The English Style Book

Marks for the Correction of Scripts

The marks used to indicate the need for corrections on manuscripts or typescripts vary from publisher to publisher and country to country. Generally, however, the following will be understood.

Margin Mark	Mark in the text	Meaning
		Remove matter
	. . . .under letters	Leave as printed
	None	Used to separate correction marks where more than one is used relative to the same line.
	_____ under letters	Change to italics
	under letters	Change to capitals
	Encircle letters	Change to lower case
	_____ under letters	Underline word or words
		Insert space
		Close up
		Insert new matter
		Insert a hyphen
		Insert an em-dash
		Insert an en-dash
		Insert brackets
		Substitute or insert full stop
		Substitute or insert semicolon
		Substitute or insert comma
		Insert apostrophe
		Insert double inverted commas
		Move matter right
		Move matter left
		Transpose order of items
		Insert paragraph
		No new paragraph here
	Encircle letters	Spell out in full, or matter in doubt