Quality Control: Difference between revisions

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'''Quality control''', often abbreviated to QC, is the process of reading through a fully-typeset manga (ideally, alongside the raws) to point out mistakes and areas of improvement. It is also known as '''proofreading''' (PR), but this term may also refer to reading over the script prior to cleaning and typesetting.
'''Quality control''', often abbreviated to QC, is the process of reading through a fully-typeset manga (ideally, alongside the raws) to point out mistakes and areas of improvement. It is also known as '''proofreading''' (PR), but this term may also refer to reading over the script prior to [[Redrawing|cleaning]] and typesetting.


Quality control should a collaborative process between the typesetter and QCer; there are often many rounds of back-and-forth before the best approach is decided upon.
Quality control should a collaborative process between the typesetter and QCer; there are often many rounds of back-and-forth before the best approach is decided upon.


This page collects a number of common issues that QCers will raise, and where appropriate gives examples.
This page collects a number of common issues that QCers will raise, and where appropriate gives examples. Not all of these represent mistakes; sometimes, the author will have done something odd, or it’s an intentional stylistic choice.


== Typesetting issues ==
== Typesetting issues ==
Line 10: Line 10:
!Issue!!Examples
!Issue!!Examples
|-
|-
| Vertical ellipses
| Vertical ellipsis
|
| [[File:Vertical ellipses.webp|x100px]]
 
Should be made horizontal.
|-
| Vertical scribble lines
| [[File:Vertical scribble lines.webp|x100px]]
 
Should be made horizontal. Can be redawn manually, or using a font like [https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Redacted+Script Redacted Script].
|-
|-
| Typos (commonly, incorrectly-doubled letters in words like “embarrassed”)
| Typos (commonly, incorrectly-doubled letters in words like “embarrassed”)
Line 17: Line 24:
|-
|-
| Inconsistent line spacing
| Inconsistent line spacing
|
| [[File:Inconsistent line spacing.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Line spacing too small or too large
| Line spacing too small or too large
|
| Too small: [[File:Small line spacing.webp|x100px]]
 
Too large: [[File:High line spacing.webp|x100px]]
|-
| Text not centre-aligned (this isn’t always bad; just follow the shape of the bubble)
| [[File:Left align.webp|x100px]]
|-
| Text not centred
| [[File:Uncentred.webp|x100px]]
|-
| Bad shaping (though one often must sacrifice either shaping or readability if hyphenation is necessary, so this can be a tradeoff; rewording the sentence is the ideal solution)
| [[File:Bad shaping.webp|x100px]]
 
Should probably move “Yeah,” to the line above
 
[[File:Bad shaping 2.webp|x100px]]
 
Should move “up.” to the previous line to avoid a triangular text shape
 
[[File:Bad shaping 3.webp|x100px]]
 
Should move “I” to the previous line to make a nicer text shape
|-
|-
| Uncentered text
| Hyphenating a non-compound word (not incorrect, but ideally one would reword the sentence so that both shaping and readability are preserved)
|
| [[File:Always sacrifice readability for shaping.webp|x100px]]
 
In this case, substituting “simply” with “just” removes the hyphen while preserving meaning and shaping. Sometimes more complicated rewrites are necessary.
|-
|-
| Bad shaping
| Hanging punctuation
|
| [[File:Hanging punctuation.webp|x100px]]
 
The left paragraph is what one would get by typing out the text normally; the right paragraph uses [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_punctuation hanging punctuation], which means that ellipses and hyphens are not taken into account when centring each line (this can be achieved by inserting invisible characters at the start of the line). Their use is a matter of style; some think is looks better, others thinks it looks worse.
|-
|-
| Incorrect crossbar I
| Incorrect crossbar I ­– crossbar I should only be used when the letter stands alone, which includes the personal pronoun (“I”, “I’m”, “I’ll”) and (depending on stylistic choice) acronyms.
|
| [[File:Incorrect crossbar I.webp|x100px]]
 
