The short answer is 'yes'. You really can't look at pursuing a potentially lucrative proofreading career without having a working knowledge of these arcane little squiggles. However, there will often be times when you hardly use them at all or, if you do use them, it will either be very sparingly or in some altered form.

Okay, so let's take a look at these proofreaders' marks. You'll find a link to a very helpful video presentation at the end of this article. It tells you what each symbol looks like, what it means and how and when to use it.

But why do we need these symbols, at all? Well, when you're marking up a proof, there's not very much room for you to make your comments. You'll probably have a few millimetres between each line and (if you're lucky) an inch of margin surrounding the actual text. Proofreading symbols allow you to make very specific remarks and instructions quickly, using a minimum of space. Without them, you'd be forced to write whole sentences and you would rapidly run out of room, or the proof would become so crammed with scrawl as to be impossible to decipher.

Now, if you're looking to carve out a proofreading career for yourself in a traditional publishing environment, you will have to learn all the proofreading marks shown in the video presentation and probably quite a few more besides. Book publishers, magazine publishers and newspapers tend to be places steeped in tradition. The use of proofreading symbols will be second nature to anyone involved in the preparation of proofs prior to going to press. There's no getting around it.

Outside of these traditional publishing environments, however, things get a little fuzzier.