Have you ever added notes for a designer or typist? Are you sure they were removed later?

It’s an easy and obvious thing to do – add a note directly where it is relevant so someone else can make appropriate adjustments. I do it a lot, especially in pdfs that I send back to a designer for changes.

Make sure they’re removed

Today, I came across this image on Facebook:

{click on the banner if you want to find out about Cadbury’s competition You may have to log into Facebook though!}

It amused me because someone has asked the designer to add extra information – and the designer has added ‘please add’ as well as the required information. And no one noticed it to have it removed before publishing the banner.

At least it was a polite request that was overlooked!

Being a polite request, this has amused me and in no way detracts from me being a Cadbury customer (given I love their chocolate it would take a lot!) But it does have the potential to damage a reputation.

How do you feel about Cadbury making such an error?

I remember a similar experience in a training manual I once read. In amongst general text was a paragraph to the effect of “Chrissie the following graphic needs to add a break between a and b plus include x, use lower case letters and correct the categories”.

It is funny to tell but it isn’t a professional look for the training organisation!

Testing the reading

Some years ago, I worked in an engineering company and wrote many Expressions of Interest (EoI). I generally took an old EoI and hand edited it, adding and subtracting text as well as moving things around.

The department secretary took my rough notes (and they were rough at times!) and typed up beautiful documents.

Just for fun, I would occasionally test her and write something like “The company has three experienced engineers and the cow jumped over the moon, The little dog laughed to understand this project’s timing.”

It’s just as well I did proof read those documents as the secretary faithfully typed up the cow jumping over the moon!

Can you tell I’m not a talented typist? There’s no way I could type pages of information without actually ‘reading’ and processing it!

Other examples?

Have you spotted live examples of editor comments that have been included rather than followed?