Proofing 101 reviews simple tips for streamlining your pattern writing and editing processes. Read the intro post for why this is a useful skill even if you’re paying a tech editor.

When I first started taking creative writing classes, the kind where students take turns submitting a piece to the class for comments, some of the comments I got initially confused me.

“I didn’t understand this part of the story,” a fellow student would say. “Why did her grocery list have ‘a really cheesy rom com’ on it?”

Because the grocery store had video rentals, of course. I’d think in my head. And then I’d look down at my piece and realize that I’d never actually explained that the grocery store had video rentals, I’d just been assuming that everyone would understand that because the story was set in the 80s and the grocery store my family went to in the 80s also had video rentals.  But what the other students had read in the draft was that the main character was in the produce aisle and then suddenly had a VHS in her hand.

When you’ve been living in the world of a story you are writing, or immersed in creating a knitted object for a pattern, it’s astonishingly easy to forget to put everything on the page.  After all, *you* know every stitch of this pattern, you’ve knit and frogged and reknit various pieces of it to make it look exactly like the idea that was in your head.  But sometimes you can get so familiar with the pattern that an instruction you think is incredibly clear causes total confusion for your audience. And while these are exactly the kinds of issues a tech editor can and will help you spot, being able to pick some of them out in your own proofing can save you and your tech editor time.

The most common example of this type of issue in knitting patterns is the “repeat X times” instruction.  You probably know exactly what you meant when you gave a two row set of instructions and then wrote “repeat 5 times.”  But a knitter will get to that instruction and wonder if you mean repeat those two rows 5 times TOTAL, or do the initial two rows and then repeat them 5 times MORE (6 total repeats).  If the repeating rows have increases or decreases, this could result in incorrect stitch counts if your knitters think you meant TOTAL when you meant MORE. And if the repeat is eight rows instead of two, being off by one repeat could also dramatically affect the size of the garment.

This can be one of the toughest types of proofing issues to spot in your own work.  After all, you are very familiar with what is in your head – it can be hard to spot what someone who isn’t in your head might find unclear. But you can try to reduce these issues with a few simple steps.

• If you took notes while you were knitting up your original sample for the pattern, double check that all of your notes made it into the pattern instructions. If you needed to write down for yourself that you meant 6 repeats TOTAL for the sleeve decreases, your readers probably need that note as well.

• When reading through your pattern, try talking through how you would execute those instructions and see if you spot any potential confusion.  (“OK, the pattern says CO 80 stitches and join in the round…. So I would get my yarn and my needle – wait a minute, I don’t specify which size needle to use here.”)

• Pay special attention to descriptions around unusual techniques or unique features of the pattern as those are the places where you are most likely to have instructions that are perfectly clear to you, the person who has been developing or practicing that technique for months, but might be confusing to a knitter who has never done it before.

• Don’t be afraid to ask for help! Tech editors (and test knitters) are ideally suited to help with these kinds of issues or you can ask a knitter friend to read through the instructions (even just for a technique or pattern piece you are particularly concerned about) and see if they find it understandable.

Have knitters ever interpreted your pattern instructions in a way you were absolutely not expecting?  Do you have other techniques to help you get a full and clear set of instructions down on the page?