As a writer and an academic tutor I beg you: do not post unedited work anywhere, ever. This applies doubly for online profiles. If this is important to you, and finding a great partner should be important, then do your future partner the courtesy of taking a few minutes to read through your whole profile and edit it. Keep in mind that spelling and grammar are one of the biggest cues available through the written medium. You are judged on your mistakes because they are one of the easiest things to pick up on. These will make you seem either lazy or uneducated. Cues such as grammar, spelling and writing style are often seen as more meaningful about you as a person than your actual message. You will never turn someone off because your spelling is perfect, but you will definitely turn off a large proportion of people because your spelling is bad.
Feeling panicked yet? Here are some tips on proof reading work.
1. Cut 10%. Go through your profile and try to cut out as much as you can while maintaining the meaning. And again, are there superfluous words in your text? Words adding nothing to your message? The cleaner and sharper your writing, the clearer your message will be. Unless a word is fulfilling a critical purpose, get rid of it.
2. Sepll-Chekecr. It sounds redundant, but ensure the presence of spell-checkers where you're writing. You ought to be writing your profile in a Word editor program, as this means that you can save it and edit it/think about it/work on it over a number of days. Some browsers also don't have a spell-checker built in, so you would need to copy and paste it into a Word editor anyway, writing it directly onto the webpage means you probably aren't considering it closely enough.
3. Read it aloud. Reading your work aloud means you can spot mistakes you wouldn't otherwise. It's better if you can cajole a friend into do this for you, because it shows you where other people struggle with phrasing or meaning. If you need to explain to your friend how it should be read, then you've failed in your writing. You'll never get the chance to explain to your online audience, so make sure you don't need to. If no friends are handy, a text to speech feature where the computer reads it to you will suffice to highlight mistakes you might have skimmed over.
4. If you didn't get a friend to read it before, get them to do it now to make sure your profile says what you think it says. This is particularly important if your surveys shows you didn't have a great understanding of your unintentional cues.
5. Now, I want you to read it aloud in a stalker or pornstar voice. Is it offensive? Then change it. Is it creepy? Change it! No one is going to be doing you any favours online, so make it fool-proof. If it could be misinterpreted in any way, change it.
After you have done all that, it's time to take it live!
Feeling panicked yet? Here are some tips on proof reading work.
1. Cut 10%. Go through your profile and try to cut out as much as you can while maintaining the meaning. And again, are there superfluous words in your text? Words adding nothing to your message? The cleaner and sharper your writing, the clearer your message will be. Unless a word is fulfilling a critical purpose, get rid of it.
2. Sepll-Chekecr. It sounds redundant, but ensure the presence of spell-checkers where you're writing. You ought to be writing your profile in a Word editor program, as this means that you can save it and edit it/think about it/work on it over a number of days. Some browsers also don't have a spell-checker built in, so you would need to copy and paste it into a Word editor anyway, writing it directly onto the webpage means you probably aren't considering it closely enough.
3. Read it aloud. Reading your work aloud means you can spot mistakes you wouldn't otherwise. It's better if you can cajole a friend into do this for you, because it shows you where other people struggle with phrasing or meaning. If you need to explain to your friend how it should be read, then you've failed in your writing. You'll never get the chance to explain to your online audience, so make sure you don't need to. If no friends are handy, a text to speech feature where the computer reads it to you will suffice to highlight mistakes you might have skimmed over.
4. If you didn't get a friend to read it before, get them to do it now to make sure your profile says what you think it says. This is particularly important if your surveys shows you didn't have a great understanding of your unintentional cues.
5. Now, I want you to read it aloud in a stalker or pornstar voice. Is it offensive? Then change it. Is it creepy? Change it! No one is going to be doing you any favours online, so make it fool-proof. If it could be misinterpreted in any way, change it.
After you have done all that, it's time to take it live!
About the Author:
Want more advice on writing well? Check out Buffy Greentree's website 100 first drafts
