I was happily reading along when all of a sudden my brain said “What? What did that just say??”

Here was the sentence: “The director was a tall, elegant man whose descendants came to America on the Mayflower.

“OOPS! That’s just not possible. Descendant means “child, offspring, heir.”
Obviously, the word they wanted was ancestors, but somehow that got missed in editing. I’m quite sure that Mr. Puzo knew the difference between those words, so he must have been suffering from a “brain pain” at the moment. And no editor caught it. Or maybe some ambitious editor didn’t know the difference and changed it from ancestors to descendants.

Whatever the reason, it sure did make me stop and look three times.

And it definitely proves that even a famous author, backed by a publisher and a team of editors, can let a mistake slip by and become published.

They make you lose track of what you were reading while you go back to re-read the last sentence and think “Huh?”

The one I found today wasn’t a major thing – but it was enough to make me stop. And I’m sure I know just how it happened. The write made some edits and changes before submitting the article. But he didn’t quite finish.

Here’s what I read: “There is still a huge backlog of these cases or foreclosures that have never been brought forward yet,” The sentence would have been fine if the writer had left off the word “Yet.” It would also have been fine if he had said “that have not been brought forward yet.” But “Have never been brought forward yet” was jarring.

Before you submit an article or a blog post – proof read your copy. See if there’s a word or two stuck in there that needs to come out.

You need to show your professionalism by using the correct words, the correct spelling, and the correct arrangement of sentences and phrases within sentences.

Misspelled words will indicate to some that you lack intelligence. That’s a shame – because many brilliant people don’t spell well. To others it will indicate a lack of attention to detail, and if you are in a line of work where attention to detail is essential, that can be just as damaging.

Depending upon the words and their placement in the sentence, misspelled words can sometimes completely change the meaning of your message.

Consider these examples pulled from church bulletins: “Say ‘Hell’ to someone who doesn’t care much about you.”

“This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.”

Then there are misused words. Those serve as huge “stop” signs in the middle of your copy, because they cause confusion. Your readers have to stop and look again to be sure they understood your meaning.

Yet, we see them all the time. Hear is used in place of here. Wear is used for where. There is used for their. One of the most common is loose used where lose belongs.

Missing words can confuse – or they can leave your readers laughing out loud.

Here’s another example from the church bulletins: “Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.”

Your sentences also need to knit your ideas together in a logical order so they clearly convey your meaning. You don’t want to leave it up to interpretation like this example does: “Don’t let worry kill you off – let the Church help.”

Obviously, errors like these are entertaining, and when they are shared among friends they do no damage. In fact, they might do good, because everyone needs a good laugh now and then.

But that changes when you’re writing for business. Unless your business is comedy, you want to be taken seriously and you want your readers to understand your message immediately. You want to answer their silent question: “What’s in this for me?”

Very few potential customers will call and ask if they don’t quite know what you mean. Worse, some of them will misunderstand and get a message that’s clearly not what you meant to convey.

So never skip the proofreading. And if you can get someone else to read your material before you send it out, do so.

After all, you know what you meant, so you might not catch a paragraph like this one: “Irving Jones and Nancy Carter were married on September 17. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.”

That copy is the first impression, and it could be the only one. Its quality will dictate whether those people begin to build an interest in you – or whether they toss you aside as not deserving of their attention.

Even when the message is good, it may need to be tidied up and polished a bit before it’s ready to greet the world. If you don’t take the time for this step, two things can happen:

1. Your readers will think you’re sloppy and pay no attention to detail.
2. The stop signs caused by errors will interrupt and destroy your message.

So write your message, then let it sit for at least a few hours. Then come back and read it with a critical eye. Here’s what to look for:

• Typographical errors and spelling mistakes
• Words doubled or left out
• Improper word choices (their for there, hear for here, etc.)
• Misplaced modifiers

When I write I’m thankful for the automatic spell checker in word – because when I get going I tend to write words backwards. For instance, I write “teh” for “the” and “adn” for “and.” And I know I’m not the only one – I see both of those errors quite often. In fact, I saw just such a mistake in the newspaper this morning. So look for words with the letters out of order.

An extra letter in a word can also cause confusion. Take this excerpt from an article about salesmanship that I read this morning: “…no different than a used care salesman.” Well, we know she meant “used car salesman,” but that little error makes the reader stop and look twice, destroying the flow of the message.

Doubling or omitting words happens easily when you change what you’ve written or get interrupted as you work. Usually it’s a small word like “the,” or “to,” or “of.”

Improper word choices are a huge problem – especially in real estate marketing. I don’t know why, but real estate blogs, blog comments, letters, and even web pages are often filled with misused words. In addition to the pairs mentioned above, writers often confuse “are” with “our,” “your” with “you’re,” “loose” with “lose”, and “to” with “too.”

The tough part of this is, if you don’t know the difference you can’t correct the errors. So if you aren’t sure that you do know, find a friend who loves words and word usage and ask them to edit your work. Getting them right will make a huge difference in how strangers view you.

Finally, misplaced modifiers can throw your whole message out of alignment. So read your work carefully to make sure it really says what you want to say. When your readers are forced to stop and try to understand what you meant, the flow is lost. And often your message is lost with it.

Phrases added to clarify who, what, when, and where have the opposite effect when you add them to your sentence in the wrong place.

Think about this sentence: “That man in the red shirt just listed his home.” Then read it when the modifier is misplaced: “That man just listed his home in the red shirt.” You know what it means after you stop and look twice – but you don’t want readers to stop and look twice in the middle of your message.

It can get worse, however. If I say: “The man from Kentucky listed his home,” the meaning is clear. But if I say: “The man listed his home from Kentucky,” it could mean that he’s from Kentucky, or that he is in Kentucky and signed the listing long-distance.

