How typos could cost you millions – and what to do about them

We’ve all seen it. Most of us have even called it out at one point or another. A brand pulls together its greatest writers, designers, creators; they have the perfect vision, a compelling campaign, a witty one-liner, released at just the right time in just the right places to a wide audience, but their ad campaign turns into a laughing matter. This isn’t about poor strategy, cultural missteps or any major oversights. They simply forgot one piece to their carefully orchestrated puzzle: They forgot to remove the apostrophe from “it’s,” when it should have read “its.”

Commas, hyphens and typos have cost companies millions. Slight copy errors can tarnish a campaign – or even the brand itself – in an instant. In a survey of 1,839 people from Tidio, 97.2% of those surveyed said grammar errors affected their perception of a company, and one company found fixing a single typo boosted their website conversions by 80%.

As a proofreader and copy editor, I’ve caught my share of humorous mistakes, my favorite when I corrected “pimp” to “pump.” But even errors that aren’t obvious, like inconsistent capitalization, dashes or period use, stand out to even the layperson as just seeming ... off, not as clean looking, even if they can’t quite put their finger on why, costing brands an increase in revenue of up to 23%.

What I’m saying is nothing new, and it’s not even controversial. So how do errors make it past the gates of big companies, such as H&M and McDonald's, at such a high frequency? Some would say people are just lazy, and that’s sometimes the case, but the problem is more pervasive – and likely runs deeper – than an underlying character flaw. Between the Dunning-Kruger and the overconfidence effect, it’s common to overestimate your ability to proofread, most people only catching 40%-90% of errors when working alone – that means up to 60% of errors go unnoticed. Anyone can make mistakes, and they can slip through the cracks simply because no one thinks they wouldn’t see them if they were there. If no one is safe from detrimental copy errors, what can we do about it?

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To start, the simplest solution to avoid errors: Get it right the first time. This is easier said than done, especially when large teams are collaborating on a single project. Mistakes are easy to make and even easier to miss. But luckily, in our modern age, there are resources available to help avoid this. Microsoft Word has a great option for spellcheck, but other resources, such as Grammarly, can give you comprehensive feedback at little to no cost, so your reputation is solid, both within the company and outside of it.

Even when checking your work, no person or program is perfect. This is why it’s always helpful to have another set of eyes on your work – someone who could check what your own eyes, or the eyes of a program, are blind to. Enlist a proofreader, copywriter or even a fellow co-worker to check your tone, spelling and grammar. This isn’t a knock on your ability to write. Even most publishing companies will proofread their works, written by professional writers, by not only one proofreader but two, and that’s after the initial rounds of developmental and copy editing. Most of us don’t work alone, and that’s a good thing.

With these two steps, ensuring quality work can be easy, but many big companies make mistakes not because they don’t want their work proofread, but because quality assurance is lost in a lengthy process. So check your QA process. Make sure every person is using spellcheck before sharing their work, and utilize checklists and workflow templates to ensure proofreading – and other quality assurance – is a step in every project. Taking a mere half hour to proofread every product can save you from a damaged client relationship or tarnished reputation down the road.

Finally, especially when working with a larger team or organization, make sure you’re all following the same brand guidelines. Many marketing departments know to create a consistent color palette and tone, but they forget the minutiae, like whether periods belong at the end of bullet points or headlines; what words are capitalized and when; what kind of dash they would like to use (-, –, —?), with how many spaces, and when and where – the list could go on for the sorts of things that proofreaders have to think about day in and day out, so make a list in your brand guide on how exactly you’ll keep your copy consistent. Customers will notice, and your brand will benefit because of it.