Editing and proofreading are vital steps in the writing process, ones that you should not skip. These steps catch grammatical, spelling and punctuation mistakes; improve the clarity and flow of your writing; and fix inconsistencies or inaccuracies. You might wonder if you could do these steps yourself, but, if you have read my blog on self-editing, you will know that I don’t recommend it. You are not objective enough to edit your own work, and you will probably miss things. But why does this matter? Are editing and proofreading that important? The answer is, absolutely. Here are five reasons why editing and proofreading are so important.
Clarify Your Meaning
Often, when we edit our own work, we miss places where the meaning might not be clear to other people because we know what we are trying to say, but we may not express that in a way others can understand. A professional edit and proofread will catch these parts and clarify your meaning, so your readers can focus on your message and not on your mistakes.
Enhance Your Authority and Protect Your Reputation
If you are trying to build a platform as a subject-matter expert, whether this is as a business or an academic, mistakes of any kind can affect your reputation. Imagine you are reading a blog about SEO optimisation, but it is full of spelling mistakes and weird tense choices, or, even worse, it gets something demonstrably wrong. Would you trust this website to give you good advice? Probably not. And you probably wouldn’t go back to them for any other information. As a content creator, you don’t want a couple of mistakes to potentially ruin your reputation.
Protect You from Embarrassment
Mistakes can be very embarrassing in any space, but especially when a simple spelling mistake slips through, as Penguin Australia found out in 2010. Shortly after publishing The Pasta Bible, an eagle-eyed reader spotted a mistake that suggested racist cannibalism. One recipe advocated garnishing a tagliatelle dish with ‘ground black people’ rather than ‘ground black pepper’. Naturally, Penguin Australia recalled the books and issued an apology, but the damage had already been done. The image still occasionally circulates on social media. This is obviously an extreme example, but, with the dominance of social media, mistakes live forever.
Save You Money
Penguin Australia lost a lot of money in this debacle because they had to reprint all those books. And they are not the only ones who lost a significant amount of money because of careless proofreading errors. This Scribendi article lists five occasions that poor proofreading cost companies millions, in one case, $225 million in one day. If you publish content with mistakes, you will also have to pay to correct them, and nobody wants to spend more on anything than they have to, especially if it could cost you millions.
Show You Care
It may be an unfair assumption that grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors mean the author is lazy or does not care, but that is exactly what readers think. Taking the time to make sure your writing is error-free and reads smoothly shows your reader that you care about them and your content, which will make them more likely to return when they need more information or the product/service you sell. After all, why should they care if you don’t?
The Importance of Editing and Proofreading
Editing and proofreading are vital processes in creating written content because they clarify your meaning, enhance your authority and protect your reputation, protect you from embarrassing yourself, save you money, and show you care about your content. Whether you ultimately decide to self-edit or have a professional editor check your work, these are two steps you must not skip.
Komentarze