I’m sure glad I didn’t forget today!

Seeing that my Active Rain profile was in sad need of updating, I took the time this morning to do it. Then I checked to see what it looked like.

I have no idea why or where it came from, but at the top of each section there were at least 100 lines of “gobbledy-gook.” I went into the HTML editor and got rid of them, but if I hadn’t checked, all a visitor would have seen was – yuck.

After that was repaired I checked all the links and they’re fine.

But earlier this week, one of my links wasn’t fine. When I posted the blog about the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, I included a link for agents to use in requesting a letter I’d written. For whatever reason, the first attempt at creating a link didn’t work – it led to an error page.

So… Check and double check. Sometimes strange things can appear when you upload – and links you thought were fine can be broken.

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.

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.