Some more proofreading traps

Readers are appalled when they spot a typo that seems to them careless or ridiculous. Most of the time though, it’s not habitual sloppiness or lack of effort leading to the errors. Instead, situations crop up where even meticulous writers or editors find it tough to catch mistakes.
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Headlines
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Imagine those unbelievable goofs in newspaper headlines, such as referring to “Mayor Michael Bloobmerg” (it should have been “Bloomberg”) or the unintended slapstick in “One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers”!
As proofreaders we sometimes, for whatever reason, not look much at the wording in the biggest font on the page when we’re proofreading. But we SHOULD!

Numbers and specifications

Few readers would know that “15 grams” should be “15 milligrams” or a lawn mower labelled as model A77134 should be A71134. The only way to check accuracy in such matters is to compare them with an authoritative source.
That’s a proofreader’s job to make sure all the numbers and measurements are what they’re supposed to be.

​Company or brand names
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Is it “Phillippe,” “Philippe,” or “Phillipe”? It’s all too easy to get this wrong.
Confusion like this happened when someone listed an 1852 bottle of Allsopp’s Arctic Ale on eBay as “Allsop’s Arctic Ale,” with only one “p.” The winning bid was $304.
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However, the buyer noticed the typo and relisted it on eBay. With the correct company spelling, and therefore getting picked up in online searches, this antique item quickly resold with a winning bid of more than half a million dollars. What a lucky buyer (the first one!).

Here are two things I could help you with:

1. Proofread all your business documents before they go out “into the world”
2. Explore solutions or possible solutions for issues in your business processes

​Contact me now!