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Pooper Postage Required: Cut Typos Out of Your Writing

ebarrows • July 10, 2017

No no no no no that wasn’t my typo. I mean I wasn’t the one who wrote “ pooper ” when it was supposed to be “ proper .”

Okay so here’s the story: I was working at a print shop when an order for thousands of return envelopes was placed. That’s what it said in the box where you’re supposed to affix the stamp. I mean I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t change it because that’s what the client ordered. So that’s what we printed. All two thousand envelopes had the word “pooper” on them.

I have to admit that was a pretty funny mistake. We all laughed about it at the shop. I bet some of the people who put their stamps on that spot laughed too. This isn’t the kind of reaction businesses want, right? If you want to be taken seriously you’ve got to make sure your words are saying what you mean.

When I’m reading a Victorian novel (cause that’s what I do) and I run across an old-timey typo – a single word misspelled amongst hundreds of thousands – I forgive it. But when I’ve only got three words to read and one of them is dead wrong there’s no room to have understanding – because the meaning is totally shot.

Here are the steps I take to create typo-free text:

  1. Spell check – If everyone used it we wouldn’t have had the “covfefe” scandal. This is an especially important step for Social Media . You’re not writing a business letter but you are communicating with the public and a quick run through spell check could save you some embarrassment.
  2. Grammarly – Install the free version of Grammarly to Word. It helps out with punctuation, identifies when words should be compound words (water fall or waterfall) and also identifies word usage errors (“dancing in the isles ” or “dancing in the aisles ”).
  3. Read it out loud – After all the spell checks just go through the document yourself. You’ll be able to pick out choppy sentences and replace words for better ones. If you only have three words in your document look up each of them in the dictionary just to be sure you’ve got it right.
  4. Have someone else read it – Hand your document to a friend, family member or co-worker. Ask them to highlight anything that stopped the reading flow for them. They’ll be able to pick out things you gloss over.
  5. Hire a proofreader – If your document is super important hire someone to read it over and confirm that you’ve eliminated all of those pesky typos.
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