In the old days, when we screwed up a press release with an embarrassing typo, it was bad enough that we had to humiliate ourselves in front of journalists.
Today, it’s a lot worse. Journalists are blogging. And they’re exposing our boo-boos to the whole world in blog posts like this one from a Baltimore Sun reporter.
A press release, written by the Center for American Progress, refers to a school “principle” instead of a school “principal.” As if that isn’t bad enough, this group is pushing for teachers’ salaries to be more in line with those of principals.
My free email course “89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases” has a lesson on proofreading. I recommend that you ask somebody else to proofread every release you write and to click on every live link to make sure it takes readers to the correct website.
Full disclosure: I’ve made more than my own share of typos. Many of them actually showed up in newspapers where I worked as a reporter, either because I didn’t proofread my own copy well enough, or a copy editor missed it. (See “The Do-it-yourself Press Release Makeover.”)
Other errors are in this blog, for the whole world to see. One of the worst appeared in this post when I first published it this morning, after proofreading it about 10 times. A reader quickly pointed out that the link to the press release tutorial incorrectly led her to the Baltimore Sun post.
Just call it “The blogging faux pas of the day.”
Hi Joan! You have a faux pas in your faux pas post. =-) Your free email course link is linked to the Balitimore Sun article.
Could you please email me the correct link. Thank you!
Typos are embarrassing; grammar boo-boos like principle for principal are worse because they make you look foolish. However, the good news is that everybody makes them and, if nothing else, you have a reason to contact news release recipients again with the correction. As Donald Trump said, “There is no bad publicity.”
Know, too, that you are in good company. Years ago I worked at major publishing houses in New York, where teams of editors and proofreaders worked on each project. Yet we always kept a reprint list, which was a list of corrections that would be made in the book’s next printing because there were the inevitable misspellings and other corrections that would be spotted only once the book was in print.
A tip from my editorial experience: Reread your headlines carefully. We tend to skip over them in proofing and that’s where many mistakes get into print.
Typos are the nemesis of copywriters everywhere. The more I read something I have written, the less likely I am going to see the glaring typo in the headline.
One valuable lesson I learned while working at an agency – read the copy backwards. It takes the meaning out of the message and you just see the words.
I still recommend having someone else proof your copy for grammatical and spelling mistakes, but this tip has really helped me when I proofread my copy.
Wow, I LOVE that tip Jenni – reading backwards to see just the words – this is a late comment, but I just wanted to thank you!