Editing and Proofreading
We may think that editing and proofreading are only for books, magazines and newspapers, but they also play an important role in business communications, and can make the difference between your written content delivering results, or suffering the fate of Shift + Delete.
Why Do I Need an Editor?
When you create written content – an introductory email, a covering letter, a blog article, a newsletter – remember that your audience is being constantly bombarded with information. You will have just seconds to persuade your readers that what you have to say deserves their attention.
Skilled editors will know how to communicate your thoughts more effectively and avoid the common pitfalls of writing. They will transform your content into concise, unambiguous sentences that flow effortlessly from one paragraph to the next.
Why Do I Need A Proofreader?
Spelling mistakes and incorrect use of punctuation are often the result of writing in a hurry, not knowing the correct spelling or rules of punctuation, or carelessness. We may fool ourselves that these are justifiable excuses for turning out poor quality writing, but our readers probably won’t be as forgiving.
In business communications, whether it be an email, a catalogue or a formal presentation, writing accuracy will reflect not only our professionalism but also our attitude towards our customers.
What’s Wrong With Auto-Correct Software?
Spellcheckers are useful as a guide and will often pick up obvious mistakes, but they should never be relied on entirely. A misspelt word may actually be the correct spelling for another word with another meaning, creating a sentence with often amusing, but occasionally disastrous, consequences.
Writing assistance tools use AI and natural language processing to predict the meaning of a phrase or sentence and suggest corrections. Again, they are a useful guide, but knowing that the results aren’t always accurate, the tools’ developers offer the options of ignoring the suggested changes or adding your version to your dictionary.
When Should I Use A Proofreader?
Clearly, you don’t want to be asking a proofreader to check every email or text message before you send it, but as a rule of thumb you might want to use a proofreader
- If it is particularly important (an introductory letter or email, a formal presentation, etc.)
- If it is to be printed (reprint costs can be very expensive and wasteful of resources)
- If it will be widely distributed to and read by people you value
Why Should I Use The Write Company?
We can help you with all your proofreading and editing needs, from that brief but important letter to a 1,000-page document. We have the skills and experience to ensure your sales and marketing material is compelling and your technical documents are accurate.
We work from hard copy and digital files, although editable text in Word documents or PDF format will considerably reduce the processing time and therefore costs. Edited and corrected text is generally returned to you as a Word file for easy copy and paste, but we can also format it to create a finished document for immediate publication.
If you have something current that you would like us to work on, or want to know more for when a need arises in the future, call us on 01760 723366 or fill in the following request and we will be in touch.