“Lorem ipsum” in the Wild

I don’t know about you but it drives me absolutely crazy to see an un-edited section of a website. I get a little hit of anxiety when I see a misspelling in a newsletter. When a meme uses “their” when it should so obviously be using “there”, I let out an audible sigh. Why, why, WHY is it so difficult to catch these unintended errors before they head out into the world of audience and customer consumption?

I have been blessed (cursed?) with the ability to find what’s broken. Notice what’s spelled wrong. Click the link that wasn’t formatted correctly. This is something that’s been a superpower of mine since I was a kid. I remember taking a trip to Cedar Point – Midwesterners know this theme park as “America’s Roller Coast”, located in Sandusky, OH. Every year, my high school band went on a 2+hour bus trip from Mount Morris, MI to Cedar Point for a day of riding rides, eating junk food, and (if A/C was needed) watching themed shows. As we all got off the bus, we were handed an entry ticket. We were NOT trusted to hold on to them until we were about to actually enter the park. We were teenagers after all.

I got my ticket and headed toward the entry line. With a group of 50+ people, there was a bit of a wait and as I tend to do, I started taking in every detail of everything around me. Including the fine print on the back of the ticket. Have you ever looked at one of these? When they say “fine print”, they are not exaggerating. The ticket itself is only about 3 inches by 1.5 inches and the amount of text is not insignificant. (BTW – this may be why my eyesight isn’t so great anymore. I actively sought out opportunities to read fine print.) So in the 2-3 minutes it took me to get my ticket and then hand it over at the entrance gate, I had already found 2 typos on the back of the ticket stub. TWO!

So yes, mistakes happen and even the ‘professionals’ can get it wrong. But you can mitigate and minimize those mistakes with some easy steps.

1. Enlist technology. There are spellcheck and grammar check options all over the internet. Chances are they know the rules of grammar better than you, or your co-workers.
2. Enlist friends, colleagues & co-workers. The more eyeballs you have on something, the better chance that someone will read it and say, ‘hey, this sentence doesn’t actually make sense’. Even if the sentence is grammatically correct and spelled impeccably, if it doesn’t get across the point you are trying to make, that won’t really help.
3. Re-read it yourself. But this time read it out loud and backwards. That’s right – backwards. When you read something, your brain has the usually helpful habit of seeing what it expects to see next. That’s great when you are reading a novel and want to get engrossed in the story, but when trying to catch errors in something that you yourself have written, that little trick can cost you some much needed perspective and awareness. By reading the words out loud, you are engaging your mouth muscles, which will slow your brain down from jumping to conclusions. That slowing down effect also happens when you read a sentence backwards. You are much more likely to to catch that you accidentally wrote the word “to” twice (like I just did!) if you read the sentence backwards. Try it. <—

Besides grammar, spelling, and meaning, with digital communication (think websites, newsletters, social media posts), it is especially important to CLICK EVERYTHING. Try every possible path that your audience will have and see if it takes you to where you want it to. If you click on a “Contact Us” link on an image on Facebook and it doesn’t immediately land on a webpage with your business’s email, phone number, an information submission form, or an appointment booking link of some kind (think Calendly), then that’s going to be confusing for your audience. It could be as simple as a typo, or it could be a design/user flow issue. Either way, mark it as needing to be fixed ASAP.

My experience over the last 25+ years since my days of high school band trips has taught me that mistakes are unavoidable. Doing everything we can to mitigate them, while also being graceful when one gets through, is not just good business sense. It’s pretty great life advice, too.