Congratulations. Your work has been accepted and you have finally received the Preview notice, which constitutes your “page proof.” Now what?
Remember our official motto: “Proofreading never ends.” Double check the spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Please also check any links in the file, to make sure they work. The link to your bio, in the copyright line on each page, is probably the best-kept open secret in Bewildering Stories; few contributors realize the link is there. The proof: the links sometimes contain errors, but only Review Editors have discovered them; no contributor has yet reported any.
After proofreading the text, send corrections, if any.
Line edits are preferred at this stage.
If you need to make extensive changes, please send a whole new file. However, please choose judiciously: it’s difficult to make changes even from carefully marked-up files. Replacing an entire file already on line is likely to delay publication.
If the work runs to more than one page on line, please cite the installment number. Please do not refer to pages in your word-processor file. A page in print is not the same as a page on line.
Please do not cite paragraph or line numbers; they’re useless. Rather, copy-paste the original line of text and, below it, rewrite it as it should appear. Plain text is recommended because it’s easiest for most of our contributors. Some proofreaders use colors, which can be helpful provided they’re not so dark that they obscure the text.
The Managing Editor will thank you for proofreading and say either “Changes recorded” or “Changes made.”
You haven’t finished yet! On Monday, when the issue officially goes on line, save the page(s) or copy-paste the text into a word-processor document for your files.
Our Review Editors regularly find errors that have escaped both you and the Managing Editor. We make corrections without notice; it’s up to the authors to keep track of the final version.