Should have followed [[Automatic Crossbar I]]’s advice.
|-
|-
| Missing crossbar I (assuming that the font has it)
| Missing crossbar I (assuming that the font has it)
|
| [[File:Missing crossbar I.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Not using different fonts for different JA fonts (incl. thoughts)
| Not using different fonts for different JA fonts (incl. thoughts); this isn’t always bad, and one should exercise judgement to make a result that’s not too plain and not too cluttered
|
| [[File:Not enough fonts JA.webp|x100px]] [[File:Not enough fonts EN.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Next-line ellipses or exclamation mark
| Next-line punctuation, e.g. ellipsis, exclamation mark or question mark (can be a lesser of two evils)
|
| [[File:Next line punctuation.webp]]
|-
|-
| Hyphen at the start of the line
| Hyphen at the start of the line
|
| [[File:Next-line hyphen.webp|x100px]]
 
In English, hyphens always go at the end of the line.
|-
|-
| Wrong hyphenation points
| Wrong hyphenation points
|
| [[File:Incorrect hyphenation point.webp|x100px]]
 
“Person” is hyphenated as “per•son”. The [https://yuri-project.net/tools/ scanlation tools site] has a utility to help find correct hyphenation points (in the left sidebar).
|-
|-
| Four-dot ellipses
| Two-dot, four-dot, etc ellipsis; ellipses should be in multiples of three
|
| [[File:Four-dot ellipses.webp|x100px]]
 
[[File:Two-dot ellipsis.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Missing punctuation at end of sentence
| Missing punctuation at end of sentence
|
| [[File:Missing punctuation.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Non-comic font used or “chopsticks” font used (e.g. Manga Temple)
| Non-comic font used, “chopsticks” font used (e.g. Manga Temple) or Comic Sans used
|
| [[File:Non-comic font.webp|x100px]] [[File:Manga temple.webp|x100px]][[File:Comic sans.webp|x100px]]
|-
| Cliché font used (e.g. Comic Sans, Wild Words)
|
|-
|-
| Using different fonts for different characters
| Using different fonts for different characters
|
|-
| Text not centre-aligned (this isn’t always bad; just follow the shape of the bubble)
|
|
|-
|-
| Stray space
| Stray space
|
| [[File:Stray space.webp|x100px]]
 
A stray space before “reminiscing”
 
[[File:Double space.webp|x100px]]
 
Double space after “mind.”
|-
|-
| No space after ellipses or space before ellipses
| Wrong spacing around punctuation, often ellipses
|
| [[File:No space after ellipses.webp|x100px]]
 
[[File:Space before ellipsis.webp|x100px]]
 
Ellipses have a space after them at the end and in the middle of sentences, and a space before them at the start of sentences.
|-
|-
| Capitalization at the start of bubbles, when it continues a sentence
| Capitalization at the start of bubbles, when it continues a sentence
|
| [[File:Incorrect capitalization.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| No capitalization at the start of bubbles, when it doesn’t continue a sentence
| No capitalization at the start of a sentence
|
| [[File:Missing capital.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Not enough white border around SFX
| Not enough white border around SFX
Line 80: Line 124:
|-
|-
| Font aspect ratio is messed with
| Font aspect ratio is messed with
|
| [[File:Squish text.webp|x100px]]
|-
|  Clashing ascenders and descenders, and other spacing oddities from the font
| [[File:Clashing ascenders.webp|x100px]]
 
Here, the “j” on the first line clashes with the “h” on the second line, and the “y” on the fifth line clashes with the “l” below it. This can be resolved by switching fonts, increasing line spacing, or adjusting letter spacing manually. Additionally, even though the text is correct, the font makes the space after the dash look larger than other spaces, which should be fixed similarly.
|-
| Font glyph needs replacement – sometimes, a font will have a particularly bad glyph and it’s desirable to replace that glyph in particular. Of course, this must be done consistently; one may wish to edit the font itself using a tool like FontForge to that effect.
| [[File:Big z.webp|x100px]]
 
The “z” in this font is very large and may warrant replacing.
 
