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Check your edit notes are gone
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:
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?
One little letter…
One little letter can make a huge difference.
I have just come across an example of why it is critical to proof read everything before you publish it, and why attention to details such as spelling and grammar are important.
Actually, I first saw this site about 8 months ago and they still haven’t noticed or corrected it. I had forgotten it but for my amusement I’m glad it was still there!
In the header of every page of the site, they have used an a instead of u in their tagline. One little letter could be a simple typo, of course, but your tagline and header are the first things people notice! And in this case, it doesn’t look like a typo as it makes a real word which gives a VERY different meaning.
The tagline in the header is “Pass a drag test no sweat” which instantly brings to mind men dressing as women (testing to see if they are real drag queens is perhaps unusual but I guess we don’t want people pretending to be in drag?)
Elsewhere, they use the tagline “Pass a drug test no sweat” which related to the fact they sell “products is removing unwanted substances from your body and provides for quick detoxification of your organism.”
I’m not going to touch the rights and wrongs of passing drug tests this way, but it is clear that there is a huge difference between drag and drug.
So check your work carefully and don’t just rely on spell checks to get your work correct.
Use your words wisely!
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