If you read a lot, you’ll see this kind of error almost every day.

So proofread, edit, and find a friend to give your copy a second look before you send it out into the world.

The truth is, when we write we know what we mean, so we don’t always spot our own errors.

And as always, when you don’t want to do this yourself, get in touch.

And that’s fine. You can learn how to do an acceptable job if you spend some time studying the psychology of advertising, read ezines about marketing, and take advantage of the “do and don’t” lists that copywriters offer all over the Internet.

Then if you take the time to really craft your ad copy, you’ll probably see some good results.

But there’s one set of roadblocks that can trip you up, even if you’ve been working hard at learning the psychological end of advertising. Those roadblocks are grammar, spelling, and word usage.

The truth is, many people who are brilliant at what they do are not very good at grammar, spelling and word usage. Those subjects aren’t important to their work – at least they weren’t important until it came time to write an ad.

To make matters worse, the lessons most people remember from grammar classes in high school or college are likely to be the ones that should be ignored when writing marketing copy.

For instance, you probably learned never to start a sentence with the words “but” or “and.” And those are words that copywriters use all the time to create a good flow from one sentence to the next. It works, because it sounds like real conversation.

Smart people know when they don’t know something, and that’s why people turn to their Word program to help them out with spelling and grammar. Unfortunately, using that program can mess up your message.

For one thing, it doesn’t know what you mean. So if you write “I can’t here you,” it won’t change it to “I can’t hear you.”

For another thing, it will advise you to change from conversational speech to academic speech. It will take a word like “can’t” and tell you to change it to “can not.” And you know that the meaning of those two words can be worlds apart.

If your child asks you to take him to the ice cream store and you say “I can’t do that right now,” it sounds far different than if you say “I can not do that right now.” The second sentence sounds almost angry because the emphasis lands on “not.”

The same will happen if you change isn’t, hasn’t, won’t, that’s, I’ll, she’ll, don’t, or any of the other common contractions that we use in conversation. When you change them, the meaning changes, and that’s not good. Or I should say, that is not good.

Academic speech has a place in the academic world – but it has no place in advertising copy targeted to non-academic readers.

Don’t put your trust in Word…

Sometimes Word does something even worse than destroying the conversational tone of your copy. Sometimes it is just plain wrong.

For instance, the other day I was writing copy for a career coach. The sub-header in the copy read: “Who is Angela and why can she help you?”

Word wanted me to change that sentence to “Who are Angela and why can she help you? A sentence like that can stop a prospect dead in his tracks – and destroy your entire message.

I suppose that the program picked up the word “and” after the name and assumed that I was writing about two people. (Do you know anyone named “why?”)

But what if I hadn’t known better and had taken Word’s advice to change the sentence? My client would have corrected the error. She also would have started looking for a new copywriter.

So what is the cure? If you’re not sure of your skills, find a proofreader. You may have someone in your family or your circle of friends who can read your copy and find any errors you miss. If not, you can find someone on line at a site like guru.com.

A proofreader is always a good idea, because even if you’re a whiz at grammar, you could miss a typographical error. And… a separate set of eyes will help you make sure your copy conveys the message clearly. Ask your proofreader to point out any spots that he or she doesn’t understand clearly and any places that seem “bumpy” when reading. You want that copy to flow smoothly.

Mistake #2:

The next mistake is handing your advertising copy over to someone who has neither the time nor the expertise to write it.

Here in our small town, business people often just make some notes about what the ad should convey and then hand it over to the ladies in the newspaper office. What a shame!

The advertisers assume that because they work at selling ad space, they know how to write a convincing ad. The truth is, they’re nice women, but they haven’t studied marketing. And even if they were marketing experts, they can’t spare the time it would take for them to create a compelling message for every one of their advertisers.

That’s why most of the ads in our local newspaper look alike – and why not one of them offers a “reason why” we should choose one business over another. But the advertisers can’t complain, because they got the ad writing service for free.

Specifically, it was about what can happen if you fail to check to see that the phone number is correct. And how easy would that be to miss? It’s like your mailbox – you see it all the time, but do you ever notice if a number has fallen off?

Anyway… the first story was about a marketer who spent a bundle on glossy-print, 100-page catalogs. She had laid it out perfectly, included attention-grabbing copy, and was primed for that catalog to bring her sales and more sales.

When it went into the mail and her copy arrived, she took one look, pulled out her wastebasket, and threw up.

There on every one of those 100 pages was the WRONG phone number. Fortunately, she was able to buy the phone number that was printed so disaster was averted.

In another example, a bank had a billboard made… and that phone number wasn’t just wrong, it was the number for an “adult” phone service.

OOPS!

Sometimes a letter can do more harm than good when it shines a negative light on the expertise of the sender.

It’s not just the composition that counts. It’s true that a letter that fails to tell the reader “what’s in it for me” will not get the hoped for results. But a letter filled with mis-used words, misspellings, and plain old typos can portray that person or business in a really bad light. As in sloppy, or unintelligent.

One accountant wrote that she had lost business because the letters she sent out made her look as if she paid no attention to details. Not a good trait for an accountant!

The cure is proofreading – not just once, but 2 or 3 times. And not immediately after you finish writing. At that time you still know what it is supposed to say – even if it says something else. It’s easy to overlook a missing word or a repeated word or a spot where it says “teh” instead of “the.” (Yep, you guessed it – that one is one of my big problems. Even copywriters need proofreaders.)

Sometimes it’s helpful to use tricks on yourself. Read your work aloud to catch missing or doubled words, or read it backwards to catch misspelled words. The best method of all is to get someone else to read it aloud to you.

When you go to the trouble to contact your clients and prospects, make sure that your letter makes a favorable impression – proofread before you send!

Oh – and that goes for email, too. It’s such an easy place to make a silly goof!