My top 5 embarrassing and costly proofreading mistakes
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MY TOP 5 EMBARRASSING AND COSTLY PROOFREADING MISTAKES OF ALL TIME BY ANTHONY CARTER Anthony Carter is managing director of Carman Online Content Publishing. copywriting visit: http://cocp.co.uk – For proofreading: http://www.carmanproofreading.co
My top 5 embarrassing and costly proofreading mistakes
Having a professional proofreading company check over your written work for errors is extremely important, as spelling mistakes or grammatical mishaps can be embarrassing and costly. If only the following top five embarrassing and costly proofreading mistakes were as lucky. Read on to find out what these are.
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1. MY TOP 5 EMBARRASSING AND COSTLY PROOFREADING MISTAKES OF
ALL TIME BY ANTHONY CARTER Anthony Carter is managing director of
Carman Online Content Publishing. For copywriting visit:
http://cocp.co.uk For proofreading:
http://www.carmanproofreading.co.uk
2. Having a professional proofreading company check over your
written work for errors is extremely important, as spelling
mistakes or grammatical mishaps can be embarrassing and
costly.
3. Proofreading your own work is something that should
generally be avoided, as I found out first-hand this week by almost
submitting an article related to musical festivals containing the
line
4. your festival bag and willies are probably already in order
Obviously, the sentence should have read your festival bag and
wellies are probably already in order
5. Luckily, my proofreader was there to pick up on the error,
so I avoided the embarrassment of seeing the wrong word published.
If only the following top five embarrassing and costly proofreading
mistakes were as lucky
6. 1. Seasoning With A Sour Taste Just one single word mistake
can result in a disaster of epic proportions, as Australian
publishing company Penguin found out in 2010 with the publication
The Pasta Bible. In a recipe for tagliatelle with sardines and
prosciutto, aspiring pasta chefs were left bemused by the
instruction to season pasta with salt and freshly ground black
people. Uh oh! The error resulted in all 7,000 copies of the
cookbook being destroyed to the cost of $20,000, a PR nightmare and
many red faces!
7. 2. Come On Baby, Were Going To Cyprus! Back in 2006, Italian
airline Alitalia realised the cost of not proofreading their
numbers when a flight from Toronto to Cyprus was mistakenly priced
at $39 instead of $3,900 a very tidy discount! Naturally, the offer
was too tempting for travellers to turn down and, by the time the
error was discovered, 2,000 people had booked up for flights. In
the spirit of the customer always being right, Alitalia was forced
to honour the price and lost a reported $7.72 million in the
process.
8. 3. Sounds Like A Bargain Electrical retailer Comet sadly
went out of business last year; however, it must look back on
mistakes such as this and realise that they certainly didnt help
themselves. In 2002, shoppers on Comets online store were able to
take advantage of a great offer on an Aiwa hi-fi for the has to be
seen to be believed price of 8.43. This was a massive reduction on
the RRP of 89, but the item was not in the sale, it was simply the
victim of some poor proofreading that lost Comet a lot of
money.
9. 4. One R or Two? In celebration of President Barack Obamas
visit to Australia back in 2010, the countrys Parliament House came
up with a seemingly great idea to produce commemorative mugs and
sell them at $10 apiece. However, workers in the gift shop (clearly
better proofreaders than the mug makers) were forced to hastily
dump the mugs after seeing the name Barrack Obama emblazoned across
the top. The cost? An estimated $2000 in lost revenue.
10. 5. Thou Have Been Told To Cheat Proofreading errors are not
a modern phenomenon and this one, dating back to 1632, is perhaps
the worst of all. The London-based printer that printed and
distributed 1,000 copies of the King James Bible was fined 300 and
forced to destroy all of the copies when a missing word meant that
the seventh commandment was changed to Thou shalt commit adultery.
Oops.
11. Were all human and as writers we all make mistakes some
more costly than others. Do not let silly errors cost you money and
cause embarrassment, contact Carman Proofreading Service and let
them proofread your work today.
12. Thanks for taking the time to read this article, which was
written by Anthony Carter, managing director of Carman Online
Content Publishing Ltd. (http://cocp.co.uk). For proofreading and
copy-editing, please visit:
http://www.carmanproofreading.co.uk