why hire an editor

We’ve all been there: a time when a simple misspelling caused a big problem. I’ve watched a colleague write an entire report in which he misspelled “public” as “pubic” – as in “the department of pubic affairs.” Talk about embarrassing. When simple misspellings slip past a big company’s editors, though, the problems run deep. It can cause embarrassment on a national scale, where fun is poked at your error for as long as the internet is around, or it could even mean a huge loss of funds. If you’ve ever thought, “Help! I need an editor!” read on to be inspired to do just that by learning more about some of the costliest misspellings that occurred. I Need an Editor: 10 Prodigious Spelling Mistakes That Cost Thousands (And Maybe Lots, Lots More) It’s not just dollars that were lost by some of these grammar snafus…it’s reputations. Check out some of the world’s biggest brands who experienced a few simple grammar errors that are still reverberating around the internet. For some of them, it was down to just a few wrong numbers or one piece of punctuation. 1. Literally, money spelled away: Mizuho Securities, Co. A branch of Japan’s second-largest bank, Mizuho Securities was working on a project to sell shares of a company via the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The project was clipping along well enough until one of the employees at Mizuho made a big typo. While the company had intended to sell single shares for 610,000 yen, the employee got it backwards and listed 610,000 shares for the low, low price of 1 yen. Within less than 24 hours, the company had hemorrhaged $340 million. 2. Missing apostrophe’s, Old Navy? Old Navy is famous for producing comfortable, stylish t-shirts with catchy slogans, but the brand cost itself lots of money when it mistakenly printed an entire run of sports-centric t-shirts without the apostrophe in “Let’s Go!” (Missing apostrophes make my teeth chatter…) Needless to say, this snafu cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars and delayed its ability to deliver the product to the consumer. What’s more, the mistake also resulted in plenty of Twitter jeering and joking on the part of former Old Navy fans. 3. Grammar snafu at Victoria’s Secret Like Old Navy, Victoria’s Secret is famous for being cheeky when it comes to their clothing. It seems like the massive lingerie brand could use an editor, though, especially after they released a Secret Body campaign in 2013 with this catchphrase… “You’ve never seen body’s like this!” Yikes. Despite the fact that Victoria’s Secret has a completely massive marketing budget, it seems like they couldn’t afford a bit extra to pay an editor. 4. Dear America: Mitt Romney’s ad campaign demise When Republican candidate Mitt Romney ran for office, he made a big mistake in his own campaign. To the delight of his opponents, Mitt’s mobile app misspelled America to “Amercia.” As you can imagine, Twitter went wild and, while the campaign never went on record about the snafu, they fixed it hastily, losing many supporters and backers in the process. 5. Think you’re genius, H&M? Think again Ah, H&M, your story has been a long and bumpy one. Despite its position as the go-to clothing company for Millennials, H&M has made several simple grammar mistakes that could have easily been prevented by an editor. One great example is a t-shirt the company released that featured a Thomas Edison quote wherein the world “Genius” was tragically misspelled:   6. Poor Nike support (grammatically, that is) While we appreciate Nike’s willingness to address its customers’ issues, the Nike Support team made a massive grammar mistake when it confused “then” and “than.” While we understand that grammar mistakes happen, the Twitter jeering that resulted from this particular grammar mistake isn’t good for anyone. It would be better if @NikeSupport had posted “you have more [than] one” instead. ‘Then’ doesn’t compare; ‘than’ does. — Grammar Police (@_grammar_) June 6, 2015 7. Dear grammar nerds, you’re needed at HubSpot Even HubSpot, our dear influencer in the world of all things content marketing, makes a mistake now and again. The company was the first to call itself out on a Facebook post that said: “Are your press releases been keeping up?” Luckily, a bit of humor is the best medicine for grammar mistakes, and the company recovered quite nicely. Thumbs up to Hubspot for handling it the right way. 8. Run towards better grammar, Reebok What happens when you build a faulty advertising campaign and post it all over New York subways? You get ridiculed, that’s what! Unfortunately, Reebok experienced this exact fate when it published its “Run Easy New York” campaign, which read like this:   9. Stella Artois: Great taste, bad grammar While everyone loves the crisp and refreshing taste of imported beer Stella Artois, not everyone loves the grammar mistakes the company used to make in its marketing campaign. One notable example is this apostrophe splice, which did some serious damage to the brand’s credibility: While this simple snafu could’ve been avoided with the help of an editor, it looks like the company didn’t have the budget or time for such things! 10. L.L. Bean finds out that misspelled phone numbers make bank L.L. Bean made headlines when it sent out a back-to-school catalogue to millions of homes. Unfortunately, the catalogue hadn’t been edited well enough and, instead of including their own phone number, the company had included the phone number of a Virginia company that was in no way related. The mistake became costly when L.L. Bean was forced to buy the phone number from the Virginia company in question, at a cost of upwards of six figures. 5 Easy Ways to Avoid Misspellings in Your Online Content As you’ve seen from the examples above, grammar mistakes can cost you big in your content, business, and even your overall reputation. Regardless of whether it’s a simple comma splice or an all-out misspelling, these things have the potential to steal thousands and even millions of dollars from your company. Luckily, there’s a way to avoid this fate. Here’s five … Read more