posted by Design
Did you catch that one? Not all errors in design, punctuation, spelling or ahem, grammar, are always that easy to catch. And sometimes, they stare you in the face and slip by unnoticed. Take for instance, a trip one of our team members recently took to a shall-remain-nameless craft store.
Look closely at the above photo. The quality might not be the best, but you certainly don't need to be able to make out more than a few words on the package to catch the mistake. While the set may sit on the shelf unmoving, we're pretty sure the designer/production artist/copywriter meant to use the
other version of the word which changes the meaning of the package contents entirely. This is a great example of how one seemigly small error can earn you the ridicule of customers and fellow designers alike nationwide.
Spelling and grammar are important, but equally so is fact checking. We do everything we can to prevent mistakes from happening and that includes visiting very Web site, calling every phone number and mapping each address that we proof. It also helps to have more than one person proofread each piece—everyone comes to the table with different skill sets, so one person might find all the design details while another looks at the spelling. We don't send anything to print that hasn't been given the thumbs up by at least three people. The one time you don't will be the time a mistake gets threw.
Paying attention to detail can avoid a costly mistake for the agency and the client (think airline
"fat finger fares.") Not only does the responsibility fall on the shoulders of the designers and account managers to proof and fact check, clients also play a big part in the
proofing process. Because no one knows the content better than the client, its important that they look over everything before sending back the final sign-off. You really can never be too carfeul.
Some common mistakes to watch out for:
- A lot vs. alot
- Stationery vs. stationary
- Its vs. it's
- Double spaces after a period (we know what you learned in high school but in the professional world it's single.)
- To vs. too
- Accept vs. except
- Affect vs. effect
- Your vs. you're
- Em dash (—) vs. en dash (–) vs. dash (-) and the proper usage
There are a number of mistakes in this blog post. Are you good enough to spot them all? Tell us how many in the comments, and if you win, you get the ultimately satisfying reward of recognition on this blog and eternal internet fame. Catch the extra error in the airline article for bonus points.
Related Posts
4 Comment(s)
|
K. Zupan said:
|
| I'm giving it a whirl!!:
grammer --> grammar
which --> ,which
seemigly --> seemingly
very --> every
threw --> through
its --> it's
carfeul --> careful
internet --> Internet
Only thing I could see in the airline article is "sign up" should be "sign-up."
I'll tell myself my response just shows my appreciation for copy-editing and not my nerdiness. :)
|
| July 22, 2009 aA 9:29 AM
|
|
|
Dave said:
|
| Great attention to detail, K– and don't worry, we are constantly reminding ourselves that we are not nerds either. To put your mind at rest, the airline article has a pretty significant error: "And that's were the law gets fuzzy." Thanks for posting, and happy proofreading!
|
| July 31, 2009 aA 7:28 AM
|
|
|
Joni Mueller said:
|
| And I'd much prefer to see "versus" versus "vs." Leave that for case citations. :)
|
| August 17, 2009 aP 6:09 PM
|
|
|
Joni Mueller said:
|
| And since the site is no longer online, I'll share a screenshot I took and kept. A glaring example of failure to proofread.
http://www.pixelita.com/temp/web-design-gaffe.jpg
|
| August 17, 2009 aP 6:12 PM
|
|
|