ending are retained in proper nouns.
  • Spaces often creep in after hyphens, e.g. well-being becomes well- being.
  • Spaces can be inserted before question marks, but is it right ?
  • Page numbers can be retained, especially if they look like letters, e.g. 5 or 15. 11 can become ii.
  • Splodges on a page can turn into random letters.
  • Double quotes can become single quotes if next to, for example, capital T.

You have to be vigilant. But you do get to read a decent book into the bargain!

Views: 2065

Other articles on Proofreading and Technology and e-books

Some related articles

The 'Apostrophiser' gets it right   Even you (and I) need a proofreader   Wrong 'Hail Mary' finds its way into Sri Lankan hymn book  

BlogSpot List

An error has occurred in script /home/writeit/public_html/config1.inc on line 9: strtotime(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone.An error has occurred in script /home/writeit/public_html/config1.inc on line 9: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone.An error has occurred in script /home/writeit/public_html/config1.inc on line 9: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone.An error has occurred in script /home/writeit/public_html/config1.inc on line 9: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone.An error has occurred in script /home/writeit/public_html/config1.inc on line 9: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone.An error has occurred in script /home/writeit/public_html/config1.inc on line 9: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone.

Comments...
Ref: 66 I have the same problems...one of the best was 'ruminating' which scanned in as 'urinating'. A sharp pair of eyes definitely needed
Romany - 09:56 19-03-2014

Leave your comment

* Mandatory field
Username
(choose one or use your existing username) *:
Email address (enter your email address) *:
Your Comment *:
Enter security code:
cypher

Home    Our Services    About Us    Blog    Links    Enquiry Form   

An error has occurred in script /home/writeit/public_html/config1.inc on line 9: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone.© WriteItClearly.com 2006–2020