The PerfectIt Blog

Here you will find tips and tricks for more efficient editing techniques and improved content. Explore a wealth of ideas, practical advice, and industry best practices that will help you save time while improving the quality of your written documents.

Business of Editing PerfectIt Business of Editing PerfectIt

Five Ways that Consistency Matters

Thomas Mann observed that "a writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people". That's because professional writers know they need to eliminate obstacles to understanding. The more such obstacles they eliminate, the easier it is for readers to focus on the thoughts being conveyed.

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Business of Editing Katy Alderson Business of Editing Katy Alderson

Bullets, Numbers and Lists: How Small Errors Have a Big Impact

Lists, bullets and numbers help to make text stand out (especially when they're used sparingly). But if there are errors in the text, those errors will stand out too. It doesn't matter that details like capitalization or punctuation inconsistencies seem small. The truth is that if they're in a bulleted/numbered list, they'll leap out at readers.

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Business of Editing PerfectIt Business of Editing PerfectIt

To Be or Not to Be in Capitals: That Is the Question

It's not as poetic as Shakespeare's eternal question, but the choice of whether to capitalize the verb 'to be' in titles continues to be pondered through the years. For most people, difficulties with capitalization in titles started at around 9 years old. When your teacher was asked if you're supposed to capitalize all the words in a title, he/she probably said to "capitalize the first and last words and then capitalize all the big words."

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Legal Writing, Business of Editing PerfectIt Legal Writing, Business of Editing PerfectIt

The Top 10 Capitalization Inconsistencies

We used PerfectIt, Intelligent Editing's add-in for MS Word that finds inconsistencies, to check 3000 randomly selected documents. PerfectIt provides a powerful way to check for inconsistent capitalization because it: Finds entire phrases in capitals, not just individual words; ignores headings and other locations where capital letters are needed; only alerts users to phrases that are both capitalized and lowercase in the same document.

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Business of Editing PerfectIt Business of Editing PerfectIt

Five Proofreading Tips for Businesses

Would you trust a five star hotel offering 'luxry accommodation'? Or an online retailer who asked for your 'adress' in a contact form? I wouldn't. And I'm not alone. However, even if you believe that most of your customers don't care about spelling errors, ignoring those who do is terrible business practice.

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Business of Editing PerfectIt Business of Editing PerfectIt

Edit Faster with Free Macros

The life of a professional editor is great: I sit in the comfort of my own home reading interesting books – and people pay me to do it! But some bits of the job are repetitious and tedious, and that's where macros come in: they do the boring bits and let me concentrate on engaging with the text. So, over the years, I have developed macros that help with a wide range of common tasks. And they're now available in a free downloadable book, Macros for Editors.

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