[[File:Weird apostrophe.webp|x100px]]
 
The apostrophe in this font is weirdly low and may warrant replacing.
|-
|-
| Bad perspective transform
| Bad perspective transform
|
| [[File:Bad perspective transform.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Text too close to edge of bubble
| Text too close to edge of bubble
|
| [[File:Big text.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Text is off-black
| Text is off-black (or off-white)
|
|
|-
|-
Line 97: Line 155:
|
|
|-
|-
| Empty bubble
| Empty bubble (sometimes intentional on the author’s part, but should not be introduced in a translation)
|
|
|-
|-
Line 103: Line 161:
|
|
|-
|-
| Inconsist capitalization and punctuation of side text
| Inconsistent capitalization and punctuation of side text
|
|
|-
|-
Line 109: Line 167:
|
|
|-
|-
| “Penrose stairs” layering
| “Penrose stairs” layering: when text is above one part of the art but below another in an inconsistent way
|
| [[File:Penrose stairs layering.png|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Mismatched repetion
| Mismatched repetition
|
|
|-
|-
| Mismatched flashback text
| Mismatched flashback text
|
| [[File:Mismatch flashback original.webp|x150px]]
 
[[File:Mismatch flashback.webp|x150px]]
|-
| Abrupt cutoff that uses an ellipsis (instead of a dash)
| [[File:Cutoff ellipsis.webp|x100px]]
|-
| Text split over multiple bubbles (this can be a lesser of two evils, especially when one is unwilling to redraw the bubble entirely)
| [[File:Weird bubble shape.webp|x100px]]
 
[[File:CURSED.webp|x100px]]
|-
| Inconsistent use of directional vs non-directional apostrophe
| [[File:Inconsistent apostrophe.webp|x300px]]
|-
| Aliased or blurry text
| [[File:Aliased text.webp|x100px]]
 
[[File:Blurry text.webp|x100px]]
|-
| Overuse of cliché fonts like Wild Words; the font itself isn’t bad, but one can do much better
| [[File:Wildwords.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Abrupt cutoffs use dashes, not ellipses
| Sound effects in speech – these can be written in plain text, but may also use breath marks, italic or bold-italic
| An example of breath marks, a.k.a. cat whiskers, fireflies or crow’s feet:
 
[[File:Breath_marks.webp|x100px]]
 
Use on words like “Whew”, “Sigh”, “Grunt”, “Cough”, etc
|}
|}




== Translation issues ==
== Translation issues ==
Grammatical mistakes should be pointed out, but can be introduced for spoken emphasis.


{| class="wikitable"
{| class="wikitable"
Line 128: Line 214:
|-
|-
| Untranslated SFX: “Doki”, “Go”, etc
| Untranslated SFX: “Doki”, “Go”, etc
|
| [[File:Doki doki.webp|x100px]]
 
“Doki doki” can be translated as “th-thump”, “ba-dump”, “bdmp”, etc
 
[[File:Goongoongoon.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Nonsensical SFX
| Nonsensical SFX
|
| [[File:Nonsensical SFX.webp|x150px]]
 
The SFX is a speech bubble from the chair, so it should be a noise the chair makes, like “creak”.
 
