I don’t know which assignment to start with this morning (I receive assignments that are due daily, and then I have others that trickle in with end-of-the-day deadlines.). So, I’m going to begin the day by warming up my writing muscles here in my blog. I haven’t written “for the sake of writing” in ages.
Typically, the pieces I write have a purpose—which, they all should. I know. What I mean by that is I intend them to be an article for my publication, an announcement, or another kind of information post.
Today? I just want to write.
Do you ever have days like that?
I do, however, have something on my mind. I want to write about the importance of proofreading for my publication. I have a reason, too.
Early yesterday morning I received an email from a startup magazine asking if I would like to submit. The email, itself, looked okay—aside from the double-spacing after each period. That still annoys me. When I clicked on the link leading to the submission guidelines . . .
Oh my word, it was a nightmare — so many editorial errors.
So, What Did I Do?
I edited everything and sent it back to them. How many other prospective writers received this email? What also struck me is the submission guidelines stated the editor would notice errors and, as a result, rejections would occur. (???)
The first error right out of the gate was “Submissions” was spelled, “Sumbmissions.”
I had to turn to Google.
I thought, “I’m old. I don’t know—there are a lot of weird words floating around. Maybe—I don’t know, this might be another one? Could this be another one of those words that people are throwing extra letters into for a specific reason?”
I see “x’s” utilized in words to show gender inclusivity. [You can read an excellent article about it here.] So, I thought MAYBE the letter “m” was being used for the same reason. No. It’s not. I was giving this startup way too much credit. It’s spelled wrong—twice—in their headers.
Then, there were cases of . . .
- Missing commas
- Misused commas
- Dangling modifiers
- Many (MANY) misspellings
- Split infinitives
- Punctuations errors
Because I’m a pain-in-the-butt, I also had to go through and change all of the double-spacing.
Wrapping up
Okay, so maybe I don’t need to write about the importance of proofreading anymore. I think I covered it pretty well in this stream-of-conscious story. Writing warm-ups have an excellent way of recounting previous situations while simultaneously preparing you for the day ahead. In this one, I was able to also dig into why proofreading is critical (especially if you’re presenting information in a mass email).