Proofread to Perfection: Typo Prevention Tactics For Copywriters
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Marcia Yudkin
Apr 23, 2013, 6:40:03 AM4/23/13
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Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
Marcia Yudkin
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Article Title: Proofread to Perfection: Typo Prevention Tactics For Copywriters
Author: Marcia Yudkin
Word Count: 555
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=851487&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
Contact The Author: http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=851487
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=851487
*********************** ARTICLE START ***********************
It once happened to me: the word "pubic" in my book where it should clearly have been "public." And in an expensive mailing, I once caught my fax number where my phone number should have been, just before the piece went to the printer.
Typos can foul up your message, offend your client or readers, damage credibility, trigger unnecessary costs and prevent interested people from being able to respond. Ensure that your message conveys the correct, intended information by following these nine steps.
1. Proofread on paper, not on a computer screen. Point a pen at words on the page to slow down your eye, so you see what is actually there rather than what you expect to be there.
2. Let your printouts sit overnight before finalizing them. Rereading after time has lapsed helps you spot glaring errors.
3. Actually dial all phone numbers to make sure you haven�t transposed digits or worse. Test all URLs by clicking on them, and carefully examine zip codes and street numbers.
4. In a recurrent publication, like a newsletter, or an email you�re adapting for a new occasion, make sure you�ve appropriately changed all dates, program titles and no-longer-relevant information that occurs deep in the piece.
5. Is it LexiConn or Lexicon or some other variation? Confirm the spelling of all place names, company names and people�s names. Things like Colombian coffee but Columbia University are tricky to remember.
6. Look up any unusual words in the dictionary to check their meaning, connotation and spelling. I was once embarrassed by having half a dozen subscribers to my newsletter inform me that I had written "inertia" where I meant "entropy."
7. Don�t forget to look carefully at headlines and subject lines. I�m not sure why, but the larger the font size, the harder it can be to catch mistakes that in retrospect appear to be staring one right in the face.
8. Read your copy out loud. This often helps you catch instances where you�ve omitted a word, changed things incompletely between drafts or inadvertently dropped a line or paragraph.
9. Take a close look at stated prices. Missing decimal points, the wrong number of zeroes, switched numbers, shipping costs updated in one spot and not another and so on are common errors.
Above all, do not assume anything. Some years back, a famous mail-order company barely averted disaster when its back-to-school catalog arrived in millions of homes. The catalog invited shoppers to call a phone number that belonged to a much smaller company instead of them. The mega-retailer had to pay the other company an unnamed sum of money (surely six figures) to immediately take over the misprinted phone number. The misprint's cause was an employee who "knew" a toll-free number starting with 877 should really have started with 800.
And that doesn�t begin to top out the monetary harm that typos can cause.
In my files, I have a case where a misplaced comma in a contract triggered $2.13 million dollars in additional payments owed by one of the parties and another where an investment firm lost more than $18 million because of a typo in an order for a stock trade.
Details matter!
About The Author: Veteran copywriter/marketing consultant Marcia Yudkin is the author of Meatier Marketing Copy and 14 other books. She runs a one-on-one mentoring program that trains copywriters and marketing consultants in 10 weeks. Participants learn no-hype marketing writing: http://www.yudkin.com/become.htm
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=851487
*********************** ARTICLE END ***********************
- To distribute your articles go to http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php
- For more free-reprint articles go to http://www.isnare.com
Message delivered directly to members of the group:
publish-the...@googlegroups.com
*****************************************************************
Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
Marcia Yudkin
*****************************
IMPORTANT - Publication/Reprint Terms
- You have permission to publish this article electronically in free-only publications such as a website or an ezine as long as the bylines are included.
- You are not allowed to use this article for commercial purposes. The article should only be reprinted in a publicly accessible website and not in a members-only commercial site.
- You are not allowed to post/reprint this article in any sites/publications that contains or supports hate, violence, porn and warez or any indecent and illegal sites/publications.
