Essay Guideline

Quite a sizeable proportion of people and organizations in the developing countries are yet to grasp the essence of proofreading services. It is surprising that even some newspapers and magazines either because of ignorance or little financial cost implications skip this function, thus relying on the reporters and contributors to submit error-free articles. It is no wonder that a glance at a sample of magazines, newspapers, and even textbooks would reveal varying degrees of errors. This all shows that proofreading services are yet to be fully appreciated.

Defects in a publication can be grouped into factual, typographical and grammatical. A factual error is simply an error made due to inaccurate or wrong information while typographical mistakes are due to wrong keying in of information. Grammatical errors are usually due to poor sentence structure, tenses and wrong use of words. Here is an illustration from ‘A book on HTML’, which was to be recommended by an uncle to his son but was declined as a result of numerous inaccurate, misleading statements and inability of the author to explain critical issues.

Example:

Lesson 1. The basics, has an unclear and misleading information of what it means to set background color, and wrongly states that the symbol are referred to as Carats.

Lesson 8. Color Choice, uses hexadecimal without shedding light on its use.

Worse still, the lessons are numbered inconsistently in the title, and table of contents.

Sometimes, a well-written piece may be marred by factual/typographical blunders. The text could be reporting an event, probably; the visit of the External Affairs Minister of Nigeria to the United Nations, but the picture of the Ghanaian Head of State is tucked beside. There are also instances when the contents of a major report are totally at variance with the captioned news item.

Example.

A caption in a leading newspaper reads “The Geshi celebrates Ndi Ani Day” while the body states ” The Lagos branch of the Geshi Town celebrates the end of 2003 on Sunday, December22, 2003.

The truth is that the human mind is structured such that it is more difficult to detect errors one is familiar with immediately. This is because our familiarity with the document we have just written makes it difficult to spot errors in the piece. Besides, because of tight work schedule, creating another time to check the manuscript is usually not possible. Also, the need to meet deadlines exerts unusual pressure on writers. All these show that proofreading services should be relegated to the background.

Poor publications have adverse effects on the image, reputation, credibility of your company and clients. For instance, if a document contains errors in pricing, or incomplete information, money will be lost on accounts and the company might fail to get another account while spending money in reprints, second mailings and overtime. Such blunders can also make customers to doubt the company’s professionalism and downgrade the company on the priority list.

Secondly, there is the cost of space paid in the newspapers for retracting misleading information as well as apology tendered for very harmful errors.

Equally important is the loss of man-hours expended in effecting necessary corrections, which should have been utilized for productive ventures that would improve the company’s bottom-line.

Thirdly, inappropriately crafted and incompletely written, edited, proofread documents such as employee handbooks could easily be exploited by aggrieved staff to the detriment of the company.

Fourthly, documents that are consistently poorly edited could lead to a dip in sales volume, as your client may be forced to review their relationship with the company. This will invariably have adverse effects on the bottom-line. Proofreading services are therefore essential to the survival of any organization

So, you don’t have to continue to lose clients, time, money and probably jobs to carelessness and indifference. The solution to these problems is to seek the services of tested and proven publication consultants to handle the frequent embarrassments.

DANIEL AZUH is the CEO of Mission Communications, an organization made up of consultants and professional writers dedicated to improving the quality of your manuscripts. Daniel has authored several articles in newspapers and journals and is on the verge of completing two of his books titled Credit Vocabulary and Marking Strategies in a period of Scarcity. Details of services being offered can be found in http://www.missioncomms.com

Share This

Comments(0)

The power of a personal Internet presence was the subject of a conversation I had with a colleague the other day. He was trying to understand what the value of a personal Internet presence was to a non-executive.

I asked him if he saw value in other industry colleagues, peers, co-workers, subordinates, superiors, existing or prospective customers, media or trade-show personal, fellow industry association members, et al. being able to learn more about who he is as a person, a professional and/or his subject matter expertise and abilities. Notice I didn’t even mention - recruiters.

I then suggested if he believed there to be tangible value in the above, then having the ability to simply say, “If you’d like to know a little more about me, just Google me” is an extremely powerful statement. I also told him he’d really know how powerful this is when after saying this to someone they respond with, “I already Googled you; that’s why I contacted you.”

In the business world, we are all pressed for time, and most of us have far too many people asking for our time. Not only does having visible information on-line anyone can find by doing a simple “Google me” search help you when deciding whether or not to consent to a meeting with someone else, it can also help those who want to meet with you have a more aligned and productive conversation with you. This says nothing about the increased exposure it gives you in the business world to opportunities to share your subject matter expertise through speaking engagements, publications, forums, etc. Notice I didn’t even mention - career opportunities.

