Proof of God
I hate bad punctuation. There is no reason to set anything in all lower case letters, unless it is a website or you are E.E. Cummings. Obviously, actual quotation marks are always necessary with dialogue. And there is no excuse for hyphens used where an en dash is required.
In the time before, when people spelled correctly, editors used proofreading marks to catch typographic and content errors and changes. As a young designer, I received corrections or revisions to the text on something called a “galley” with the date and time. The galleys were marked up with funny marks that indicated changes. These were proofreading marks. As I made the corrections, I marked each one with a highlighting pen. The galley was then set aside as a “foul galley.” This had nothing to do with chicken or "fowl."
This may seem antiquated and overly detail oriented, but it saved time and mistakes. Today, I receive pdf. files with long comments such as “change shortcut to “detour” and move the third line of the second paragraph to the fifth paragraph after the last sentence”. As a limited individual, I am left confused. Consequently, I do my best to understand the request and make the necessary change. Of course, it is typically wrong, and the client is sure I am negligent or deliberately not making the change. If only I received a clear document with legible proofreading marks. But, perhaps this is like asking people to leave calling cards when they visit. Yet another example of the decline of western civilization.
In the spirit of giving back, I share the AdamsMorioka proofreading chart. Feel free to distribute it to the next client who suggests, “replace the a in the subhead with an e, then move the line to the left. Change the fifth telephone number to a 310 area code, except the one on the back which should be 212.”