By: Brad Kartel
Submitted: 2011-12-10 10:49:05 | Word Count: 581
It is quite surprising how much people actually manage to overlook whenever dealing with anything composed of word and letters, how people can make the simplest mistakes in spelling and grammar. I am talking, of course, about the way people tend to skip proofreading or to do a haphazard job of it whenever dealing with essays, posters, term papers, etc.
Sometimes, it is not even a matter of knowing how to proofread, but rather how to proofread well and with the commercial printing of publicity and other types of materials, you cannot expect your commercial printing company to do all the work for you. If you want nearly flawless written work, you better start improving your proofreading skills at once.
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The first thing you should remember when doing some proofreading is that you should always read your work-whether it is as short as a business card slogan or as long as contest mechanics in a poster-thoroughly. When I say thoroughly, I mean that you should comprehend every letter of every word in every sentence and see how the ideas will flow from one paragraph to the next. If you read it as a customer would-skimming and skipping every few words-you are sure to miss out some crucial details that may embarrass you at some point in the future. Keep in mind that you will be printing out dozens or hundreds of these things and a mistake in your template will be repeated a hundred times over.
Next, how many times should you proofread before sending of your prints? Once is never enough, and twice is fine but should only be done when you are in a bit of a hurry. You would be surprised to find that even if you read through your draft a third time, a fourth, or a fifth, you can still find a small error here and there. This is because if you read the same thing over and over again, your brain starts to predict what you want to see, making you miss out on the little errors you didn't expect to see.
Finally, while repetitive proofreading is definitely a must, you should also consider having another person take part in the process as well. You alone may miss mistakes even if you read something several times over, and sometimes it takes another pair of eyes to scope these out. Your commercial printing company does its part by sending you the proofs of your requests, and you should take advantage of this by having different people look over them. You wouldn't normally think so, but a thorough check of smaller commercial prints like business cards is actually more crucial than in brochures or booklets, so be sure to have at least two people proofreading these.
Proofreading has always been the bane of writers, researchers, marketers, and any other jobs along these lines. Especially now that customers are growing to be more critical with each passing day, the value of proofreading commercial printing products grows as well. Once again, it must be stressed that your commercial printing company can only do so much for you, and you should do your part in the commercial printing process as well. And if you caught the mistake in the previous sentence, you are off to a good start.
Author Resource:-
Brad Kartel is a marketing executive whose passion is helping business owners build their campaign through acquiring services from a commercial printing company. Learn more about commercial printing.
