Friday, September 12, 2014

Proofread everything - Even your own name

Did I tell you about the campaign where the candidate's mail had him running for office in a completely different town? That guy didn't proofread his own materials.

Better than doing it yourself (though you are ultimately responsible, so do it yourself too) is to have a good proofreader in the form of a trusted staffer with a good eye and spelling skills do it for you.

A fresh set of eyes on the mailer before it goes to the printer and when the proof comes back can catch something your jaded set of peepers might just miss. Like when you, or your mail consultant,  spells your own name wrong. This happened. A candidate named, let's say Alison, had a consultant who created some eye catching mail with a logo that read "Vote for Allison." See the problem?

When Alison looked at, she wasn't looking at the spelling of her name. She was looking for typos in endorsement names, or punctuation errors, something she was good at, having been an English teacher for 20 years.

It wasn't until the mail was printed and sitting in people's mailboxes, that she caught the error, on the mail that arrived in her own mailbox.

Then it was obvious. Luckily most people wouldn't notice the difference between one l Alison and two l Allison. But the guy with the wrong town? You can bet people noticed that!

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