Wikipedia:Did you know/Proofreading

This page is about proofreading hooks, although proofreading articles is also helpful. Only a few thousand people will look at a Did You Know article during its twenty-four hours of fame – but almost a million people will load the Main Page during that time, including the hooks, although most people don't really look at the hooks. Source http://stats.grok.se/ . One Main Page misspelling or comma can change the world more than you realize.

Places to look for mistakes

Template talk:Did you know, whether hooks on that page have been approved yet or not. Even if the hook is rejected, it's a good idea to fix typos as you find them, because the reason for rejecting the hook might be corrected in the future. The rest of this page is mostly about proofreading here at Template talk:Did you know, but you can also proofread the following:
The seven preparation areas (1 2 3 4 5 6 7)
The seven queues (1 2 3 4 5 6 7)
Template:Did you know, on the Main Page. You need to be an administrator to change it directly. Otherwise, suggest corrections at WP:ERRORS#Errors in Did you know?. Some prefer to proofread Did You Know as it appears on the Main Page, so they won't miss any changes others make during preparation (described here). But that means the public is exposed to errors until they are reported and fixed. Also, if everyone wants to make their contribution last, then who would be first?
Don't forget image captions; they can have typos too. Usually the images on Template talk:Did you know don't have captions yet, but at the preparation areas and beyond, they do.

Proofreading Template talk:Did you know

If you find proofreading mistakes at Template talk:Did you know, first decide if your change is big, little, or in between. In general, changing a couple words without changing the intended meaning is a little change. If an entry sounds as if English isn't the author's native language, then changing several words can be considered "little". For a little change, just change it; nobody really wants to know that you added a space after their three dots. For an in-between change, change it and then explain what you changed. For a big change, suggest a rewritten hook using an ALT. Look through the rest of the page to see how ALT's are formatted.

Remember to check ALT hooks in addition the the hook at the top, some of which occur in the middle of a paragraph full of comments. Just because an ALT isn't formalized as an ALT, doesn't mean someone can't copy it to a preparation area without noticing typos.

Hook proofreaders who are familiar with the rules of Wikipedia:Did you know/Nomination can ensure compliance with those rules. User:Shubinator/DYKcheck automates some of that process.

Specific errors to look for

Of course you should fix or question anything that's wrong, but here are some specific errors you can look for. Most of them are from our nomination rules, linked above. The search for many of these problems should be automated. See User:Art LaPella/Proposed Main Page proofreading bot, which was mostly written in 2007.

Search strings

Some routine proofreading errors can be found by searching the whole page for the following strings:

"..t" to find a missing space after the three dots, which are called an ellipsis. Add the space. Note this trick only works if the hook begins with "that", "the" or some other word beginning with "t".
" ?" to find a space before the question mark at the end of the first sentence (remove the space)
"...." to find an ellipsis with more than three dots (remove all but three)
"}.. " (that's a curly bracket and two periods) to find an ellipsis with only two dots (it needs three)
"'.. " is a variation of "*.. " if AltN is used
"}that" to find an ellipsis that is missing altogether
"} that", "'that", "' that" are variations of "}that"
"pictured) " (note the space) to find (pictured) or (object pictured) unitalicized. Our convention is to italicize that word or words when there is an image.
"'')" (single quote, single quote, parenthesis) is a sign of italicizing "pictured" but forgetting to italicize the parentheses, according to J7

Errors typical of Did You Know

the link to the article should be bold (sometimes the article link is missing altogether)
the hook should end in a question mark (in case of a multi-sentence hook, the first sentence must end in a question mark, and User:Shubinator/DYKcheck can't automatically check the total hook length)
hook length. If it's over the limit of about 200 characters including spaces, I link to User:Art LaPella/Long hook, combined with {{subst:DYK?no}} (which shows as ), to explain this problem. With practice, you can recognize a hook that's too long by how many lines it occupies on your screen, after mentally excluding wikitext that isn't counted.
Don't capitalize the first word of the article title, just because it's capitalized in the title (unless it's a proper noun)
Excluding Template talk:Did you know, the word (pictured) should be just after what is actually pictured – especially after the picture has been changed. Therefore, there should be one and only one word (pictured) in the entire list.
Duplicate "that", duplicate ellipsis, duplicate question mark ... "that that" at a preparation area or beyond is especially common.
Also, if you know all these rules, you can be alert to answer routine questions about those rules.

Errors you would proofread on any page

Remember, almost a million people will at least load this stuff, so routine proofreading is more important than on just any page.

spelling
grammar
capitalization
apostrophes
MOS:NUM
WP:DASH
commas after phrases like "Cleveland, Ohio", "Paris, France", and "June 5, 2009" (see comma article), and around nonrestrictive appositive phrases
correcting links to disambiguation pages according to this. User:Splarka/dabfinder.js helps find them. Another way to find short pages, which are usually disambiguation pages, is to click "preferences", "Misc", and then change the "stub link" number.
italicize books, court cases, ships etc. as described at MOS:TITLE
Wikilink unfamiliar words
correct a missing space between a word and the wikilink symbols "[[" for the next word, or between "]]" and the next word