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I had thought hand marking was out of "style"—evidently it's not, and for good reason. Copymarking forced me down to a pace that made each pass over the document feel much more complete—like I hadn't missed anything. The planning part of the process was also more thorough. Editing passes were planned with more specific goals since a digital program wasn't helping me out with the basics of spelling and punctuation.
I felt more confident in my decisions and caught things like inconsistent style and tone, or homonyms that a word processor might let through. Also, something about putting physical marks on the page make me pause to think about my intentions for the writer. Being careful about which mark to put down, I asked myself each time: Is this a correction, or a suggestion? How do I elaborate in the limited margin space? Does this actually need to be changed, or am I being prescriptive?
The curriculum in this class encouraged us to take the time to hand mark when possible, especially if the document is going to be in print. Coming from a web design background, using standard proofreading marks on screenshots of web copy in their final form would be a great way to communicate edits to developers.
Below are samples from the project. Click the image to expand.
