It is extremely important to have your written work checked for errors by a professional proofreading company, as misspellings or grammatical errors can be embarrassing and costly. Reviewing your own work is something that should generally be avoided, as I found out firsthand this week when I nearly submitted a music festival related article that contained the line, ‘your festival bag and creeps they’re probably already in order…’ Obviously, the award should have said ‘your festival bag and water boots they are probably already in order…’
Fortunately, my proofreaders caught the mistake, so I avoided the embarrassment of seeing the wrong word published. If only the following five embarrassing and costly review mistakes were so lucky…
1. Seasoning with sour flavor
A single word mistake can result in a disaster of epic proportions, as Australian publisher Penguin discovered in 2010 with the publication The pasta bible. In a recipe for tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto, aspiring pasta chefs were baffled by the instruction to season the pasta with “salt and freshly ground blacks.” Uh-oh! The mistake resulted in all 7,000 copies of the cookbook being destroyed at a cost of $20,000 – a PR nightmare and lots of red faces!
2. Come on baby, we’re off to Cyprus!
In 2006, Italian airline Alitalia realized the cost of not checking its numbers when a flight from Toronto to Cyprus was mistakenly priced at $39 instead of $3,900 – a pretty cool discount! Naturally, the offer was too tempting for travelers to turn down, and by the time the mistake was discovered, 2,000 people had booked flights. In the spirit that the customer is always right, Alitalia was forced to honor the price, losing $7.72 million in the process.
3. Sounds like a bargain
Electrical retailer Comet sadly went out of business last year; however, you need to remember mistakes like this and realize that they certainly didn’t help themselves. In 2002 shoppers at Comet’s online store were able to take advantage of a great deal on an Aiwa hi-fi for the “must be seen to be believed” price of £8.43. This was a massive reduction in RRP of £89, but the item wasn’t on the sale, it simply fell victim to a poor review that lost Comet a lot of money.
4. One R or two?
To celebrate President Barack Obama’s visit to Australia in 2010, the country’s parliament had the seemingly genius idea of producing commemorative mugs and selling them for $10 each. However, the gift shop workers (clearly better proofreaders than the mug makers) were forced to promptly throw the mugs away after seeing the name “Barrack Obama” emblazoned on top. The cost? An estimated $2000 in lost income.
5. You have been told to cheat
Proofing errors are not a modern phenomenon and this one, dating back to 1632, is perhaps the worst of all. The London-based printer who printed and distributed 1,000 copies of the King James Bible was fined £300 and forced to destroy all copies when a word was missing meaning the seventh commandment had been changed to “Thou shalt commit adultery”. oops.