Business Writing:

5 Tips for Making Your Copy Error-free

By Mary Love

Oh-oh. You’ve worked hard on your proposal, labored over your presentation for days and checked and rechecked your facts. But there it is. Projected full-screen before your toughest clients. Bigger than life. Your product doesn’t “relieve” pain. It “relives” pain. The room is in an uproar.

Once an error surfaces, it seems so obvious. In fact, now it’s flashing like a neon light. How could we have missed it?

Missing mistakes is easy. Our brains train our eyes to see what they want to see. So instead of seeing “pubic relations” in our expensive new ad, our brains will see “public relations,” because it knows it’s supposed to see that. (Did you catch that one the first time you read it?)

Also, by the time a project is ready to go to press (or get sent to the client or presented at a meeting), we are tired of seeing it. It’s been written, reviewed by a committee, rewritten and changed at the last minute. We’d rather eat that manuscript for lunch than read it one more time.

But the good news is that catching errors can be almost as easy as missing them. And you don’t need to call your eagle-eyed high school English teacher back to help. Here are a few simple tips to try when you want to make sure you’ve caught any and all embarrassing boo-boos in your copy:

1. Read the big print. In our hunt to find The Typo we’ll read and reread the finest print but gloss over the headlines and titles—where the most embarrassing errors often lurk. A favorite proofreader’s axiom says, “If it’s as big as the nose on your face, everyone can see it but you.”

2. Read backwards. No, you don’t need a mirror. Read your sentences from right to left, word by word—“mirror-a-need-don’t-you.” You’ll be surprised at how easily you can trick your brain into seeing individual words and letters.

3. Look for what’s not there. Your new brochure just arrived from the print shop and looks great, but . . . oops. What happened to the company phone number? How will customers reach you? Sometimes we focus so hard on checking what’s written that we fail to notice when items mysteriously disappear. These invisible errors are the most challenging. So, try to proof against an earlier draft or a publication with similar information. Or, make a quick list of essential elements before proofing, and then check to see that they’re there.

4. Get a “fresh eye.” If there’s a mistake in your copy, someone who has never seen the text before is your best bet for finding it. Ask a family member or someone else who is not closely involved with your subject.

5. Get another fresh eye. Two are always better than one. Have one person read the draft aloud while the other checks the final.

And, as an extra step, . . . relax. Your eyes and brain will cooperate better if you take a deep breath, close your eyes for a minute, and clear your mind before taking that last look. It can’t hurt.

Mary Love is a writer and editor specializing in medical and health communications. She can be reached at 410-381-6523 or at Writing@MaryCLove.com. Her web site is http://www.MaryCLove.com.