Profit from Proofreading
There are many reasons why paying for professional proofreading helps businesses succeed. See below for just some of them!
- Even minor typos or ambiguity in sentences can undermine confidence in a company – it can convey carelessness. If you don’t think checking for mistakes is important, why should clients believe that you think their business is?
- A UK study by Global Lingo in 2013 found that 74% of people noticed the quality of spelling and grammar on a company’s website; 59% would not use or buy from a website that had bad grammar or obvious spelling mistakes; and 82% wouldn’t if it had not been correctly translated into English from another language
- The study found that the participants wouldn’t have trust in a company to provide a good service if they had such mistakes and that it would put them off due to a lack of care and apparent unprofessionalness
- Errors undermine corporate credibility as mistakes can be seen as a lack of attention to detail, which can then be damaging to the brand
- Proofreaders ensure that terminology remains consistent and that figures remain accurate
- Using colleagues to check one another’s text is not enough – professional proofreaders are trained to spot errors and they provide objectivity
- Text that is clear and easy to understand improves stakeholder engagement and strengthens brand reputation
- Brand voice is preserved when there is consistency of: tone; a voice that is aligned with the company’s values; spelling conventions; and formatting of numbers, dates and percentages. This also increases long-term trust in your company
Proofreading and Proof-editing for the Financial Services Industry
With nearly ten years of experience working with IFAs across the UK to help provide a custom CRM system and nearly five years of experience working in banking, I understand the terminology of financial services and therefore, the context of the written content, making me well placed to provide editorial services in this area.
I have spent the past six years proof-editing documents that were produced using an integrated document automation solution of a custom CRM system for financial advisers. These were often suitability letters or valuation reports and I had to ensure that they were error-free, consistent in terminology and presentation, and free of ambiguity or misleading information. As the Consumer Duty states, consumer understanding is imperative and means that your clients must “understand the information they are given” and that this “information should be clear, timely, and accessible – without jargon or misleading terms” (Source: FCA website). With the introduction of generative AI to write, or assist in writing, such letters or reports, it is even more important to have a professional not only check for errors, whether contextual, factual or grammatical, but also to ensure a human element to the writing – one that is personal, and tailored to the client’s level of understanding and experience.
Annual Reports
Using a professional proofreader for annual reports is extremely important. Some of the benefits are listed below.
- Accuracy, clarity and consistency is especially important in annual documents – simple mistypes can occur in figures too, or in decimal places
- Proofreaders save clients money by preventing lost sales, lawsuits and other major issues
- Annual reports need to be precise and there is no substitute for a professional proofreader
- A division of ARANCA, a global research and advisory firm, say that “In the era of heightened corporate transparency, annual report proofreading has become a core part of investor relations, corporate governance, and brand reputation management” (Source: Importance of Annual Report Proofreading Services)
- It’s especially important for annual reports because they are permanent so any errors can be shared and therefore live on even if a mistake has later been corrected
- Proofreaders also ensure style guide adherence, which, along with reinforcing the brand, improves readability by ensuring consistency across sections, tables and appendices
- This also includes cross checking numbers with context, and ensuring figures match across charts, graphs and text
- Eliminating ambiguity is important to make sure clients do not misinterpret the information or feel mislead by it
Elevate Your Business
Use a professional proofreader and see the benefits to your business.