It happens to the best of us, and it usually happens at the worst possible time.
You’ve laboured over a document, you’ve put your heart and soul into it; you’ve checked it, double checked it, triple checked it. You’re about to sign off on its final approval but you stop, pen poised; that dreadful feeling of doubt is back.
I received a phone call the other day from one of my clients. She was about to send a document to the printers and on her last read through she stumbled across a ‘to’ that she thought should have been a ‘too’. So she did exactly what we all would have done; she asked the person sitting beside her what he thought. When the two of them couldn’t reach agreement they asked others in their office for an opinion. The result of the straw poll was – 50 per cent voted for ‘to’ and, you guessed it, the other 50 per cent voted for ‘too’.
It was all too much! What was she to do?
She decided to call me. My vote would be final and there’d be no further correspondence entered into!
How can you avoid being in this same situation? You don’t want to be the one to sign off on a document that’s got a glaring error in it; errors are very costly. They don’t just cost you in reprints they cost you in reputation.
Whether you’re the author of a document or you’ve worked with a document for a long time, by the time it’s in its final stages of approval, you’re often too close to the content to know what the quality is like.
My advice is, seek a second opinion. Ask a colleague who has a good grasp of the English language to proofread your work; someone who can spell and who knows about grammar and punctuation, someone who understands your objectives and your audience and how you can reach them. If you don’t have that person in your office, ask a professional proofreader to do it; ask me.
I listened with great interest the other day as my eight-year-old son explained that he’d been proofreading at school that day. When I enquired further about what he’d done he said that he’d written something, proofread it himself and then he’d given it to the little girl sitting beside him so that she could proofread it too. In return she gave him her written work and they both set about improving each other’s spelling and punctuation.
If it’s good enough for eight-year-olds to take the time to get their work proofread then it’s good enough for the rest of us to do it too. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you think I can help.
Oh, in case you’re wondering, I voted for ‘too’!
