I had a Brighton, Michigan based construction client recently email me to say we needed to reprint the materials that were on their way from the printer – the website on the back was wrong.  This immediately put a lump in my throat, worried that I had done something wrong – had missed a very important detail.  Turns out in this case, it was the client’s error, but I still felt pretty bad about it.  I want my clients to be excited when they receive their stuff, not bitter that they had to pay twice for it.

But… this underscores the importance for everybody – client and designer – to really truly proof your marketing materials before sending them to the printer.  Now I know this may seem like the most obvious advice in the world, but really, how well do we proof our work?

Here are some tips to help avoid catastrophic “typos”:

  • Read it out loud.  When you hear the sound of the words, it is much easier to tell if the grammar is wrong or a sentence is awkward.
  • Print it out.  Who knows why, but it can be considerably easier to see errors on a hard copy than on the screen you’ve been staring at all day.
  • Get a second (or third) opinion.  This is especially important if you’re the one who designed the piece.  It can be very hard to spot little errors in our own work after we’ve been looking at the same document for awhile.  Fresh eyes can always help
  • Get a second opinion.  Yeah, I know I already said this one.  But it bears repeating.  Plus, while one person might be really good at spotting places where images don’t line up, but is horrible at spelling.  Another will catch all those words that spell check misses because they’re still real words (their v. they’re).
  • Which brings me to the obvious one that a lot of us (myself included) still forget from time to time.  Use spell check.  While it’s not perfect, it will catch the really bad mistakes.
  • Pay special attention to contact information.  Website, email, phone number.  This stuff is critical in a marketing piece.  While a typo is bad enough in the prose, imagine how much worse it is when the person reading it is ready to call and do business with you, but can’t because you got a number wrong.

Nobody wants to put out bad work, and it’s hard to take the time to really truly look closely at what we put out before we put it out.  But when you’re sending something out to be printed, and paying the extra money for it, take the time.  Get excited and stay excited when that shiny new brochure comes in smelling of fresh ink.

What have you found helps when proofreading your work?

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