Conant Correct by Claire Conant

I just received an automated email newsletter and this was the opening line:

I have allot of information to share with you.

That should read “a lot” not “allot”.

The audience of this newsletter are people buying fabric. Some of these people might not recognize the error, and many might. For those that do recognize the error, the image this typo presents is - to me - one of a company who doesn’t pay attention to the small details.

Details count.

Just like with a resume, every contact you have with a potential customer should be perfect, always presenting your best foot forward. Mistakes like this are easily corrected, but better corrected before they’re sent out.

Few appreciate the benefit of a good editor.

I used to work for a corporation as a technical editor. My role was mainly to focus on all the technical documentation (user guides, installation manuals, operations guides) but the marketing director insisted that everyone in his department send their documents through me for a final editorial pass before they were distributed outside the company. It was my job to “save the company from any potential embarrassment.” I caught problems like this, ensured consistent messaging throughout all the documents, and made sure that a consistent tone and style was applied. However once he left the company, the support for true editorial compliance left with him.

Can you afford not to have an editor?

Maybe fixing a small error like this one I saw won’t make a huge difference in this company’s overall sales, but since you never know online who is reading, can you afford to take the chance? The one person who is turned away from your site from something so easily corrected could just be the person who has a thousand dollar order to place. Or more.

Here’s a great article on the state of copy editors today, written by Lawrence Downes of The New York Times.  Unlike the author, my background is not in newspaper copy editing. I came to the profession in a roundabout way. I started off as a benefits administrator in a corporate Human Resources department, and the bulk of my responsibilities was editing (and writing) internal communications. I then moved to the role of technical writer, then to technical editor, and now I do copy writing, copy editing, writing for the web and content analysis, to name just a few.

I have the utmost respect for the copy editors that I correspond with through an online email list. There is an art, a skill, required in prepping manuscripts for print, evaluating and copy editing scientific, medical, and legal documents. The value of a copy editor, in my experience, is often lost on communicators, but shouldn’t be. We always add value, even if we ask "the irritating question".

And hopefully, we get to ask the question before it’s too late.