[[File:Nonsensical SFX 2.webp|x100px]]
 
Did she really extend her hand and crack it?
|-
| Overused SFX
| “fwip”
|-
|-
| Bad/unnatural wording
| Bad/unnatural wording
Line 137: Line 236:
|-
|-
| Incorrectly added hyphenated phrase
| Incorrectly added hyphenated phrase
|
| “The most-popular flavour is”
|-
|-
| Incorrectly not added hyphenated phrase (e.g. “first year” “first-year”)
| Incorrectly not added hyphenated phrase
|
| “first year” should be “first-year”
|-
|-
| Apostophes and “s”s: “Girl’s school”, “Parent’s evening”
| Apostophes and “s”s
|
| “Girl’s school” should be “Girls’ school”, “Parent’s evening” should be “Parents’ evening”
|-
|-
| Missing comma: “It’s not like I’m mad at you Akizuki-san.”
| Missing comma
|
| “It’s not like I’m mad at you Akizuki-san.”, “Oh no not with that girl…”
|-
|-
| Extra comma: “I think, […]”
| Extra comma
|
| “I think, it’s a good idea”
|-
|-
| Contraction not used in speech, e.g. “you are”
| Contraction not used in speech (often subjective)
|
| “You are” → “you’re”, “I am” → “I’m”
|-
|-
| Phrase that is close to, but not exactly, an English idiom
| Phrase that is close to, but not exactly, an English idiom
|
|
* “You’ve been following me all the afternoon!” → “You’ve been following me all afternoon!”
* “I guess it can’t be this bad to” → “I guess it can’t be that bad to”
* “I bought it on my own accord” → “I bought it of my own accord”
* “What’s gotten in her?” → “What’s gotten into her?”
* “Did I just get caught up into this?” → “Did I just get caught up in this?”
* “I had a few tricks up my sleeves” → “I had a few tricks up my sleeve”
* “Her reputation spread wide and far” → “Her reputation spread far and wide”
* “What’s up all of the sudden?” → “What’s up all of a sudden?”
|-
|-
| Inconsistent spelling dialect
| Inconsistent spelling dialect
|
| “ize” versus “ise” endings; “Mum” versus “Mom”; “color” versus “colour”; etc
|-
| Inconsistently-spaced compound phrases (in the case where both are grammatically correct)
| “photoshoot” versus “photo shoot”
|-
|-
| Inconsistently-spaced words, e.g. “photoshoot” vs “photo shoot”
| Missing space in words that are sometimes compound
|
|
* [[File:Walked onstage.webp|x100px]]
* “Good to have you onboard”
|-
|-
| Missing space in words that are sometimes compound: “She walked onstage”, “Good to have you onboard”
| Wrong extended letter; in general, one should elongate the vowel that is stressed in English
|
| “grabbbbeeeeed” → “graaaaabbed”, “pleaaaase” → “pleeeease”, “Stop ittttt!” → “Stop iiiiiit!”
|-
|-
| Wrong extended letter (e.g. “grabbbbeeeeed” instead of “graaaaabbed”)
| Letter extend to two letters long – always use at least three
|
| “graabbed”, “pleease”, “Stop iit!”
|-
|-
| En dashes should be used to hyphenate phrases that have spaces: “red bean paste–filled bun”, “Cold War–era”
| En dashes should be used to hyphenate phrases that have spaces
|
| Correct examples include “red bean paste–filled bun”, “Cold War–era”
|-
|-
| Capitalization of words that are both normal and proper nouns: “to Dad” but “to my dad”.
| Capitalization of words that are both normal and proper nouns:  
|
| “to my Dad” “to my dad”, “to dad” → “to Dad”
|-
|-
| Inconsistent tense
| Inconsistent tense
Line 179: Line 291:
|-
|-
| Inconsistent 3rd person vs 2nd person
| Inconsistent 3rd person vs 2nd person
|
| [[File:Inconsistent person.webp|x200px]]
|-
|-
| Stock phrases: “that person”, “pinch”, “even if you tell me that”, “say unnecessary things”, “killing intent”; see also this [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vTHDoAcD9D4pMo8idCwbwTOky6I8EeLfazDPEROL3FIsyZx958u7MxhUZ0wLSXUWw/pubhtml spreadsheet of stock phrases]
| Stock phrases (to be used in moderation)
|
| “that person”, “pinch”, “even if you tell me that”, “say unnecessary things”, “killing intent”; see also this [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vTHDoAcD9D4pMo8idCwbwTOky6I8EeLfazDPEROL3FIsyZx958u7MxhUZ0wLSXUWw/pubhtml spreadsheet of stock phrases]
|-
|-
| Overuse of Japanese sounds like “Kya” or “Eehh”
| Overuse of Japanese sounds
|
| “Kya”, “Eehh”
|-
|-
| Overuse of Japanese punctuation like tildes or “…!”
| Overuse of Japanese punctuation like tildes and ellipses-exclamation marks
|
| “Oh no~”, “No way…!”
|-
|-
| Overuse of ◯◯ or XX or similar, instead of rewording
| Overuse of ◯◯ or XX or similar, instead of rewording
|
| “You wanted to go to ◯◯ High School, didn’t you?” → “You wanted to go to that high school, didn’t you?”
|-
|-
| Inline TL notes; prefer folding them into the text, or adding notes at the end
| Inline TL notes; prefer folding them into the text, or adding notes at the end
Line 206: Line 318:
|-
|-
| Lines connected incorrectly
| Lines connected incorrectly
|
| [[File:Incorrect lines JA.webp|x100px]] [[File:Incorrect lines clean.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Screentone wrong shade
| Screentone wrong shade
|
| [[File:Screentone wrong shade.webp|x100px]]
 
