Proofreading Archives

Looking for a Babysitter. Call Jane.

Katherine, a reader, sent me an excellent example of the confusion that can result from messages that are stingy with words and punctuation. Katherine saw this handwritten advertisement on a bulletin board: Looking for a good, responsible babysitter. Call Jane. Underneath the announcement were small slices… continue reading

Proofreading

I Right Email and Reports

I got two messages this week from professional women who told me what they right. It wasn’t that they were righting wrongs. They were writing email, reports, and proposals. They simply typed right when they meant write. And they did not catch their errors before… continue reading

50 Ways to Test Your Proofreading Skills

I am excited to announce Error Quests, a new product we just released. It is a collection of 50 short excerpts from business messages, each one containing just one error in grammar, usage, word choice, sentence structure, or punctuation. Your job is to find the single… continue reading

Help for People Who Make Signs

My friend Margaret sent me two examples of faulty writing on signs. I want to share them to help office managers and others who make signs for visiting customers. Read the two notices below, and see if you recognize the problem they share. In a… continue reading

Proofreading

Proofreading Slogan: Print Before Sending

I regularly receive emails that end with the slogan “Please consider the environment before printing this message.” Many people, including me, are concerned about wasting resources. Yet I’ve found that it’s much more effective to proofread a document from a printed page than from a screen.… continue reading

Error in an Ezine to 11,192 People

I published my monthly e-newsletter Better Writing at Work and sent it to more than 11,000 subscribers. One of them, proofreader and copyeditor Geoff Pope, found an error in the title of the newsletter and lead article. Can you find it? “Hot Button Language to Avoid—and Words… continue reading

Avoid This Simple “Comma Splice” Error

In 2010 one of the most common, surprising errors I saw in people's writing was run-on sentences made up of two short sentences. Here are examples: Thanks for your help, it's exactly what I needed. I will see you on Friday, I'm looking forward to… continue reading

Today Is 1/11/11–Or Is It?

In the United States, today is 1/11/11. In much of the rest of the world, it's 11/1/11. That difference is enough to argue against using numbers alone. Although all those 1s look terrific together, numbers alone can't communicate with the clarity of words, especially if you have… continue reading

Proofreading

Proofread Your Slogan Too, Scammers!

Today a friend sent me an example of a typo at the end of an email. It appeared in the company slogan: OBSESSED WITH BEIGN THE BEST I burst out laughing at the beautiful irony of the error, as he had done. But before I… continue reading

Proofreading

Editors, Copyeditors, Proofreaders–Whose Job Is It?

The other day a client emailed to tell me she had seen me quoted in an online newsletter. Always thoughtful, she sent me the link to the article. I excitedly clicked the link (it is still exciting to be quoted). But my excitement withered when, seeing the… continue reading