How consistent are your documents? Without a professional proofreader, inconsistencies rule the day! 

When your annual report is beautifully presented and error-free, it really looks like you have your house in good order. On the other hand, errors and inconsistencies are messy and undermine the substance of your documents.

Unfortunately, mistakes and oversights are common. That’s because typically many individuals contribute to these lengthy documents, bringing their own style and errors to the page. So, without a professional proofreader presiding over the whole document, inconsistencies rule the day!

Here are some of the discrepancies we often find:

Inconsistencies:

• Capitalisation of job titles and teams or departments
• Capitalisation and hyphenation of key terms
• References to financial years (FY 18/19 or the 2018-2019 financial year)
• Dollar amounts (millions or billions written out or substituted with the letters M or B)
• %, per cent and percent
• Spacing between words, ranges, dollar amounts, paragraphs
• Single and double quote marks

Spellings:

• American variations
• Letters missing creating new words (polices for policies; mange for manage)
• Triple letters
• Mixed up words (it’s/its, affect/effect, practice/practise)

Punctuation:

• Incorrect use of commas, colons, and semi colons
• Use of hyphens [-] instead of the longer en-dash [–]

Bullet points:

• Some in initial caps, others lower case
• Some are punctuated, others not
• Varying indentation

Illustrations:

• Missing captions
• Incorrect numbering
• Typos in charts, diagrams, tables
• Illegibility of wording on images
• Inappropriate image choice

Headings:

• Title case versus sentence case
• Font size and treatment
• Indentation

Table of contents:

• Non-correlation with headings

With our trained eye, there is a lot we can pick up that will help your document positively gleam! This will help you showcase all your hard work and achievements from the last year much more effectively.

For help with copywriting, proofreading or editing any of your business documents, contact Proof Communications on 1300 PROOFS (1300 776 637) or head to the contact page.