Dear proofreader

Author's name: Mahmoud Abdel Razek Juma

In a world full of mistakes, you alone are required not to make mistakes. It's as if the great poet Ahmed Abdel-Moati Hegazy, in his inspiring poem "Elegy for the Circus Player," was addressing the proofreader, not the "circus player"! Proofreading is one of the strangest professions. There is no educational qualification that guarantees one's ability to practice it, and no lessons or workshops can prepare you to be capable of it. It is a profession that only requires its practitioner to be talented at spotting mistakes, to have an eye that falls directly on a missing or misplaced hamza, or on two letters that are both in the same place as each other, or on the quotation mark that begins a statement but has no corresponding mark to end it, etc.