It’s embarrassing to be caught in a mistake. It’s even more embarrassing when that mistake is in the first place you count on potential customers looking. Despite the occasional-comic strip joke about the doughnut-shop owner who boosts sales by hanging a banner advertising “DOUGNUTS”–so passersby will wander in to chide him about the mistake and perhaps make a “since I’m here” purchase–most business owners would rather not be known as the guy who can’t spell his own name.
Nonetheless, “rush job” mistakes continue to make themselves obvious through postings and headlines alike. The decorative sign that read, “If Your Lucky Enough to Own a Horse You’re Lucky Enough” (reported as a “‘breathtaking’ grammar mistake … managed to get the word wrong AND right in the same sign!”). The Washington Postarticle introduced with the page-wide and boldfaced question: “Did they need this big of a party?” The store sign advertising “CAT RING” (perhaps the E had only temporarily fallen off that one, but it still took me a few minutes to realize they were selling catering services and not feline-themed products). And I don’t have space to get into all the errors I’ve seen glaring out from PowerPoint slides at crowded seminars.
Even mistakes that are caught in time can cause problems. There were the 10,000 brochures that were already back from the printer in hard copy before someone realized they advertised complimentary instead of complementary options. There was no budget for a reprint job, so the copywriter responsible for the error put in eight hours of overtime–hand-gluing e‘s on top of i‘s.
If you can’t proofread the whole thing multiple times to make sure every word is right, at least spend fifteen minutes on the most highlighted words!