Three Tips to Clean Up Your Copy

Many people love to write, but one aspect of writing whether creative or technical is the editing process; rarely is a first draft ever good enough. Anyone who has worked as a copywriter understands the amount of tedious reviews their work needs to go through before it hits the press (or the web). But there’s many times when the quality of writing isn’t up to par for translation. A solid source document is the first and most important part of the translation process. The following three tips are ones that we live by at Translation Services International and serve as a great guide to cleaning up your copy.

1. Purpose?

What is the purpose of the document, letter, brochure, manual, video, advertisement, training program, etc.? Typically it depends on the company’s division requesting a quote. Are you selling a product or service, describing the function of a computer program, training someone how to operate and maintain a compressor, informing employees about company policy, etc.?

2. Who is writing?

It has come to our attention that quite often, writing assignments are handed off to employees who might not have proper training or experience. This will be illustrated in the continuation of this section. The Internet has many sources to help understand the basics of most writing assignments. For help writing business letters check out this guide from Purdue.

Here’s a helpful scriptwriting guide from Column Five Media. There are obstacles involved in video scripts that will be explained in a future article.

If the company you work for sells products or services and you are writing the advertising copy, here are 5 helpful tips for advertising copy.

It is not uncommon for the documents we receive to have major spelling or grammatical errors. We also see this on company websites, which in turn create a negative image of the company. If they don’t care enough to exhibit high quality writing, a reader might wonder if they care enough about the products and services they are selling. Some errors are simple typos wherein the wrong key is inadvertently typed, while others are basic misspellings. Words that are commonly misspelled are loose for lose, it’s for its, recieve for receive, seperate for separate, embarrased for embarrassed, — — you get the picture. If you feel that spelling is one of the areas where you need help, here is a link to the most common misspelled English words.

3. How to review and proofread a document

Writers need to put themselves in the position of readers. A writer may have a vast amount of knowledge in the material they want to communicate. But this can be both a boon and a bane when it comes to communicating their thoughts. Because what seems to be quite clear or easy for them to understand might be totally misunderstood by a reader. Writing coaches suggest the following:

• After the document is completed, read the first sentence and pause. Think about what that sentence means. Imagine that you are the reader with no knowledge of the subject matter. Is there anything in that sentence that might not be clearly understood by the reader? If the answer is yes, revise it and then read it again until the information is clear and precise. Then go on to the next sentence and repeat the process. This may seem quite time consuming, but it’s worth the effort. When the document has been completely proofed and revised to your satisfaction it’s time for the final step. Have a co-worker or someone not familiar with the subject matter read the document and report back to you what exactly they understood. If there are issues, they will become apparent.
• Another interesting way to proofread a document is to read out of context. That is, read the very last sentence. Then read the penultimate sentence and so on until you reach the beginning of the document. Not only will this method help to recognize problems with content, but it will also help to identify spelling or grammar errors.
• As a final step, check the spelling and grammar using the spell checker on your computer. Although this is not perfect solution, eg. (form and from might look correct to a computer program) it will find those no so obvious errors that somehow escape human recognition.

When following these three tips, your copy will be primed and ready to pass of to our agency to commence the translation process. It will save you time, money and ultimately result in a greater experience with the reader.