Proofreading can save you money!
Bad copy can be a huge turn-off.
Did you know that proofreading can save you money? As a writer, editor, proof-reader, and content creator, let me tell you how that simple step of proofreading – whether it’s asking one of your competent employees to do it, or paying someone else to do it – can actually save you money. Caught your interest? Let me illustrate with some examples of what I encountered recently.
On a visit to a Colombo hotel with my family for dinner, I happened to read the tags at the buffet – as you do to identify what the dish is. The “Papper Beef Salami” certainly caught my eye. In fact, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Later that evening, out of curiosity, I visited the room that some members of my family were staying in. Being the son of a distinguished hotelier, it means that in many ways, I am a “chip off the old block”.
The room was lovely – a simplistic yet practical design that made good use of the limited space available, while not making the room seem cluttered. Perusing through some of the literature available, I took note of two more proofreading errors. The first one was on the placard advertising the “Free City Tour” that this hotel offered. One of the clauses stated that “All charges for sight visits will be paid”. Sight - not site, mind you!
The second one was a sticker on the sand bin in the room balcony informing to dispose cigarette buds in it...buds, not butts. To find out, I did some research. Bud is technically correct, but much less oft used than butt, which is the widespread and accepted term. So, unless the hotel is planning to regularly host high-level delegations of English laureates, why not just stick to the commonly used and widely understood term? Then of course, there was the menu at the seafood restaurant which spelt boiled vegetables as boild vegetables as accompaniment for three different dishes it featured.
Notice a trend here? These are all printed materials that have ingloriously carried these errors into the final output. As someone who has been involved in print media for over five years, let me point out that printing is no longer as cheap as it used to be. Even a basic 80gsm A4 printing paper pack has skyrocketed to over three times what it used to cost last year. Bear in mind that this hotel has around 300 rooms, which means that over 300 of each sticker and placard have been printed, and that’s not accounting for a small inventory it probably holds as replacements.
The right thing to do would be to re-print everything, and that costs...you guessed it - money. How could the hotel save money? Simple; by having someone proofread the materials before they leave the computer screen and head for the printers. Do it in-house, and you don’t pay a cent. If you’re not confident in your in-house abilities, hire someone to do it for you. Whatever they charge, it’s never going to come close to the cost of a re-print and the ridicule that accompanies mis-spells.
Of course, the buffet printed tag is much cheaper, done in-house, so you may ask, what the big deal is. Dear reader, the big deal is that your brand image suffers. It shows that you have staff who either don’t have a good command of the language and never thought to verify before printing or think that they ‘know it all’. Either way, it doesn’t send a positive message to your customers. After all, in hospitality, the devil is in the details.
Ashraaq Wahab - Technical Director Hospitality Sri Lanka, Automotive Journalist, Marketer and Writer, who enjoys penning his thoughts, insights and ideas on a variety of topics.
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