The Proof Fairy » proofreading

Proofreading in the news

Alison — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:21:01 +0000

It’s not often that proofreading – or lack of – becomes a front page news story, but that’s exactly what happened last week, thanks to a slip of the keyboard by Labour leader Ed Miliband. It seems everyone is on Twitter these days, even shadow PMs, and in a tweet about the death of Blockbusters’ TV presenter Bob Holness Miliband accidentally called the programme “Blackbusters”. A simple enough mistake to make when you’re typing in a hurry, but one that The Sun thought worthy of the front page! Typically the timing was bad, following hot on the heels of the much-reported tweets by Labour MP Diane Abbott about inherent racism and divide and rule policies, but at least The Guardian kept a calm head and saw the unfortunate typo for the non-story it was.

Another typo-related story, with the potential for a more serious outcome, was reported by the Daily Mail in the same week. An American man accidentally pressed the 0 key instead of the 8 on his mobile phone when setting up a bank payment. The error meant he was 80 cents short on his mortgage payment, triggering a letter threatening him with foreclosure despite him sending a cheque for the outstanding money. The bank has since rescinded the warning, but the man has decided he’ll stick to cheques in future!

Another Mail Online story reported the rather foolish vandalism attack on Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s house by a group calling themselves Real Fathers for Justice. If you’re going to the effort of buying spray paint and breaking into a property to vandalise it, you’d think you’d make the effort to get the spelling right too!

Finally, a report by IT security company Sophos discovered that making mistakes when you type in a URL can have serious consequences thanks to “typosquatters”. These unscrupulous souls register domain names that are very similar to existing websites, in the hope that people will mistype the URL and land on a rogue site instead. Sophos looked at six popular websites – Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple and their own site – and investigated over 2000 domains that had one character added, deleted or changed in the address – for example, twitterz.com and facemook.com. The report found over 80% of the domain names had been “typosquatted” and while most of them were harmless, 5% were either adult or cybercrime sites. Landing on one of those would be a nasty shock if you were just trying to buy a new iPad …

So what’s the point of me reporting all these stories? I’m not a grammar Nazi (despite popular opinion!) and proofreading isn’t the be all and end all of life – but these stories do demonstrate that you need to have your proofreader’s head on, even on social media sites!

5 Tips to help you with proofreading

Alison — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:44:14 +0000

Almost all businesses use the written word to promote themselves and most people rely on their spellchecker … but that can be a big mistake!

See, spell checkers are okay, but they’re not infallible. Much of the language we use is based on context, so a spell checker will not know if you’ve used “compliment” when you meant “complement”. It won’t be able to tell that you’ve missed the “d” off the end of “and”, or that there’s a word missing from a sentence. And it will often throw up odd grammatical suggestions that will turn your paragraph into nonsense.

And you can’t guarantee that YOU will be able to spot your own mistakes either! It’s true – when you’ve thought of the words, researched the words, written the words and proofread the words, you will see what you expect to see, not what is actually on the page. Here are five tips to help you spot those annoying typos and errors in your writing:

1. Read the text out loud. This forces you to read every word on the page; it’s much easier to skip over things if you read in your head.

2. Don’t proofread a document as soon as you finish writing it. Take some time away so the words are not as fresh in your mind.

3. If you’re checking a string of numbers, check them backwards as well as forwards. Or get someone else to read them out while you check them.

4. Print out documents rather than proofreading on-screen – it’s much easier to spot errors on paper.

5. Use the dictionary! Don’t be ashamed to look up a word up if you’re not sure of its spelling.

However, my most important tip would be to get someone else to proofread for you. A second pair of eyes is essential to prevent you letting typos go out unchecked. If you don’t have anyone around, consider using a professional proofreader; my Pay As You Go Proofreading Service will help make your life typo free for a very small price!

Make proofreading part of the process, not an afterthought!

Alison — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 11:39:11 +0000

I know I probably bang on about the importance of proofreading a little too much but it really should be a vital part of the process whenever you create marketing materials – and not just an afterthought. Time and time again I find evidence that proofreading after the event can be an expensive exercise!

