Error Proof Your Business Proposal or Business Project By Reading Your Work Out Loud
To anyone writing a business proposal or business project, I cringe when I see obvious mistakes in spelling, punctuation, grammar, statistics, photos and photo captions.
And here's why.
I spot them too easily.
I was recently working with a web design company.
They do good work, but when I looked at their website, I caught so many spelling errors and missing words that I wondered if anyone had taken the time to read it through.
And what was worse, and I'm sure you've guessed it, I began to have doubts about how good they really were.
That's the issue here.
How good are you? Can you be trusted? If you submit a proposal to a client and there are errors that should have been caught, will they trust you with their $2 million, or $250,000, or $25,000 project? That's what errors do for me - they stretch my ability to trust people.
How do you prevent this? By constantly checking the work you put out and then checking it again, and having someone else check it.
If there's a technical area being discussed, let people from that department do the checking.
Sometimes it gets tricky, especially if you are referencing sources using APA or MLA style.
APA especially has certain use of italics and punctuation that can easily confuse people.
My number one rule for avoiding mistakes is for the document to be read out loud.
This is where most errors are caught.
When I say out loud, I mean everything, from headings to table of contents, to staff resumes and any Appendices.
I get embarrassed when a newspaper gets a headline wrong.
Didn't they have someone proofread it? Well they did, but here's what happens all too often.
A proofreader fails to read the document out loud.
The document gets passed to someone else to proof.
They don't read it out loud either.
Because of that, they fail to pick up a glaring error in spelling or a misplaced word.
I've known a document to go through several readers, each one failing to pick out the error.
I repeat - read the document out loud.
True story.
I was involved with one of the most embarrassing errors I've seen.
The consultants I worked for had completed a Functional Report for a small hospital run by a group of nuns.
On the cover, the first place anyone looks, and in large letters, was this glaring error: The first "n" in Functional was missing.
How can you possibly miss something like that? But we did.
Had we read it out loud, it would have been caught.
If you're responsible for writing a business proposal or a business project, don't make the same mistakes when they are so easily avoided.
Read your work out loud, or have someone else read it out loud to you.
You may be very surprised at the errors you'll pick up in your business proposal.
I hope I caught any errors in this article.
And here's why.
I spot them too easily.
I was recently working with a web design company.
They do good work, but when I looked at their website, I caught so many spelling errors and missing words that I wondered if anyone had taken the time to read it through.
And what was worse, and I'm sure you've guessed it, I began to have doubts about how good they really were.
That's the issue here.
How good are you? Can you be trusted? If you submit a proposal to a client and there are errors that should have been caught, will they trust you with their $2 million, or $250,000, or $25,000 project? That's what errors do for me - they stretch my ability to trust people.
How do you prevent this? By constantly checking the work you put out and then checking it again, and having someone else check it.
If there's a technical area being discussed, let people from that department do the checking.
Sometimes it gets tricky, especially if you are referencing sources using APA or MLA style.
APA especially has certain use of italics and punctuation that can easily confuse people.
My number one rule for avoiding mistakes is for the document to be read out loud.
This is where most errors are caught.
When I say out loud, I mean everything, from headings to table of contents, to staff resumes and any Appendices.
I get embarrassed when a newspaper gets a headline wrong.
Didn't they have someone proofread it? Well they did, but here's what happens all too often.
A proofreader fails to read the document out loud.
The document gets passed to someone else to proof.
They don't read it out loud either.
Because of that, they fail to pick up a glaring error in spelling or a misplaced word.
I've known a document to go through several readers, each one failing to pick out the error.
I repeat - read the document out loud.
True story.
I was involved with one of the most embarrassing errors I've seen.
The consultants I worked for had completed a Functional Report for a small hospital run by a group of nuns.
On the cover, the first place anyone looks, and in large letters, was this glaring error: The first "n" in Functional was missing.
How can you possibly miss something like that? But we did.
Had we read it out loud, it would have been caught.
If you're responsible for writing a business proposal or a business project, don't make the same mistakes when they are so easily avoided.
Read your work out loud, or have someone else read it out loud to you.
You may be very surprised at the errors you'll pick up in your business proposal.
I hope I caught any errors in this article.
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