According
to the Associated Press, a Pennsylvania attorney is finding out that typos can
be expensive.
A federal judge recently reduced his
requested fee from $180,000 to about $26,000 after reading a three page document
from the lawyer full of misspellings and other errors.
The lawyer admits he
relies too heavily on spellcheck software and doesn’t proofread
enough.
But he says the judge should have known that he
accidentally filed an unedited copy and that the amended paperwork filed three
days later was the finished product.
One additional
problem: That filing had errors, too.
To avoid typos and other costly goofs, we suggest that you try these proofreading drills from Writers Web Watch enewsletter by Communication Concepts and other sources.
People
read differently on screen and on paper, so print out a copy of your writing.
If you read aloud, your ear might catch errors that your eye may have missed.
Keep your staff’s proofreading skills in top shape
by periodically running through some simple proofing exercises.
For example:
Proofread an article by starting at the end of the piece, and reading it aloud. When we read backwards, we’re not reading for content so we’re not sidetracked by the temptation to edit the copy, says Dennis John Gaschen, a professor of Communications at California State University—Fullerton.
We tend to
miss errors in sentences that contain a lot of words with the letter
“f.” That’s because we learned to read phonetically.
As we proofread, when we see the word “of,” we
think of the way it sounds, “ov,” not the way it looks.
Learn to recognize the tendency to pass over the letter
“f” by counting the number of “f”s in a sentence. Most
people find fewer than there are.
Do a
search for typically misused words, such as “to” for “too.”
Do the same for names that aren’t spelled in the usual way.
For instance, if you quote an executive whose last name
is spelled Thomson, run a search for “Thompson.”
Don’t assume anything about the spelling of first
names either. Marilyn is one way to spell a woman’s name. So is Marylynn,
Marilynn and Merilynn.
Homonyms are words that share the same spelling or pronunciation but have different meanings. Switching “accept” with “except” or “complement” with “compliment” could be disastrous, so pay attention to them.
After
checking all the previous points, don’t forget to get a colleague to
proofread it for you. You’ll be amazed at the mistakes you’ve missed.
A second person will also be in a better position to
evaluate whether the sentences make sense or not. Copresco employs a
professional proofreader to review our important documents.
Check out
Copresco’s TechTopics No. 12 guidelines for more effective
proofreading and a short treatise on spell checkers.
Ways
to avoid embarrassing—and costly—proofreading mistakes and blunders
are included.
The bulletin will be helpful to anyone who
creates or is responsible for final approval of documents for publication.
For a free TechTopics subscription, complete the
form on our website.
Copresco
will be closed Thursday, November 27 and Friday, November 28 for Thanksgiving.
Enjoy the holiday weekend.
We
discussed the benefits of calendars in our April Overnight Lite.
Here’s an automatic calendar maker for Quark and InDesign:
http://www.data2date.com
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