We used PerfectIt, Intelligent Editing's add-in for MS Word that finds inconsistencies, to check 1200 randomly selected documents. Each document was 1500 words or more and was downloaded from the internet. The results were staggering. Everyone knows not to use two different spellings for the same word, but we found that more than a quarter of documents published online did exactly that. The worst offender was 'organise' and 'organize', which came up in more than 10% of all documents (including all the sub-variations, such as 'organization' and 'organizes'). But it was far from the only one. Here's the full top 10.

The first line of defense against consistency errors is simply being aware of them. The Top 10 errors listed below give authors and editors a reminder of important things to check before documents are published. However, the best way to improve consistency in documents is to run PerfectIt.

Written communication is the foundation of every law practice, but it is extremely time consuming—and when time-pressure is a factor, it can be an embarrassing stumbling block. So how can lawyers balance time and billing pressures with the perfectionism that the industry demands?

As a medical writer, your team depends on you to catch errors, large and small. It’s your job to make sure that months or even years of hard work on a regulatory submission, grant application, or research article aren’t undermined by small imperfections that make a bad impression and weaken your team’s credibility.

You want your self-published book to make an impression on your readers. But you want that impression to be based on your ideas and your writing, not on inconsequential errors and inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation.

I’m a practicing lawyer and I’m a legal tech entrepreneur. Living in both of those worlds, I’m always amazed when I hear people speak about lawyers as if we are rare mythical beasts to be tamed and tricked into using technology.

If you’ve been using PerfectIt 3, then you’re about to experience a dramatic improvement in how PerfectIt works and how much time it can save. The improvements bring Windows users in line with features that Mac users have had since the launch of PerfectIt Cloud.

If your work involves more than one style manual, or more than one set of style preferences, you’re going to love the changes in PerfectIt 4 (our Windows edition). The most exciting difference is the introduction of styles based on styles. However, it helps to understand the other changes we’ve made.

Bad writing – stiff, convoluted, inconsistent – can get in the way of communication just as bad handwriting can. Healthcare professionals take in a lot of information and must make important decisions based on it. Anything that increases the effort of taking in that information increases the likelihood of errors.

People resent being corrected. No matter how big or small the problem is, no one likes to feel scolded. You may be the office editorial expert, but your co-workers won’t welcome unsolicited instruction on how to use software they’ve been using for years; and they certainly don’t want to hear that words they’ve used their whole lives are offensive to company stakeholders.

The most important changes in PerfectIt 4 are: Faster initial scan saves time on every document; New user interface with detailed previews and one-click fix; GPO Style added to built-in styles; Major updates to American Legal Style and WHO Style; Base new styles on existing styles; Combine styles to create new styles; Online help.

Solo and small firm lawyers represent individuals and businesses, providing access to justice for clients whose needs would otherwise go unmet. It is a worthy practice in a profession experiencing rapid changes that are eroding the financial stability that lawyers once enjoyed.

If you have a cat or a dog, you know the first challenge in using medication to treat their health conditions is getting them to swallow the darn stuff. The same is true for health information with people, especially ordinary people with no special medical background. In order to be in control of your health, you have to be well informed about it. But people need that information in a form they can swallow.

I can vividly remember what my young associate days were like. As part of the class of 2008, I graduated with classmates who had offers rescinded or who were furloughed as the economy tanked. Good grades were no longer enough, an offer was not a guarantee of a job, there was no longer time to ramp up in an apprenticeship format, and our mountains of debt made failure not an option.

Your house style guide is the document that keeps track of all the writing style preferences at your organization. It includes everything from how your brand should be presented through to spelling, hyphenation, and capitalization preferences in documents.

Bluebooking is a menial task and a law school hazing ritual that has no bearing on actual law practice, right? Wrong. Citing is more than just an exercise in irrational obedience.

Most abbreviations do require a definition. In any case where readers might be confused by TLAs (three letter abbreviations), it's important that they be defined in the text or in a Table of Abbreviations. A research proposal or article with complicated and confusing abbreviations is one that will quickly face rejection. The problem is that authors become so familiar with abbreviations that they forget to define them. To test how prevalent the problem is, we used PerfectIt, the add-in for MS Word that locates undefined abbreviations, to check 3000 randomly selected documents.

Many law schools are failing to adequately prepare students for the profession. Historically, students were not required to participate in legal clinics, complete internships, or take practice management classes. In 2015, the American Bar Association (ABA) issued a guidance memo that clarified that schools must offer experiential learning.

The best way to self-edit a document is not to. Seriously: You should get an editor’s help whenever you can. The cost is probably less than you think. The work will come back faster than you think. And you are better off if you don’t try to go it alone. You can find more details in You Should Hire an Editor.