The key concept many people fail to understand is the following:

It is one thing to have content floating around the Internet pertaining to you. It is an entirely different thing to have content visible on the first page of hits when someone does Google you.

So how do you go about proactively not only building a personal Internet presence, but also building a visible Internet presence by driving content in your control to the first page of Google? Start writing. It’s that simple.

What do you write about? Write about the problems you solve everyday. Write about the systemic problems and/or issues you address everyday and how you address them based on your unique perspective and subject matter expertise. You don’t have to give away the farm. Simply speak about situations and solutions in more general terms.

This also begs the question: Where do I publish what I write? There are all kinds of places to publish content, but the media you’ll most likely want to publish in are blogs and articles. This content will typically become more visible (i.e., rank higher) in search engines faster than general personal or corporate website content you might publish. That said, all blogs and article sites are not created equal. There are many, many, places to publish content, but you want to publish content in places which will result in high ranking content that will ultimately show up on the first page of Google.

So how do you identify the “right” places to publish your content? Look for sites that have a lot of traffic combined with also having a lot of changing or new content. Sites that have these two elements going for them will typically result in content that ranks higher faster in the search engines. Sites combining a lot of traffic with blogging or article content are typically the best. On-line networking sites such as Ecademy combine a lot of traffic with constantly changing new blogging content. Article sites such as EzineArticles combine a lot of traffic with constantly changing new article content. You can also create even more exposure for the content you create by leveraging sites like ArticleMarketer that broadcast your article content to even more article, blog, newsletter, etc. publishing sites.

Here is the key: the power of leveraging sites such as Ecademy, EzineArticles, et al. comes from using them to point to other web content you’ve created and/or already exists that you want to drive higher in ranking in the search engines. You benefit from “guilt by association” as a result of hyperlinking to other content. When search engines like Google scan your content on sites like Ecademy and EzineArticles and find hyperlinks to other content, they give preferential ranking to the hyperlinked content.

With a little effort, and by leveraging the power of sites like I’ve mentioned above, you can build a visible personal Internet presence in as little as a couple of months. You will then be able to benefit from the power of being able to say, “If you’d like to know a little more about me, just Google me.”

Ron Bates is an expert in mission critical retained executive search. He is a Managing Principal with the retained executive search firm Executive Advantage Group, Inc. He has delivered personal executive coaching projects to former SAP, E&Y, Oracle, and WorldCom Exec’s responsible for multi-billion dollar business units, and co-founded http://www.CV-Advantage.com, a self guided job search oriented executive coaching process.

With +27,000 direct contacts on on-line professional networking platforms, Ron has been referred to as “the most connected man on Earth”. View Ron’s networking profile on Ecademy.

As a recognized expert in building an on-line personal Internet presence, Ron has been an invited speaker at venues such as the Marketing Executive Networking Group, British America Business Council, Expert Connections, and is a regular guest on Netshare’s “Ask the Coach”.

Ron’s blog: Internet Presence - Do you exist? can be found at http://www.search-advantage.com

For more information on Conducting a Job Search Campaign go to http://www.job-search-campaign.com

Share This

Comments(0)

Regardless of who you are: an individual, business organization, religious organization, military, proofreading and editing services are required to deal with all manner of errors we face in the course of producing our documents. In-fact, proofreading and editing services are a vital aspect of human activity as most business transactions are conducted in printed form. However, as a result of time constraint and dearth in skilled human resources, some organizations outsource part of this function to professional writers and editors.

The tasks usually discharged by professional editors include: proofreading, copyediting, revision, and writing of publications. Let me briefly consider each of them.

1. Proofreading: In proofreading, proofreaders check documents for typographical errors, repetition of words, and correct styles. In addition, proofreaders check for grammar difficulties and also suggest changes in word choice, and wrong placement of punctuation marks.

2. Copyediting: Broadly, copyeditors review copy for spelling, grammar, consistency and format. It also involves correcting errors on conflicting statements found in the body of the texts after consultation with the author of the document.

3. Revision: This service extends more than proofreading and copyediting to include restructuring of sentences

4. Rewriting: In this service, the editor takes information in the manuscript supplied by the author, and rewrite in a better and clearer form.

5. Writing: In this case, you supply the information that you wish to communicate, and in close consultation with you, the editor writes the document or the book you envision.

It is therefore important that organizations and individuals are conversant with the various services usually performed by these editing outfits. This will ensure that appropriate proofreading and editing services are provided to the client.

DANIEL AZUH is the CEO of Mission Communications, an organization made up of consultants and professional writers dedicated to improving the quality of your manuscripts. Daniel has authored several articles in newspapers and journals and is on the verge of completing two of his books titled Credit Vocabulary and Marketing Strategies in a period of Scarcity. Details of services being offered can be found in http://www.missioncomms.com

Share This

Comments(0)