Is Literacy Important? Who cares?

Is literacy important to your business? Who cares? Perhaps you've made it this far without having to do much writing, editing, or reading. And now you have a business establishment. Why should you hire a professional editor or writer to help you with tasks you may not be well-suited for? What business tasks do you have that might require the polish that a professional editor or writer could provide? Do you have a business policies and procedures manual to keep you and your employees consistent with their practices? This document might be helped with the expertise provided by a professional documentation specialist. Is your business regulated by Federal, State, or City ordinances and inspectors? You may need to have documentation prepared for these regulators' inspections. A professional documentation specialist may help you in avoiding additional pain resulting from these inspections. How about your advertising and marketing materials? I've seen advertisements where a price was incorrectly listed--and the car dealership had to scramble to correct the $10,000 difference in price on the ad. If they had asked a professional editor/writer to look at the ad before it went to press, they might have saved themselves a lot of scrambling. Sometimes the illiteracy is only somewhat embarrassing. When a 15-foot long banner has the word "Management" misspelled, it may be only an annoyance when it's announcing the change of ownership of a pizza parlor. However, if it is on a sign for a company specializing in "Quality Management", it may be more of a concern. (I've seen this at a Biotech Tradefair--a company specializing in "Quality Management" had a huge banner in which they misspelled the word "Management".) Sort of makes you wonder about how they manage *other* quality.

Likewise, it's amusing to find spelling and grammatical errors in menus at Chinese restaurants or in the hand-made flyers for a car-wash and detailing center. Yet, it's annoying to find these same gaffs in a computer installation and configuration manual, or in a manual for a piece of medical equipment or chemistry-laboratory analytic equipment. Certain types of documentation are more critical than others, and grammatical and spelling and usage errors in the critical documents can cause a lot of trouble if in the wrong place.

You may find an inexpensive "proofreader" at your local college, but you may be better off with a professional and experienced editor and writer. It may not be necessary for the pizza parlors or restaurants, but for businesses involving high-tech or complicated products--in particular, those regulated and inspected by various authorities--having a well-written, error-free documentation (manuals, advertising, marketing, and so on), could be the difference in remaining in business and seeing it go down the tubes. Consider this also, you will generally "get what you pay for"--if you go to the *cheap* side--you may not be getting the best you could get in regards to the professional techniques and services.