The latest high profile case of this was featured in The Guardian on Saturday. The story led like this:

The American author Jonathan Franzen might justly be called a perfectionist: his latest opus, Freedom, took nine years of painstaking effort to complete inside a spartan writing studio – and is now being widely acclaimed as a modern masterpiece.

So it is particularly unfortunate that, thanks to an apparent mistake by his typesetters, the version published in Britain has been found to be littered with errors.

In a highly embarrassing move, publishers HarperCollins were today forced to offer to exchange thousands of copies after Franzen revealed that the UK edition of a novel dubbed “the book of the century” is based on an early draft manuscript, and contains hundreds of mistakes in spelling, grammar and characterisation.

The publishers are alleging that the copy of the book that went to print was in fact an early draft, not the final version. Incredible really – it only takes a simple numerical renaming of every draft to see easily which the latest one is – but then, mistakes do happen.

So how will this impact on HarperCollins? It could prove very expensive for them if they are to recall all 80,000 copies. Fellow publisher Jonathan Blake comments:

HarperCollins is not planning a full scale recall of the 80,000 hardback copies in bookshops for logistical reasons. Such a print run would have cost the publisher around £70,000, with distribution and other costs ramping the amount up to around £100,000.

In other words, unless purchasers specifically request a replacement, the incorrect books will remain on the shelves! Before you rush out to stock up and sell them on eBay, there’s little chance that they will become valuable or collectible though, with such a high print run.

(Full article here)

Clkoser to home, I have dealt with clients who made similar mistakes – and it has cost them dearly. One company asked me to proofread the copy for a new website – but not till after the site had gone live. The site was littered with mistakes so not only did they have to pay me for the proofreading, they also had to recall the web designer, whose bill for editing the site wasn’t small.

And I’ve lost count of the number of people I meet who have errors in their marketing materials. They know they’re there, but they didn’t get them properly checked before the artwork went to print. And with most businesses running on tight budgets, there’s not a lot you can do with 5,000 incorrect leaflets other than hand them out despite the typos!

So okay, this is a business plug, but it’s also a very inexpensive tip too. Before you send anything off to print, get it checked first!

A good proofreader is never off duty!

Alison — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:14:05 +0000

While you can learn to proofread, the vast majority of professional proofreaders would probably agree with me that the ability to spot typos and errors is actually a gift, something you’re born with, rather than a learned skill. In fact, it’s probably more like a curse – because when you are a natural proofreader you can’t just switch off the eagle eyes!

I discovered this on a recent family holiday. Much to my children’s horror, wherever we went I was constantly spotting errors! I guess I should have been totally off duty and kept them to myself, but it’s difficult to resist blurting out “They’ve made a mistake here!” whenever you see a typo!

The worst example was a leaflet for a country park that we visited. In four places “disabled” was spelt “disadled” and there were two or three other spelling mistakes on the flyer too. Did it stop us visiting the park? No. Did it change my perception of the place? Yes, a little bit. It all comes down to attention to detail – if the owners of that park are a bit sloppy when it comes to detail, does that affect the way they approach health and safety etc? Who knows.

It seems that wherever you go, whatever you do, there are typos and errors – and us proofreaders just can’t help spotting them. On a shopping trip a while ago I noticed that a big poster on the wall advertising a broadband service actually talked about “braodband”. A leaflet handed to me at a school meeting last night had two typos on it, in a very prominent position. And twice in recent weeks I’ve spotted typos on people’s business cards – one of them in the email address!

Fortunately I’m not the only person in the world with this particular curse, but we may be few and far between. It took at least two weeks for someone to notice the error on this road sign on the busy A429!

I’d love to hear about any very public typos you’ve spotted!

3 examples of why proofreading is so important

Alison — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:54:30 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of proofreading recently, on a variety of topics. One of my clients writes business tenders and he gets me to check them all over before they’re submitted – when competition for a contract is tough, it could be the one or two small typos that slip through that make all the difference. Another client is an aspiring author, and I have been proofreading his first three chapters before he sends them off to publishers – again they could be rejected if there are spelling mistakes or poor grammar. Most of the errors I pick up are fairly unexciting, but there have been a few high profile ones recently that bring home just how important proofreading really is. I hope the following will bring a smile to your face – and also make you double check your work from now on (or, better still, send it to me!)

