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Proofread - dang it!Today I want to talk about proofreading, or rather, the lack thereof. It amazes me how so many semi-illiterate people have managed to find themselves in situations where they get to write, and have others read the nonsense that they generate. I want to say something else before I begin this particular caterwaul. I live in a glass house, but here I am throwing stones. There is no question that I make frightening, horrid mistakes. I've said overdue instead of overdo. I've said its instead of it's. And I've mixed up my theirs, they'res and theres with the best of them. In fact, my beautiful assistant, who doesn't edit anywhere near enough of these articles, will probably go crazy with her red pen over this one. But one thing is certain. At least I make an effort. Also certain is that there is too much stuff floating around these days that is so poorly written that it's darned close to offensive. You see, proofreading isn't fun. After about the fifth or sixth time that I read a piece, I can't stand it anymore. But I'm afraid, for some of us, proofreading even once is a burden. One of my pet peeves is to get an email, or read a letter, or view a Web page where the writer clearly didn't read the text through even once. It's always obvious because the errors are SO egregious that only a complete nincompoop would have missed them. So what does that say about their attitude towards me, their correspondent? Is it OK for them to send me virtually unreadable garbage in order to save themselves the time and effort of a simple review? And it's not only emails. One of my clients has a sales department where half the sales staff are so bad that they have a secretary proofread everything that goes to customers. It's amazing what she finds. And it's sad that the company has to waste her valuable time because of the lack of commitment from some of the sales reps. They added a writing test to the interview process just to weed out the jamokes who couldn't wright gud. Why is proofreading such a problem? No, I'm not going to indict the entire education system of this country. While I won't say that's not part of the problem, it's a little more than that. Let me illustrate by going back to the days BPC (before the PC). When I wrote a letter or memo, I would grab my yellow pad, and write it out in pencil...longhand. Then I would walk over to my boss's secretary, and in total supplication, beg her to type my document. Luckily I knew how to suck up well, and after a few days, a draft of the letter would appear on my desk. I'd make some corrections, mostly because my handwriting was so bad that she always guessed wrong on a few words. She'd then retype the letter, run it by me one more time, and then it would go out. This process almost guaranteed that the document would have few, if any errors in it. It had been rewritten a couple of times, passed through a couple of different pairs of critical eyes, and a couple of days had passed since I had scratched out the original thoughts. Today, we have none of this. Most documents are prepared and sent out almost instantly. Get an email, type a response and send. The Webmaster creates and uploads a document without having the marketing department look it over. Reports are prepared using the world's best office productivity tools, but it looks like a monkey wrote it. Why? There are no multiple sets of eyeballs looking at the copy. There is no re-writing (since we now have word processors). And there is no time to let the words "cool off" so that they can be read with a cleansed brain. I blame it on computers. Computers are so powerful, they allow us to be really sloppy. In the past, the primitive techniques at our disposal required multiple individuals to be involved in creating a document. Now, we don't have secretaries anymore. We have executive assistants. Why should they type when you've got your own computer? The problem can be solved. Here are some ways that we CAN write cleaner documents, and even use the computer as part of that process. After you've written the document, read it through only enough to make sure you've gotten it organized right. Do NOT read it through more than once. You want to avoid having your brain subconsciously memorize the document, defeating you from effectively proofing it. Instead, read the document out loud immediately. If you're working in a cube or open office, this is a little tough. But it's important. If necessary, go outside (not where the smokers hang out) and read it. If nothing else, it'll give you the chance for a little change of scenery. As a bonus, you'll acquire an interesting reputation as the guy who goes out to the parking lot throughout the day, stands there for a few minutes, then comes back in. Trust me, people will fear you. Reading your writing out loud will turn up so many errors that you'll be embarrassed to think you might have posted the document to your Web site unchanged. After you've made the massive corrections from that exercise, you now want to review it again, just to make sure you haven't introduced any more mistakes. One of the major problems with cutting and pasting is that fixing one problem often creates more. There's always the odd participle, article or pronoun just sitting there on the page with nothing to do. I'm not going to make you read it out loud again, though. Read it through very carefully, then throw your brain into reverse and read it through backwards! No, not word for word. Read each sentence individually going from the back of the document to the front. This is a good way of preventing your brain from skimming and getting ahead of you. Don't be the only person who reads your copy. In my case, my beautiful assistant reads stuff, if she's around or there's time. If you're not lucky enough to have such a wondrous person, try having a fellow worker read your writing (and you, of course, read theirs). Another option is to print the document out in a much larger font than you've been composing with. I usually write in Courier 12. However I'll print the draft in something like Arial 20. When you're reading in REALLY big print, those errors will stand out. Force yourself to read one line at a time. Read just the way you did in grade school - take a sheet of paper and use it to prevent your eyes from going to the next line until you've carefully read the line you're on. Use spell-checking! There is absolutely NO excuse for having misspelled words that could have been caught by the computer. You've got the technology, use it. However, grammar checkers are less useful. They may catch some things, but they won't catch much...so don't rely on them to catch your goofs. Let the piece sit for a day. Even if it's an email response, save it as a draft and reread it in the morning. This will not only help you find errors, it might prevent your sending out an email that you shouldn't have. Because I'm getting tired of being embarrassed by my beautiful assistant, I have made a checklist of all the typical mistakes that I make. For example, I will occasionally mix up there, their and they're. I use the search function to find ALL of those words in the document, and I inspect their usage. I also tend to use "also" and "as well" in the same sentence. So I search for those words as well. And I use way two many "buts" at the beginning of sentences (did you notice the "two" - another of my typical mistakes). Use your word processor's search capability to master your own list of common errors. Finally, for material that's really important, and you're not lucky enough to have a beautiful assistant or average looking co-worker to review your copy, you may wish to contact a professional proofreading service. Doing an Internet search under "proofreading" should give you more than enough leads to get you started. Before you start chastising me about all those dangling participles and split infinitives (as my beautiful assistant will no doubt do), I prefer to think of those things as more an issue of style. They're not stoopid erors. Having too many toos in a sentence talking about twos and tos is pretty dopey, though. Writing is communicating. Communicating is the act of conveying information from you to the other party. If you insist on offering un-proofed gibberish to your correspondents, they might get the point you're trying to make. They'll also get the message that you're either partially illiterate or remarkably inconsiderate. Proofing takes time and effort, as I've illustrated above. But it is invaluable to avoid making a VERY bad impression on customers, vendors, fellow employees and your boss.
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