by Nancy Scnoebelen Imbs
Published in American Society of Administrative Professionals
To err is human. We all make mistakes, even the best writers. Proofreading allows us to take a laser-approach to our writing — word by word, paragraph by paragraph, from start to finish. Ensuring your copy is free of typos, spelling or grammatical errors is not only the foundation of good writing, it sets the stage as a detail-oriented professional who takes pride in their work.
Every time you write a letter or an email, it reflects the way you present yourself and your company’s credibility. This can translate into how much you care about what you’re writing, the intended recipient or ultimately the company’s reputation.
To borrow a quote from Dale Carnegie, “There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.”
The “what we say and how we say it” make proofreading ever so important. Above all, proofreading matters, and like anything, practice makes perfect.
It can be easy to overlook errors in our own writing, because we’re so close to the content. Proofreading is classic evidence that writing looks different to the writer and reader. Our brains tend to think everything we do is correct, so as the writer, we have a difficult time recognizing our errors.
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