One of the most high-profile typos in recent months has to be the “ground black people” in an Australian cookbook. The phrase, which of course should have been “ground black pepper”, appeared in The Pasta Bible and led to all 7,000 copies being destroyed, at a cost of over $AU20,000! Amazingly, the Head of Publishing at Penguin Australia defended the proofreader responsible for letting the error through, saying that they would have been “concentrating on checking quantities, a common source of error in cookbooks” and that as almost every page would have included ground black pepper as an ingredient, he saw this as “quite forgivable”. Not so forgivable when it was an expensive error that caused a lot of offence too …

This next error was spotted in Birmingham by 4Networking member Richard Heathcote. Perhaps the error is intentional and aimed at getting people to talk about it – in which case it’s certainly worked. Mind you, I think I’d be wary about buying a property built by a company who apparently show so little attention to detail …

Apparently, the building opposite had an identical poster but with “appartment” instead of “aptartment” …. and that apostrophe shouldn’t be there, either!

Finally, an error closer to home (for me anyway) that appeared in the Oxford Mail – a newspaper that is no slouch when it comes to typos. This one is probably one of its best/worst though, depending on how you view it. Check out the entry for March 2008 … Now I know local councils come in for a lot of abuse, but maybe this is going a step too far?!

More proof that spell checkers aren’t perfect

Alison — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:37:41 +0000

This poem proves perfectly why you should never ever rely on a spell checker. A basic one will allow through all these words, even though over half of them are incorrectly used. A more sophisticated spell checker will pick up that words are wrong within the context … but would everyone know what to replace them with?

CANDIDATE FOR A PULLET SURPRISE

By Jerrold H. Zar

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it’s weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o’er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Bee fore a veiling checker’s
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we’re lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know fault’s with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word’s fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw’s are knot aloud.

Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.

Title suggested by Pamela Brown.
Based on opening lines suggested by Mark Eckman.

By the author’s count, 127 of the 225 words of the poem are incorrect
(although all words are correctly spelled).

Published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, Jan/Feb1994, page 13. Reprinted Vol. 45, No. 5/6, 2000, page 20.

The the impotence of proofreading

Alison — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:14:14 +0000

Yes, you did read the title right! This video, featuring American poet Taylor Mali, is a great example of why you should never trust the spellchecker!

So who is this Proof Fairy anyway?

Alison — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:23:23 +0000

The Proof Fairy is the alter ego of me, Alison Neale, and I have always been fascinated by the written word. As a child I spent hours locked away in my bedroom, book in hand. English was my favourite subject at school and I often wrote stories and articles, some of which were published in the local press. My mum taught English as a Second Language (ESL) and was my main critic, so sloppy spelling or grammar was not allowed!

After completing my A Levels I indulged my love of the written word through my career. I spent several years working in publishing and that gave me the opportunity to hone my skills in copywriting, editing and proofreading. After taking time out to bring up my children I took on the challenge of a degree course and, as a single parent, graduated in 2005 with a First Class Honours Degree in Media Technology and Production.

I switched to visual media for a while, working as a picture research manager for one of the world’s leading stock photography libraries, and then spent some years publishing my own community magazine here in rural Oxfordshire.

The Proof Fairy

The inspiration for The Proof Fairy came when I visited the website of a business acquaintance and spotted several silly mistakes that really altered my perception of the professionalism of the business. Knowing that the company had probably spent a lot of money on the design of the website, I saw an opportunity to help by offering my editorial services at an affordable rate – and The Proof Fairy was born!

The Proof Fairy began as a sideline to my magazine but has now become my main business. As The Proof Fairy I offer a range of editorial services including copywriting, copy editing, blogging and proofreading. Based in Faringdon, Oxon, I work for clients in a range of industry sectors across the country.

As well as running my copywriting, editing, and proofreading business, I am kept busy with my two children and our pets – a mad cat and a bearded dragon! I am also an Area Leader for 4Networking, overseeing the four Oxfordshire 4N groups. In my spare time I enjoy photography, geocaching, good food, swimming and reading. I’m also an avid football and motor sports fan.