August 28, 2014
Dear Susan:
Weather your struggling to find like minded professional individuals, business ideas, career paths, or ways of developing additional income of your own we can help you maximize your results. With a great business system, business team, experienced knowledge, and technology all at your finger tips…
Three typos in the first ten words (and that’s being generous with the word count) and more to follow, I closed the invitation. It was ostensibly for a networking group, but let’s face it: who wants to network with people who can’t be bothered with such basics as grammar? Isn’t communication the foundation of networking? And good communication key to understanding each other?
I can’t hammer home the importance for everyone (myself included!) to use a good proofreader whenever you turn out writing that’s meant for public consumption. This person shot him/herself in the foot by sending out an invitation like this. And s/he’s not the only one who’s done this, either.
I see it daily. And I don’t understand why. Yes, you may think you don’t need to spend the money on editing. But guess what? You do. In the long run, you need to make sure every word is as strong as it can be, every comma, every synonym — every everything.
Yes, human editors miss things. Yes, computerized editors (oh, don’t use those!) miss things. Computers can’t pick up the nuances of human speech and communication. Humans are … well, we’re only human. My effectiveness goes down when I get tired (go figure). If we haven’t worked together before, I may struggle a bit as I pick up your voice. Both problems are pretty easy to correct.
So don’t be that person who sent me that invitation to join a business network. I took one look at it and decided that if the sender wasn’t professional enough to make sure s/he didn’t look like a doofus, his/her group wasn’t the sort of people I wanted to be associated with.
Although if I did join, imagine the business I could pick up…
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