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May 13, 2005
Proofreading for blogs? Absolutely.
By Christy Brewer
You know this would cheese me. Adrants features an announcement from someone who thinks misspellings are charming. Okay, okay… it’s fine for your personal LiveJournal, but if you want to attract intelligent clientele (read: any corporate client), you absolutely must have every letter and punctuation mark in its respective place.
Unfortunately, yes, corporate bloggers, this means running your posts by a proofreader before posting. Train your proofreader to move with the conversational flow of the post copy, but make sure everything is technically correct. Otherwise, you could be in the hot seat.
If you can’t afford a proofreader (because we can be an expensive lot!), at least do this:
1. Run a spellchecker. Better, compose your post in a word processing program. Then, cut/paste into your blog submission form.
2. Read the post backward. Read each word separately to ensure that each word is, in fact, a word you would expect to see in the post.
3. Have one other person read it. Another set of eyes never hurts.
No, it’s not cute. Trust me. You never know, I just might be your customer some day. Make me happy.
Posted by staff at May 13, 2005 08:46 AM
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Comments
I couldn't agree more. The same goes with profanity and rants. Who would hire such a person?
Posted by: John at May 13, 2005 09:31 AM
It's always amazed me that AdRants has so many typos in their newsletter email. You'd think they'd be trying a little harder.
Posted by: Mike M. at May 13, 2005 01:21 PM
Well, blogs are conversational, and while I have unofficial copyeditors (reporters and friends that read my blog and send me emails on mistakes), I do type quickly and may make mistakes.
It's a hard one to call - blogs are moving to corporate identities, so we need to be more careful with spelling, grammar, but then again, how many are good at grammar or spelling anymore?
Posted by: Jeremy Pepper at May 13, 2005 02:38 PM
Conversational tone is a must. However, let me be clear that while in speaking, we may make mistakes in conversation, the person who truly wants to be understood will correct him/herself as quickly as possible. The same approach should be used in a corporate blog. If, by chance, even after proofreading, a mistake slips by, simply correct it so that you know your readers get the full meaning of your post, and don't get hung up on the mistake.
The bottom line with any form of communication, blogs included, is to be understood.
I believe in making the effort to be good at grammar and spelling to lessen the chance of misunderstanding.
Posted by: Christy Brewer at May 16, 2005 10:08 AM
P.S.: Even fellow bloggers hold each other to this same "proofreading" standard. See CCRyder's comment about misspellings in the GM FastLane blog. (Posted by: CCRyder at May 13, 2005 11:05 AM)
Posted by: Christy Brewer at May 16, 2005 10:23 AM