Can be avoided by using [[Redrawing#High-contrast filters|high-contrast filters]].
|-
|-
| Screentone misaligned
| Screentone misaligned
|
| [[File:Misaligned screentone.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Screentone too blurry or sharp
| Screentone too blurry or sharp
|
| [[File:Screentone too sharp.webp|x100px]]
|-
| Redrawing using wrong colour
| [[File:Nobody is evil.webp|x100px]]
 
The circled region is pure black, while the region around is slightly brown. Using [[Redrawing#High-contrast filters|a filter mask to increase contrast]] can help spot this kind of issue.
 
[[File:Clean with blue.webp|x100px]]
[[File:Clean with blue, high-contrast.webp|x100px]]
 
An instance where cleaning was performed with a bluish-black colour instead of real black.
|-
|-
| Missed cleaning speck
| Missed cleaning speck
|
| [[File:Speck.webp|x100px]]
|-
|-
| Lines connected that were intentionally split in the raw
| Lines connected that were intentionally split in the raw
Line 227: Line 351:
|-
|-
| Lines too blurry or sharp
| Lines too blurry or sharp
|
| See [[Redrawing#Controlling hardness|Controlling hardness]].
|-
|-
| No levelling: Black is off-black, white is off-white
| No levelling: Black is off-black, white is off-white
|
| See [[Physical Raws#Color Calibration|Color Calibration]].
|}
|}

Latest revision as of 12:33, 19 February 2025

Quality control, often abbreviated to QC, is the process of reading through a fully-typeset manga (ideally, alongside the raws) to point out mistakes and areas of improvement. It is also known as proofreading (PR), but this term may also refer to reading over the script prior to cleaning and typesetting.

Quality control should a collaborative process between the typesetter and QCer; there are often many rounds of back-and-forth before the best approach is decided upon.

This page collects a number of common issues that QCers will raise, and where appropriate gives examples. Not all of these represent mistakes; sometimes, the author will have done something odd, or it’s an intentional stylistic choice.

Typesetting issues[edit]

Issue Examples
Vertical ellipsis

Should be made horizontal.

Vertical scribble lines

Should be made horizontal. Can be redawn manually, or using a font like Redacted Script.

