There’s a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in some cases it could be worth thousands of pounds of lost business. A misplaced letter here or a minor error in grammar there, and before you know it you’ve lost the trust of your customers.
Everyone makes mistakes. All it takes is a few words that can be misread horribly, amusingly, or horribly amusingly, and you’ll quickly start trending on social media (and not for the reason you want). So how do you avoid those mistakes? You hire an expert, the same way you would hire a plumber to fix a leak, or a mechanic to fix your car. But rather than waiting for a problem to present itself, you hire a proofreader to prevent mistakes. And the size of the document doesn’t matter, either; I’ve worked on 2-page CVs and 130-page PhD theses, so don’t worry about asking me to look at your new single-page menu or price list (or even your new shop signage).
Mistakes are real, expensive and damaging
A document that hasn’t been professionally proofed can often be spotted as easily as fridge art can be distinguished from gallery art (unless your two-year-old child is the next Van Gogh). But what really stands out is when lack of an editorial eye costs you money and reputation. And it doesn’t matter who you are and what your responsibilities include – getting something wrong could lead to serious consequences:
- You might be a government agency out of pocket for thousands of pounds to reprint a form or a brochure that had spelling errors in it, or to remake a bronze plaque that misspelled a historical figure’s name.
- You could be a business that ended up selling products or services at a loss because of missing punctuation marks or decimal points in your contract.
- You may be a blogger or influencer who posted a topical reference that was actually incredibly insensitive… and went viral, for the wrong reasons.
- You might be a jobseeker whose CV included mistakes that led to you not getting an interview.
- Or perhaps you’re an educational publisher who inadvertently included a rude word from another language in a school text, or a cookbook publisher who let a recipe go to print with a typo that turned a dish from edible to inedible in just one word.
These things have happened in real life, some of them several times, and a good proofreader could have prevented all of them. In fact, good proofreaders do prevent things like this many times a day. You don’t hear about it because the mistakes were caught in time.
What value do proofreaders add?
When you’re dealing with the text that’s your face to the world, you can’t afford not to get a professional. Certainly, you could hand over proofreading jobs to new or junior members of staff, but why would you trust such important work to someone who is still learning the business?
A professional proofreader like me stands ready, willing and able to strengthen and embarrassment-proof your text for less than the cost of the time it took to write it, let alone the time it would take you to rewrite it. In some cases, I might even be able to have the proofed document back to you on the same day you sent it! Good text pays for itself in increased revenue – and with the revenue you won’t lose because of a job badly done.
If you don’t have an in-house proofreader on your staff, there are many advantages to using a freelancer like me. Here are a few of them:
- You save staff time – and you keep staff focused on the jobs for which they were hired; that means you get more from your staff and their job satisfaction will probably be higher when they’re not interrupted with proofreading assignments.
- It ensures consistency of style and vision when you have an ongoing relationship with your proofreader, and at the same time it only costs you money when you are having them do work.
- It gives a fresh external perspective that no one inside your organisation can provide. When you’ve been working on a text for hours, reading and re-reading it, it becomes easier to miss errors, no matter how much attention you pay.
- Proofreaders have access to the right tools, such as the Oxford English Dictionary. Sure, there are plenty of decent, free alternatives out there, but only the OED offers access to 600,000 words and over 1,000 years of English, as well as quarterly updates.
Proofreaders are passionate and affordable
Every text you’ve really enjoyed or found useful has had a proofreader behind the scenes who helped to make it that way. You’ll rarely find a proofreader credited in any published text, but we don’t do it for the credit – proofreaders like me are passionate about language and helping people communicate more clearly, and we love what we do.
Professional proofreaders are also really affordable, especially when you consider what we could save your business in terms of potential embarrassment or lost revenue. I work on a fixed-price basis, so you’ll know upfront exactly what your job will cost with no extra or hidden charges, so if you have any documents you want checking for errors then don’t delay – get in touch via the homepage and let me know how I can help you!
The Polished Page 