Lately I’ve noticed a troublesome trend: people aren’t proofreading much anymore. From emails to, heaven forbid, newsletters from school, I keep finding misspellings and typos. Apparently, the fine art of proofreading is losing favor in our culture. Here are five reasons why you shouldn’t waste your time proofreading either.
Reasons to NOT Proofread
- You are perfect. You don’t make mistakes, so you don’t need to check your work. ‘Nuff said.
- Other people have more time than you and won’t mind taking a few extra minutes to translate your confusing prose. You sent a reminder for a meeting on Tuesday October 3, when the 3rd is actually a Wednesday? No worries. Everyone loves a mystery.
- Blame it on technology with a disclaimer at the end of all of your correspondence. Something like “please excuse any auto correct errors.” This will show that you’re aware of the mistakes in your writing, just unwilling to make the effort to fix them. That will impress your readers.
- Important people like potential employers, donors, or clients will overlook your lack of attention to detail when you request a job, money, or their business. Hey, people these days are generous. They don’t care about your work ethic or focus on professionalism. They just need to know how awesome you are.
- You can better spend your time doing things like watching NetFlix or checking Instagram. We’ve all got to prioritize.
Can you think of any other reasons why people should (not) proofread? Sarcastic responses welcome.
Thank you to Dana at Kiss My List for inspiring this piece with her blog post Ten Posts I Would Never Write and to the wickedly sarcastic mama who wrote this genius letter to her kids.
And, if you don’t like the satirical, please see this article on why sarcasm is good for you.
Thanks for joining in the jabs!
“It’s the story that counts. Only really picky people care if it’s full of spelling and grammar errors and typos.”
HATE that attitude in self-publishers.
I agree. Presentation matters too, people! Thanks for joining the rant. 😉
Ha! Such a laugh this morning – thank you! To add, don’t bother with proofreading because you really love conflict and arguments.
Funny! At first I thought, “Wait! Julia says we shouldn’t proofread???” Newsletters and correspondence from teachers in need of serious proofreading irks me something fierce. Well done on this!
Back when I used to write reviews for self-published books as part of a group blog, I declined to read a book based on the sample pages posted to the author’s website. I told him — as politely as I could — that he changed the verb tense of his narrative 3 times in the first two pages and that his work needed editing. He called me a grammar snob.
I can’t fault him for not proof-reading though. You first have to know something about spelling and grammar — and what a verb tense is — before you can find the mistakes.
But Dianne, if he wrote a book, shouldn’t he know something about spelling and grammar, or at least feel compelled to learn it? Also, I’m not talking about detailed, grammar intense editing, I’m talking about a basic read-through to make sure no words are missing and everything makes sense. It’s lack of respect for coherent communication that is troubling me here.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
LOL, I was speaking facetiously when I said I couldn’t blame him. I absolutely did blame him! I really do think he knew absolutely nothing about verb tense and how to use it properly, but if you’re going to write a book, you ought to make it your business to learn! As for checking for mistakes and clarity …
Here’s another war story from that time of my life. One book I agreed to read had some puzzling errors in it. Characters kept saying things like: “What the maxer with you?” And “As a maxer of fact …” There was a character named Max in the story, and FINALLY, I realized that the character’s name must have originally been Matt. This author had done a Find and Replace to change Matt to Max. Then she didn’t bother to read through her manuscript before self-publishing it on Amazon and therefore never noticed that every instance of the letters m-a-t-t occurring together had been changed to m-a-x.
Like the other author, she did not appreciate me pointing out the error.
Sorry I didn’t catch the sarcasm! You’ve got some scary stories. Too bad that they didn’t like you pointing out the errors – clearly, some education was in order!
Ha! Very nice 🙂