Typos (commonly, incorrectly-doubled letters in words like “embarrassed”)
Inconsistent line spacing
Line spacing too small or too large Too small:

Too large:

Text not centre-aligned (this isn’t always bad; just follow the shape of the bubble)
Text not centred
Bad shaping (though one often must sacrifice either shaping or readability if hyphenation is necessary, so this can be a tradeoff; rewording the sentence is the ideal solution)

Should probably move “Yeah,” to the line above

Should move “up.” to the previous line to avoid a triangular text shape

Should move “I” to the previous line to make a nicer text shape

Hyphenating a non-compound word (not incorrect, but ideally one would reword the sentence so that both shaping and readability are preserved)

In this case, substituting “simply” with “just” removes the hyphen while preserving meaning and shaping. Sometimes more complicated rewrites are necessary.

Hanging punctuation

The left paragraph is what one would get by typing out the text normally; the right paragraph uses hanging punctuation, which means that ellipses and hyphens are not taken into account when centring each line (this can be achieved by inserting invisible characters at the start of the line). Their use is a matter of style; some think is looks better, others thinks it looks worse.

Incorrect crossbar I ­– crossbar I should only be used when the letter stands alone, which includes the personal pronoun (“I”, “I’m”, “I’ll”) and (depending on stylistic choice) acronyms.

Should have followed Automatic Crossbar I’s advice.

Missing crossbar I (assuming that the font has it)
Not using different fonts for different JA fonts (incl. thoughts); this isn’t always bad, and one should exercise judgement to make a result that’s not too plain and not too cluttered
Next-line punctuation, e.g. ellipsis, exclamation mark or question mark (can be a lesser of two evils)
Hyphen at the start of the line

In English, hyphens always go at the end of the line.

Wrong hyphenation points

“Person” is hyphenated as “per•son”. The scanlation tools site has a utility to help find correct hyphenation points (in the left sidebar).

Two-dot, four-dot, etc ellipsis; ellipses should be in multiples of three

Missing punctuation at end of sentence
Non-comic font used, “chopsticks” font used (e.g. Manga Temple) or Comic Sans used
Using different fonts for different characters
Stray space

A stray space before “reminiscing”

Double space after “mind.”

Wrong spacing around punctuation, often ellipses

Ellipses have a space after them at the end and in the middle of sentences, and a space before them at the start of sentences.

Capitalization at the start of bubbles, when it continues a sentence
No capitalization at the start of a sentence
Not enough white border around SFX
Font aspect ratio is messed with
Clashing ascenders and descenders, and other spacing oddities from the font

Here, the “j” on the first line clashes with the “h” on the second line, and the “y” on the fifth line clashes with the “l” below it. This can be resolved by switching fonts, increasing line spacing, or adjusting letter spacing manually. Additionally, even though the text is correct, the font makes the space after the dash look larger than other spaces, which should be fixed similarly.

Font glyph needs replacement – sometimes, a font will have a particularly bad glyph and it’s desirable to replace that glyph in particular. Of course, this must be done consistently; one may wish to edit the font itself using a tool like FontForge to that effect.

The “z” in this font is very large and may warrant replacing.

The apostrophe in this font is weirdly low and may warrant replacing.

Bad perspective transform
Text too close to edge of bubble
Text is off-black (or off-white)
Bubbles too thin (should have redrawn bubble)
Text rotated 90°
Empty bubble (sometimes intentional on the author’s part, but should not be introduced in a translation)
Missing SFX
Inconsistent capitalization and punctuation of side text
Obscured text missing a half-covered letter
“Penrose stairs” layering: when text is above one part of the art but below another in an inconsistent way
Mismatched repetition
Mismatched flashback text

Abrupt cutoff that uses an ellipsis (instead of a dash)
Text split over multiple bubbles (this can be a lesser of two evils, especially when one is unwilling to redraw the bubble entirely)

Inconsistent use of directional vs non-directional apostrophe
Aliased or blurry text

Overuse of cliché fonts like Wild Words; the font itself isn’t bad, but one can do much better
Sound effects in speech – these can be written in plain text, but may also use breath marks, italic or bold-italic An example of breath marks, a.k.a. cat whiskers, fireflies or crow’s feet:

Use on words like “Whew”, “Sigh”, “Grunt”, “Cough”, etc


Translation issues[edit]

Grammatical mistakes should be pointed out, but can be introduced for spoken emphasis.

