Proofreading your content is, without a doubt, an indispensable stage of the writing process and the most important of all content editing tips. Small errors can have a far greater impact than you might expect. The BBC reports that a single spelling mistake on a website can reduce sales by fifty percent – one of several reasons to always edit your work. Correct grammar and spelling both play an important role in presenting a professional and credible image of your company to potential customers. But, of course, nobody’s perfect.
Mistakes happen to the best of us, sometimes even after extensive editing. Grammar can be especially tricky, since the spellcheck function in Microsoft Word never seems to be as competent as it thinks it is. Plus, grammar is pretty thorny to begin with. You may ask: “Was that a run-on?” “Does it need a semicolon?” “Should I use ‘who’ or ‘whom’?” “Do I mean ‘their,’ ‘there,’ or ‘they’re’?” “‘Its’ or ‘it’s’?” “Should that be ‘alot’ or ‘a lot’?” (Hint: it’s never “alot,” and if you check out that link you’ll never make that mistake again.)
We’ve all been there. Even when you know a rule, sometimes your fingers get ahead of you, and suddenly you’ve written the wrong thing. Luckily, if you’ve ever made a mistake like this, you’re not alone! (And, if you haven’t, congratulations – I aspire to your level of perfection.) These 8 times errors slipped through the cracks prove that we’re all human (and that proofreading really does matter).
1. It’s not all fun and games:
Image credit: HubSpot
The mistake that shows up in this ad is a pretty common one, so it might not have been too bad – were it not for the educational games it’s promoting. Sometimes I wonder if the universe has a thing for irony.
2. The devil is in the details:
Image credit: The Guardian
Again, it’s really the irony that makes this. Can you think of a worse place for a typo? The placement seems too perfect to be true.
3. My country, ‘tis of thee:
Image credit: HubSpot
This seems like quite the typo, but who knows? Maybe a name change is just what America needed to become “better.”
4. The name game:
Image credit: HubSpot
Misspelling the name of the paper is a pretty embarrassing thing to do, but they handled it with remarkable poise. It’s not the only mistake of its kind, however…
5. The name game, part 2:
Image credit: The Guardian
The country Chile knows how it feels to flub its own name, too; in 2008 the Chilean Mint mistakenly produced coins that spelled “Chile” incorrectly. Not all typos end badly, though – these coins, which are still in circulation, have become collector’s items.
6. Thou shalt proofread:
Image credit: The Guardian
Have you ever read back over a sentence you’ve just written and realized you left out an important word? The same thing happened to Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, who in 1631 published what were meant to be copies of the King James Bible. Unfortunately, they left out one important “not” in the 10 Commandments and accidentally sanctioned the practice of adultery. Their version of the Bible became known as the “Wicked Bible,” and nearly all copies were burned by the church.
7. Fake it ‘til you make it:
Image credit: Cracked
This is more of a communication error than a typo, but some extra proofreading would have come in handy. Notice anything off about the middle definition in that picture? "Dord," meaning density – mistakenly added to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. The entry was meant to read “D or d,” the abbreviations for density in scientific fields, but at some point it mutated into "dord" and was added to the dictionary, despite not being a real word.
8. Maybe it’s easiest to just give up:
Image credit: The Guardian
Sports aren’t my forte, but I’m pretty sure this headline from the New Orleans Times-Picayune isn’t using widely accepted football terminology. This baffling sentence appeared in 2011 when somebody presumably forgot to substitute the real headline for the placeholder text.
So, remember: always, always, ALWAYS proofread your work – but if you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. At least you know you’ll be in good company!
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