Learning how to proofread business documents is an essential skill for any proofreader. Businesses constitute the largest market for proofreading, and they typically pay the highest rates. Focusing on landing business clients, therefore, is a great way to maximize your income.
In many ways, proofreading a business document is no different than reviewing any other content. The overarching process will remain the same, as well as the tools and techniques you will need to use.
There are certain aspects of proofreading business clients, however, that should be given special attention. These include the importance of meeting deadlines, understanding tone and audience, bearing in mind search engine optimization (SEO), knowing industry terms, and knowing the value of creating style guides.
Focus on meeting deadlines
Meeting client deadlines is, of course, always important, but it’s especially important when it comes to business clients. Businesses often face tight schedules and hard deadlines. Failure to meet these goals can lead to lost opportunities or, worse yet, lost revenue.
As a freelance contractor, you do not want to be the “weak link” in a project. Your goal should be to proofread all content on or ahead of time. Business clients value efficiency, so if you can deliver quality work in a timely manner, you will be a valuable resource for them. You can even use this as leverage to increase your rates over time.
Understand the tone and intended audience
Many businesses, especially those with marketing departments, focus on trying to maintain a certain tone or voice that aligns with their intended audience. As a proofreader, it’s important to get a sense of the tone and audience to make the best editing choices.
For example, if you are contracting with a company selling board games, it’s likely they want their content to be fun and lighthearted. This means using vivid, descriptive, and short words. You wouldn’t want to suggest a word like “obsequious” or “malfeasance” in such a text.
On the other hand, say you are working on a blog post for a medical device company. It’s likely addressed to doctors and nurses and meant to inform them of the product’s capabilities. In this case, a scientific or highly technical word might be the right choice. A phrase like “fun for the whole family!” would be entirely out of place, however.
Of course, these are exaggerated examples designed to make a point. But it is important to preserve (or enhance) the voice of any content and ensure your proofreading suggestions make sense to and will be understood by the intended audience.
Be aware of SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) is a set of practices designed to attract search engine traffic (also called “organic traffic”) to a web page. Put another way, the goal of SEO is to get your website or webpage on page one of Google results when potential customers search for terms and phrases related to your business. These terms are called keywords. It’s important to bear keyword requirements in mind when proofreading business content destined for the web.
Sometimes clients will give you a list of keywords that need to remain in the document. Other clients will highlight keywords for you. Still others will expect you to generally recognize potential keywords in the text. Regardless, when editing SEO content, it pays to be extra vigilant with respect to keywords. Depending on the client, in fact, they may prefer keeping a keyword intact over grammatical correctness or precision. You may find it worth a conversation with a business client to get a feel for their priorities in this regard.
Watch for company- and industry-specific terminology
Every company has insider vocabulary, also called “jargon,” that basically evolves as conversational shorthand. These terms make it easier for people working on the same projects or products to quickly and efficiently commuicate. This can include novel uses for words, entirely new terms, and acronyms.
When everyone is “in the know,” jargon works. But when it comes to mass communication, it only hurts the readers’ chances of understanding what’s written. For this reason, it’s best to avoid jargon at all costs.
That being said, there is a place for industry-specific terminology, depending on the intended audience. If the intended audience is doctors and nurses, there any number of medical terms that might be perfectly fine to use in an article or blog post. Or if you are proofreading an email that will be sent to online business owners, you may not need to define SaaS (software as a service). Everyone in that field will already know what that acronym means.
It takes a bit of critical thinking (and experience) to know the difference between jargon, which should be replaced or omitted, and industry-specific or technical terminology that may have its rightful place in a document. Because of this, be sure to think through any such terms carefully.
Start a client style guide
When it comes to guidance on how to proofread business documents, perhaps the most valuable tip is to create a style guide. (Some clients may already have an in-house style guide before they hire a freelance proofreader, but a majority do not.) Style guides are a very important tool for several reasons, and they help both your clients and you.
Developing a style guide for your clients, especially when you have multiple of them, is crucial. This is because every client will have their own preferences. A style guide allows you to document these preferences and refer back to them instead of trying to rely on your memory alone (which is never a good idea). It can include anything from notes on voice and tone to preferred spelling, often-used acronyms, and product names. Simply put, whatever idiosyncrasies you find in their documents should go in the style guide.
A style guide benefits you by ensuring you are proofreading with consistency in mind. You aren’t writing out the word “percent” in one text, for example, while using the % sign in another. It also helps ensure you don’t misspell company or industry terms or mistakenly apply a specific client’s guidelines to a document for another client.
The easiest and best way to create a style guide is via Google Docs. The format is largely up to you and can be as simple as a bulleted list. Adding content to the guide is as simple as making notes as you proofread. Once you have filled out the guide to the point where you feel someone else could make use of it, you can then share the document with your client. Not only can this help them inform their writing upstream and make your job easier, but it shows that you’re the type of freelancer who goes above and beyond to provide clients value. Plus, when you decide to move on, you can leave the style guide with the client to help set them up for success down the road—a very nice parting gesture.
Summing it up: How to Proofread Business Documents
When it comes to how to proofread business documents, certain aspects of the process need focused attention. These elements include managing deadlines; proofreading with tone, audience, and SEO in mind; understanding when to use industry-specific terms; and the importance of creating and using style guides.