Issue Examples
Untranslated SFX: “Doki”, “Go”, etc

“Doki doki” can be translated as “th-thump”, “ba-dump”, “bdmp”, etc

Nonsensical SFX

The SFX is a speech bubble from the chair, so it should be a noise the chair makes, like “creak”.

Did she really extend her hand and crack it?

Overused SFX “fwip”
Bad/unnatural wording
Incorrectly added hyphenated phrase “The most-popular flavour is”
Incorrectly not added hyphenated phrase “first year” should be “first-year”
Apostophes and “s”s “Girl’s school” should be “Girls’ school”, “Parent’s evening” should be “Parents’ evening”
Missing comma “It’s not like I’m mad at you Akizuki-san.”, “Oh no not with that girl…”
Extra comma “I think, it’s a good idea”
Contraction not used in speech (often subjective) “You are” → “you’re”, “I am” → “I’m”
Phrase that is close to, but not exactly, an English idiom
  • “You’ve been following me all the afternoon!” → “You’ve been following me all afternoon!”
  • “I guess it can’t be this bad to” → “I guess it can’t be that bad to”
  • “I bought it on my own accord” → “I bought it of my own accord”
  • “What’s gotten in her?” → “What’s gotten into her?”
  • “Did I just get caught up into this?” → “Did I just get caught up in this?”
  • “I had a few tricks up my sleeves” → “I had a few tricks up my sleeve”
  • “Her reputation spread wide and far” → “Her reputation spread far and wide”
  • “What’s up all of the sudden?” → “What’s up all of a sudden?”
Inconsistent spelling dialect “ize” versus “ise” endings; “Mum” versus “Mom”; “color” versus “colour”; etc
Inconsistently-spaced compound phrases (in the case where both are grammatically correct) “photoshoot” versus “photo shoot”
Missing space in words that are sometimes compound
  • “Good to have you onboard”
Wrong extended letter; in general, one should elongate the vowel that is stressed in English “grabbbbeeeeed” → “graaaaabbed”, “pleaaaase” → “pleeeease”, “Stop ittttt!” → “Stop iiiiiit!”
Letter extend to two letters long – always use at least three “graabbed”, “pleease”, “Stop iit!”
En dashes should be used to hyphenate phrases that have spaces Correct examples include “red bean paste–filled bun”, “Cold War–era”
Capitalization of words that are both normal and proper nouns: “to my Dad” → “to my dad”, “to dad” → “to Dad”
Inconsistent tense
Inconsistent 3rd person vs 2nd person
Stock phrases (to be used in moderation) “that person”, “pinch”, “even if you tell me that”, “say unnecessary things”, “killing intent”; see also this spreadsheet of stock phrases
Overuse of Japanese sounds “Kya”, “Eehh”
Overuse of Japanese punctuation like tildes and ellipses-exclamation marks “Oh no~”, “No way…!”
Overuse of ◯◯ or XX or similar, instead of rewording “You wanted to go to ◯◯ High School, didn’t you?” → “You wanted to go to that high school, didn’t you?”
Inline TL notes; prefer folding them into the text, or adding notes at the end
Questions (including rhetorical) without question marks

Redrawing issues[edit]

Issue Examples
Lines connected incorrectly
Screentone wrong shade

Can be avoided by using high-contrast filters.

Screentone misaligned
Screentone too blurry or sharp
Redrawing using wrong colour

The circled region is pure black, while the region around is slightly brown. Using a filter mask to increase contrast can help spot this kind of issue.

An instance where cleaning was performed with a bluish-black colour instead of real black.

Missed cleaning speck
Lines connected that were intentionally split in the raw
Missing redraw
Lines too blurry or sharp See Controlling hardness.
No levelling: Black is off-black, white is off-white See Color Calibration.