The importance of proofreading

Nobody’s perfect.

That we all make mistakes is no excuse for not trying to prevent them, or fixing them afterward. It’s certainly not a reason to go on the offensive and try to deny there was ever a mistake in the first place.

Own up, early and completely: most sane people will probably forgive you, because nobody’s perfect.

Hell, I regularly find errors in this blog, two or three years after publishing a post. And let’s not forget my debut novel, which I am now revising after getting the rights back last month. This thing was published four years ago and sold a couple thousand copies, and the gaffes I’m only spotting now have been seen by all those people.

That said, when you are offering any kind of public face, proofreading is a vital step that many people and businesses seem to miss.

They may not know any better. They may be cynically counting on a population’s advancing illiteracy and lackluster reasoning skills to conceal the problem. They may even excuse the error, with the idea that it makes them seem more approachable, down-to-earth, one of the masses…

But there are enough sharp eyeballs out there, that businesses need to be vigilant about their public facade. The best they face is a private personal correction…the worst is public mockery.

Take this restaurant sign.

The business owners wrote up the ad copy, and none of them spotted a problem. They paid to have it made by a print shop, either local or online. Nobody there saw a problem, either.

Do you see the problem?

The food might be excellent. I’m going to try it out, to see. This is just a common typo, after all.

But a business or businessperson who misses or deliberately fudges some non-vital stages in their operations, may be missing more critical issues, too.

Today, it’s a turkey panini. Tomorrow, it may be nuclear launch codes or climate change responses.