As a creative agency, we’re all about colour, shape, balance and beauty. Nothing makes us happier than being able to deliver the most fabulous website, brochure or presentation for our clients (among many other things of course) – but there’s one element that is sometimes beyond our control.
Words.
In reality, everything we create forms a frame and a context for the written content, which in some cases comes directly from the client. And sometimes without quite as much attention to detail as our perfectionist in-house copywriters would like, in an ideal world. Picture the scene. We’ve designed a corporate brochure featuring sophisticated typography, graphics and photography, of course allowing space for written content. We’ve used ‘Latin’ text to show where the copy will go, and then the day comes where this vital element lands in our Inbox. This is where we take a deep breath, and then click ‘Open’ . . .
However brilliant our creative work, if it’s sitting alongside poorly crafted, badly-written copy – then our original vision for the finished project is never going to hit the mark, because while incredible visuals are our bread and butter, it’s the entire package we care about.
In any piece of sales and marketing collateral, every element has to be spot on, if it’s going to do the job to the best of its ability. And that means perfectly written, error-free copy to sit alongside those beautifully crafted, eye-catching visuals that you’ve already invested your marketing budget in.
But why does it matter so much? Because people judge.
Harsh but true. Even in this day and age of text speak, and strange acronyms being added to the Cambridge Dictionary (IYKYK!) – properly written text still matters. Even those who can’t spell or punctuate, and who don’t know their dangling modifiers from their past participles, still expect the people they are thinking of buying from to get it right. If a supplier or service provider doesn’t know where the apostrophe goes or how to spell key terminology, or didn’t care enough to pay someone to tell them, then what other details are they not paying attention to?
Good quality copy isn’t just a nice to have, it’s essential. And this is where proofreading becomes extremely important. It can make or break your brand reputation, provide you with a competitive advantage, and ensure you’re saying exactly what it is you mean to say to your customers. It’s not just external audiences either. Think of all the documentation your business generates in-house – instruction manuals, training materials, HR documentation, intranets, employee handbooks . . . all of that has to make perfect sense too. Yet the people who are responsible for writing them are unlikely to be experts in this field as well as their own.
So what’s the answer?
We’re not talking about asking someone to write your copy from scratch here (though of course we can do that as well) – we’re talking about getting a fresh pair of eyes on something you’ve written already. Not just to look for obvious things like spelling, punctuation and grammar, but also to check that what you’re saying actually makes sense to the audience and is written as clearly as it can be, something we explore further in our guide to accessible to website design. Beyond that, have you been consistent in your use of capitalisation, or hyphens? Have you got the right type of quote marks in the right places? And does the tone of voice, and the overall style of the copy, match your own communications guidelines document, if you have such a thing? (And guess what, if not, we can help there too!)
It’s easy to think that you can manage this in-house, but we guarantee that if you send us a piece of your copy to review, we’ll find at least one thing that needs correcting or improving, and almost certainly a few more. To illustrate the point, here are a few examples of real-world situations we come across all the time, in no particular order:
- Copy created from multiple different sources, written in different styles, tones and tenses.
- A mixture of British English spelling, American English spelling and Oxford English spelling – OK, who even knew that last one was a thing?!
- Inconsistencies in capitalising (or not) product names, proper nouns, corporate terms, official departments, job titles . . . the list goes on.
- Content written by someone whose first language is not English, where things like contractions, colloquialisms or just simply the phrasing, may not flow quite as well as it could.
- Technical documentation with numerous different measurements and acronyms, all written inconsistently – and not conforming to in-house guidelines.
- Interminably long sentences with a million commas, where you’ve long since forgotten what the point was by the time you get to the end.
- Formatting errors and inconsistencies in bulleted lists and other types of copy hierarchy.
- General verboseness, using ten words to explain something when two will do!
- Lack of clarity in explanations and instructions which lead to content being confusing at best and unsafe at worst.
- Issues with factual accuracy, where information has been gathered from online sources that have not been verified.
Maybe just one or two of these might sound familiar – and if so, then we’ll leave you with a small challenge. Open your company website, grab a brochure from the rack in reception, or perhaps have a glance though your own social media feeds. Can you see anything which might fit one of those categories above?