Take a Second Look: Avoiding Editorial Errors

You finally did it! You put in the time, the money, the effort, and now you have something to show for it: the product. All you have left to do is to get it into the hands of customers. Unfortunately though, without a professional presentation, your product won’t even make it to a vendor. But before you go spend the rest of your budget on flashy sales gimmicks, take a second look at your presentation. Will it gain the attention and respect of the buyer? The answer to this question and the key to your success could lie in a simple proofread.

Often, companies spend their entire budgets on research, development, and production, only to cut corners when it’s time to write a proposal. To meet deadlines and stay under budget, a project manager with no formal writing experience might type up a plan and run a quick spell check. No mistakes? Fantastic. Run the presses and send it off before the office closes. But wait, there’s a problem. Automated spelling and grammar checks don’t catch every mistake.

For example, that manager means to start a sentence with “Whether friends and your family,” but instead, being in a rush, he writes “Weather fiends and you’re family” The buyers receive the proposal and immediately jump to the conclusion that either A) the company is accusing them of being related to a gang of cut-throat rainstorms or B) the company lacks the professionalism to properly edit documents.

That company’s product might be exactly what the buyers need; however, the buyers never make it past the errors to see what the company has to offer. Pardon the pun, but they can’t see the sunshine for all the rain. Eventually, that company is going to have to learn how to professionally edit documents, hire professional editors, or suffer everlasting bad business.

Sales proposals, however, aren’t the only types of documents you should submit for professional editing. Businesses need websites, and these websites should be free of errors. As a service or product provider, you are constantly trying to sell while consumers are constantly looking to buy. The Internet has made this relationship easier than ever. With a simple query into a search engine, consumers can find your business within seconds. If the visitors see typos or poorly constructed sentences, they are likely to leave your website to find something more professional that might meet their needs.

Editing is vital to every form of writing. Neglecting to edit will always yield negative or no results, regardless of content. Students who express complex concepts but fail to properly edit will make worse grades than those who do edit, even if the ideas are less developed. Job applicants with outstanding education and experience whose résumés contain misspelled words or incorrect punctuation are not likely to be contacted for an interview.

Regardless of deadlines or budget limits, editing should never be neglected. You may not be willing to give up your time looking over a document you just finished. It may be more work than you want to put in. In these cases, there are companies and individuals who will edit for you. This can even be more helpful than editing your own work. Because they are not familiar with your ideas and style, they tend to catch your mistakes more easily. Plus, it’s their job to do a good job. Remember that you have spent all of your resources on developing a product, a service, a grade, or even yourself. Why not spend the time, the effort, or the funds to ensure your work is correct and sounds great? It never hurts to take a second look.

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