Do you trust in Dog over God? This police department may not, but here they are, telling the world that they do.
I preserve the mistakes I see online and in person by taking a photo or a screenshot. I find at least two per day on a major retail, news, or goof-around website. I keep a catalog of these boo-boos and show them to potential clients to prove my gripe: having a second pair of eyes is worth every penny because it saves money, time, headache, and reputation, all in one easy (and affordable) swoop.
For example, this Dunkin’ Donuts is selling munchins. Yum?
Typos are funny when you spot them yourself. Typos aren’t funny when they happen to you.
- Imagine printing 500 business cards, only to find when they arrive that your email address is at .cmo and not at .com. That’s $60 wasted.
- Imagine printing 100 banners that say “visit our stor” instead of “visit our store.” That’s $2,000 down the drain.
- Imagine making 200 giveaways that have a phone number with a missing digit. That’s $400 of your hard-earned money, gone!
No matter how confident you are that you know your phone number or how to spell “store,” everyone becomes blind to their own text, especially after staring at the same proof or sample for days on end.
And that’s just the physical costs of a typo! Imagine if a mistake is lurking on your website you wrote ages ago (and if you wrote it ages ago, it’s time for a refresh), or an errant word is floating around a brochure that you reorder on autopilot every three months. To potential and existing customers and clients, those typos are not just mistakes. They can call credibility into question. If you can’t take the time to spell something right on your package, brochure, or website, are you taking the time to produce a worthwhile product deserving of someone’s hard-earned money?
Readers notice mistakes. The quality of what you’re selling plummets when coupled with poor, misspelled content. Read the comments on any article on any major website, and there are plenty of people calling out the author or editor for not catching a mistake. There are posts on major websites like Buzzfeed dedicated to the typo that are based off images shared on social media networks, which means that John Q. Public noticed the typo and found it funny enough to put online for everyone to see. That’s not good publicity.
It doesn’t matter how confident you are in your spelling of basic words. One slip of the keyboard or one irrelevant back burner thought, and your serious intention becomes an embarrassing — and expensive — mistake. It’s worth investing a few dollars to avoid costly mistakes.
SCS Creative guarantees a quick turnaround on all proofreading projects. Get in touch with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Alignable, by email at info@scs-creative.com, or by call/text at (732) 646-8877.
