CRINGY TYPOS? HERE’S THE ULTIMATE PROOFREADING LIST FOR CONTENT CREATION
In light of a recent HBO Max email mishap and the outpour of support for the marketing intern – many took the time to tell their own early career horror stories. We took it a step further and asked our IG community, “what’s the most cringy thing you did early in your career?”
The responses? Nothing short of amazing.
Spilled coffee on collateral to accidental emails. We’ve done it all!
But the biggest, yet most unsurprising mishap we saw among marketers, communicators and media? Typos. The brain starts to work on auto-pilot when you’re churning out miles of copy and batching content. It becomes easy to miss the little things. Luckily, we put together a hand-dandy checklist for you to streamline proofreading:
Proofread out loud. First things first. Read everything you wrote out loud. Does it flow? Does this timeline make sense? Do any sentences read awkward or confusing? The Read Aloud function in Word is a lifesaver for catching copy hiccups.
Duplicative writing. Are you using the same word too many times? We see “customer” often used in back-to-back sentences. Try the synonyms search tool and change it up throughout the paragraph. Best swaps could include “consumer” or “clientele.”
Duplicative messaging. Also check for redundancy with messaging. Consumers need to hear, read and watch a message 7x before they make a purchase decision or take action, but NOT within the same piece of content. Don’t beat a dead horse.
Cliches and jargon. Speaking of dead horses, avoid cliches and stay away from puns. Also remove any industry jargon and spell out any acronyms on their first use. Not everyone knows what “CRM” means.
There, they’re, their. Pay attention to words with multiple spellings and various meanings. You’ll sidestep a major mishap when you know the difference between being there and what they’re doing.
RSVP details. If you are promoting an event, triple check the date, time, address, and contact information. Can you imagine telling a producer to show up after an event happened? Or sending reporters to the wrong address because of a typo?
Links. Check that all linked material works before publishing. There is nothing more frustrating for a reader than wanting to know more and then landing on a 404 page. Include links for any source referenced, such as a statistic, or any products and services mentioned.
Passive voice. Passive voice is the easiest way to lose a reader. For example, in “The hat was worn by the girl,” the hat (the subject) receives the action of the verb, and “was worn” is in the passive voice. Construct sentences where the subject performs the action. “The girl wore the hat.”
Is there a point? Leave a reader feeling empowered with more knowledge or offer a clear call to ask in all of your writing.