When To Kill The Copywriter
Judging by the number of fliers for payday loans, title loans and pawn shops hitting my mailbox in the past week, I’m guessing our town has been identified by some of these seedy companies as one likely to be financially struggling after the holidays. Also judging by their fliers, despite having different names and addresses, several of them are affiliated.
How do I know?
Because some soon-to-be unemployed person forgot to proofread the fliers before sending them off to the place that does their cheap brochure printing so our town’s name is misspelled. Not that many people will notice, I’m guessing. If you’re the type to get yourself into such financial straits that you need to frequent one of those businesses, chances are you aren’t educated enough to recognize a misspelling when you see one.
I suppose the same argument could be made about the folks who work for those kind of places, too. How else to explain why they’d spring for professional printing services tri-fold brochures but not for someone to proofread their copy?
Being the kind of stickler that I am, it’s tempting to grab a big, fat red marker and circle the misspelling on the three dozen or so fliers we’ve received in the mail since Christmas, then mail them all to their corporate headquarters. I’m pretty certain someone there would be interested in knowing that despite their investment in glossy four-color brochure printing, they only managed to make themselves look even more fly-by-night.
But I decided to put the things to better use. They’re lining my cats’ litter boxes instead.
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Now, as a copywriter, I say, “Wait just a minute.” It was probably the account executive’s fault. She was too busy sleeping with the client to get the details straight, such as the town’s name, and besides, she was too busy sleeping with the client and thinking about getting her nails done, so she just handed the copywriter a bunch of half-assembled information, waved her lovely hands and said, “I need this by 4:00.” Which is, by the way, when she’ll be back from getting her nails done.
She’s had the information for days. She proofreads it herself, even if it does contain big words such as “financial,” and it looks right to her so it must be right.
Better yet… websites (tourism, especially) that are full of mistakes. I have, in the past, attempted to tell the webmasters that their sites are riddled with typos and bad grammar, all for naught. Like Anne says… they’re getting their nails done.
I had a supervisor who had come from a college job and she would use red marker on weekly status reports and return them to the writer.
I did the red pen correction thing with an old boyfriend’s love letters. Had been looking for a way to dump him. That definitely worked.