A few days ago, we received a response from someone interested in working for our business. The writer demonstrated several interesting credentials, though my “spidey sense” told me something wasn’t quite right. Last night, this individual confirmed that fact, when he sent another lengthy email, with the salutation: “To Mr. John Buckshon”.
Of course, we all make stupid mistakes. For several days, and highly visibly, one of this blog’s postings turned a headline word “things” into “thins” — resulting in a strange, almost senseless meaning. If you read through?the first draft of virtually any writing, you’ll find plenty of typos, errors, sloppy pieces of syntax, and you’ll probably have a name, two or three, incorrect.
These mistakes don’t count for much, except where first impressions are really important — like a job application, or, sometimes, in an RFP submittal.
Now, as Matt Handal reminds us, “Stop worrying about bug dust” — that is, there is no need to drive yourself nuts about tiny proofing details — at least until you have the big picture under control — but a simple checklist to verify name spellings, headline typos (and for RFPs), submittal guidelines will save you much stress and the dreaded automatic rejection answer.