- You are not allowed to use this article in UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) or SPAM. This article MUST be distributed in an opt-in email list only.
- If you distribute this article in an ezine or newsletter, we ask that you send a copy of the newsletter or ezine that contains the article to http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=851487
- If you post this article in a website/forum/blog, ALL links MUST be set to hyperlinks and we ask that you send a copy of the URL where the article is posted to http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=851487
- We request that you ask permission from the author if you want to publish this article in print.
The role of iSnare.com is only to distribute this article as part of its Article Distribution feature ( http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php ). iSnare.com does NOT own this article, please respect the author's copyright and this publication/reprint terms. If you do not agree to any of these terms, please do not reprint or publish this article.
*****************************
Article Title: Proofread to Perfection: Typo Prevention Tactics For Copywriters
Author: Marcia Yudkin
Word Count: 555
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=851487&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
Contact The Author: http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=851487
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=851487
*********************** ARTICLE START ***********************
It once happened to me: the word "pubic" in my book where it should clearly have been "public." And in an expensive mailing, I once caught my fax number where my phone number should have been, just before the piece went to the printer.
Typos can foul up your message, offend your client or readers, damage credibility, trigger unnecessary costs and prevent interested people from being able to respond. Ensure that your message conveys the correct, intended information by following these nine steps.
1. Proofread on paper, not on a computer screen. Point a pen at words on the page to slow down your eye, so you see what is actually there rather than what you expect to be there.
2. Let your printouts sit overnight before finalizing them. Rereading after time has lapsed helps you spot glaring errors.
3. Actually dial all phone numbers to make sure you haven�t transposed digits or worse. Test all URLs by clicking on them, and carefully examine zip codes and street numbers.
4. In a recurrent publication, like a newsletter, or an email you�re adapting for a new occasion, make sure you�ve appropriately changed all dates, program titles and no-longer-relevant information that occurs deep in the piece.
5. Is it LexiConn or Lexicon or some other variation? Confirm the spelling of all place names, company names and people�s names. Things like Colombian coffee but Columbia University are tricky to remember.
6. Look up any unusual words in the dictionary to check their meaning, connotation and spelling. I was once embarrassed by having half a dozen subscribers to my newsletter inform me that I had written "inertia" where I meant "entropy."
7. Don�t forget to look carefully at headlines and subject lines. I�m not sure why, but the larger the font size, the harder it can be to catch mistakes that in retrospect appear to be staring one right in the face.
8. Read your copy out loud. This often helps you catch instances where you�ve omitted a word, changed things incompletely between drafts or inadvertently dropped a line or paragraph.
9. Take a close look at stated prices. Missing decimal points, the wrong number of zeroes, switched numbers, shipping costs updated in one spot and not another and so on are common errors.
Above all, do not assume anything. Some years back, a famous mail-order company barely averted disaster when its back-to-school catalog arrived in millions of homes. The catalog invited shoppers to call a phone number that belonged to a much smaller company instead of them. The mega-retailer had to pay the other company an unnamed sum of money (surely six figures) to immediately take over the misprinted phone number. The misprint's cause was an employee who "knew" a toll-free number starting with 877 should really have started with 800.
And that doesn�t begin to top out the monetary harm that typos can cause.
In my files, I have a case where a misplaced comma in a contract triggered $2.13 million dollars in additional payments owed by one of the parties and another where an investment firm lost more than $18 million because of a typo in an order for a stock trade.
Details matter!
About The Author: Veteran copywriter/marketing consultant Marcia Yudkin is the author of Meatier Marketing Copy and 14 other books. She runs a one-on-one mentoring program that trains copywriters and marketing consultants in 10 weeks. Participants learn no-hype marketing writing: http://www.yudkin.com/become.htm
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=851487
*********************** ARTICLE END ***********************
- To distribute your articles go to http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php
- For more free-reprint articles go to http://www.isnare.com
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