Is Ben Franklin to blame?

Did you know that 259 years ago (in 1752, do the math) Benjamin Franklin allegedly created all your issues with gadgets and gizmos? If the legend holds true, when he flew that famous kite and got the shock of his life, his discovery of electricity started the ball rolling for all the electronic doodads and addictions that plague us today and make our digital communication so difficult and important. So the next time you want to smack your iPhone around for autocorrecting your texts or throw your laptop out the window when spell check fails you yet again, just take a calming breath and whisper curses at Poor Richard and all that he hath wrought upon us. (And tell him you still haven’t forgiven him for wanting to make the turkey our national bird.)

Written by: Sean Taylor, ProEdit

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Managing a Successful Brand: The Importence of Producing Error-Free Content

Did you notice the spelling mistake in the title of this piece? Chances are you did. In fact, it probably sprang from the page almost immediately. These types of editorial errors play a big role in how your company is perceived. From the first page to the last, error-free content is of the utmost importance. Communications documents, whether internal or external, that are riddled with spelling, grammar, or formatting errors can pose a potential threat to the future of your company! When these types of errors continuously pop up in your content, you can be sure that your clients or potential clients are making negative judgments about your company, employees, and services. These kinds of perceptions, however harmless they may seem, can hurt the top-notch brand you worked so hard to create.

Negative Judgment #1: Your Company is Unprofessional
You know that your company is professional. You’ve worked hard to develop an image that your company’s services are at the top of your field. Content that has a lot of errors is a red flag that your company is not carefully and thoroughly reviewing materials for publication. This can indicate a level of unprofessionalism, since the way you present your company to the world should be high on your list of priorities for creating and managing a positive brand. If you can’t take the time to ensure that your own products are perfect, how can potential clients know you won’t do the same to them?

Negative Judgment #2: Your Employees are Not Skilled
Of course you employ only the best in your field. But even skilled writers and editors make spelling and grammar errors in initial drafts. Tight deadlines make people work faster, which means the important quality assurance phase of document production is often foregone to deliver the product on time. Producing error-free content is as simple as carefully reviewing any material you’ve written. Enlist the help of a colleague or two to give the document additional pairs of eyes and make sure to use the “Spell Check” function in your word processor.

Negative Judgment #3: Your Services and Deliverables are Low-Quality
Imagine opening an issue of Time magazine and finding multiple editorial errors on the first page. You turn to the next page, which is just as plagued by spelling and grammar mistakes. Regardless of what the article is actually saying, it’s hard to really trust content that doesn’t follow the basic rules of spelling and grammar. It’s like the old saying, “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.” Readers get distracted by mistakes on the page, and no matter how profound what you’re trying to say is, they will determine that your services are low-quality.

Everyone makes mistakes in their writing; it’s a natural part of the drafting process. However, you have to be ready to give your final product that finishing polish before presenting it to the public. No matter how small you think the errors may be, these kinds of mistakes speak volumes to your contacts. Protect your brand by making sure you are producing only the highest quality material!

Are writing and editing just not your company’s strong point? Contracting with a writing and editing service like ProEdit can help improve your content at a low cost and with a fast turnaround.

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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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Branding: Your Message Needs a Word Tuxedo

Did you watch the royal wedding?

Think of what you didn’t see amidst all the grandeur and pomp and beauty: not one single pair of blue jeans, not one tank top, not one T-shirt with a funny caption. Why not? Because the dress code matched the event—formal, fancy, classy. Anything less than a suit or a tuxedo would have been out of place. Imagine jeans, tank tops, and funny T-shirts scattered throughout the church. That would have created a far different atmosphere and knocked formal, fancy, and classy down to informal, casual, and tacky.

What does this have to do with editing and branding?
Just like the wrong dress code can reduce a royal wedding extravaganza to a stereotypical shotgun wedding, the wrong dress code in your business communication can reduce your professional, informative, and unique company image to something cheap, unhelpful, and commonplace.

How do you dress your business communication properly to send the right message? Make sure your work has had “alterations” for the best fit. Only instead of seams and fabrics, use the tools of proofreading and editing.

Proofreading – Getting Rid of the Wrong
“But I ran it through spell check,” some may say. Well, as nice a tool as spell check is, it falls short in one vital area—it doesn’t think for itself. It’s only as good as its dictionary. Because of that, trusting it to make your copy foolproof is a risky proposition.

For example, spell check fails to understand the differences between “it’s” and “its” (though it does mark it while you’re typing, be careful—it’s often trying to “correct” it into a wrong usage) or “they’re” and “their” and “there.” It also doesn’t catch the common mistyping of words like “or” for “of” and “up” for “us.” And that’s the just the beginning. When it comes to proper usage, it doesn’t recognize the differences between “which” and “that” or “less than” and “under,” among other common grammatical mistakes.

Just ask the editors of the Brigham Young University student paper. In 2009, they trusted spell check to “proofread” their copy and accidently accepted the word “apostate” for a misspelling of “apostle.” Then they went to press without proofreading the “corrected” text—and quickly recalled 18,000 copies of the paper (http://www.sunjournal.com/node/85717). As honest a mistake as it was, it did cause the paper a lot of embarrassment.

Suppose you’re driving home and pass a billboard that reads “Better then our competitors.” That’s not exactly going to fill you with confidence in that company’s ability to do its job.  It doesn’t matter if that job is laying bricks and has nothing to do with writing or editing. It still reflects poorly on that company’s quality of work. “I wonder if they hurry through their brickwork too, and make similar mistakes,” you might think.  Sure, it is a simple mistake and a common error, but it speaks volumes about the business that made it. In other words, it hurt the brand in the eyes of a potential client.

The bottom line: Read your work to proofread it. Sure, use spell check and grammar checkers as tools, but yours must be the mind at work behind them to think beyond where their abilities stop short.

Editing – Making What’s Right Even Better
There’s a common misconception that editing and proofreading are just two ways of saying the same idea. The truth, however, is that editing picks up where proofreading ends.  Editing goes beyond correcting spelling and grammar to make your copy the best it can be. (To continue our analogy of getting dressed for the royal wedding, think of proofreading as taking a shower and getting clean—the basics—and editing as visiting your closet to choose the right suit or dress—adding the finishing touches to look your best.)

Good editing looks at style, tone, and voice. It makes sure your professional company has a professional image. It makes sure your casual surf shop has a casual tone in your communication. It makes sure your instructional copy is easy-to-follow and written simply and directly.

Good editing aims first for the ultimate goal of any written message—understanding. It aims for the simple instead of the verbose, the clearly defined instead of the esoteric, and the concrete instead of the abstract. It enables you to speak plain language to the average person rather than speaking jargon understandable only to those with doctorates in your field. Good editing helps you “determine the best options” rather than “delineate the most advantageous possibilities intrinsic to the market.”

Taking the time to edit your documents (or have them edited by someone else) will ensure your brand maintains the image you want to show off to your current and potential clients.

We’re often told that we “clean up well” when we put on something nice to wear, which for me usually means a coat and tie. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. When I go out, I want to put my best foot forward and talk and dress in a way that says something about me. In a word, I “edit” myself to send the right message.

Put Your Message on the Best Dressed List
Are you looking to improve your company's communication and ensure that your brand is seen in the appropriate light? Don’t let simple, common errors undermine your materials. Make sure to get your point across clearly and directly, and don’t hinder your message with a tone, style, and voice that doesn’t match your image.

In short, don’t show up at the royal wedding in jeans and a T-shirt.  It’s not pretty, and you’ll get all the wrong kind of attention.

Written by: Sean Taylor, ProEdit

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