How to reduce the number of typos in your communications

Hello, marketing writers!

(And that’s anyone who’s a business person.)

Welcome to cleaner, smoother communications.

I’m going to show you a really simple method for greatly reducing the number of typos in your writing — whether it’s a video script or an email to Sally down the hall.

Now, notice the title of this piece doesn’t say, “How to eliminate typos in your communications.”

That’s impossible. 

Let’s just accept that reality and move on, shall we? 

Because, despite our best intentions — proofreading  our work and proofreading it again, and again — and having others read our work too, it seems those pesky typos have a way of sneakily camouflaging themselves in our communications — only to become glaringly visible after we’ve hit the send button.

Doh!

So, I present to you today a sure-fire way not to eliminate typos entirely, but, and I guarantee this, to greatly reduce the number of typos in all of your writing.

It’s refreshingly simple to do. And it really, really works.

But brace yourself: you might initially feel slightly silly practicing this method. 

Conversely, you might find it’s the most fun you’ve ever had proofreading your writing.

Ready? OK, here it is:

Read your writing back to yourself – out loud.

Yup. Just like you were reading a script for a radio commercial or a podcast. Read it out loud. Deliberately, with care for your pronunciation. Like you were telling a story to someone.

Put on your very best radio announcer voice. Try it with your favorite foreign accent. However you do it, it will be the most fun you’ve ever had proofreading.

And I guarantee you, you will catch most (if not all) of you typos — spelling and grammar errors alike.

Not only that, you’ll enjoy the added benefit of not just cleaning up your prose, but actually improving it too. It’s amazing how visible awkward sentence construction becomes when we hear it, rather than just silently read it.

Now, to finish this article off, I’m going to read it aloud to myself before I publish it. Probably a couple of times.

(And if I missed any typos, well, just think of all the other typos I DID find!)

To your typo-trashing success,

Ron Marcus is the principal of Grow, a brand and marketing consultancy for small businesses and nonprofits. He’s been helping businesses and nonprofits create and live authentic, successful brands in service of people for thirty years.