Tools don’t necessarily eliminate mistakes, and often all they really do is enable you to make more mistakes quicker than ever before.

CMSWire touches on a common problem that exists in many more places that just in Content Management Systems. They suggest that;

The biggest mistake in content management is writing for the organization and not for the reader.

I think I’d say that this isn’t a mistake left just to the CMS world – this may be a big problem with business PR and communications regardless of delivery method. It is hardly the biggest problem in the world of CMS as far as I see it, and my money is on another number entirely.

One thing that print media has going for it is that, in a way, business has a bit more of a respect for it, and tends to make more of an attempt to proofread since they understand that changes may be next to impossible. The more difficult mistakes are to correct, the more likely that you’re going to try not to make them. Engraving a message in stone? Thirty people check the spelling and grammar and message. A monk illuminating a bible by hand? Thirty people checking every page and every letter. Typesetting a manuscript manually and a handful of people check the type, and the print copy. Printing brochures, and typically a handful of people go over everything before the print run is completed.

With blogging and CMS tools that publish directly to the corporate website, it’s not uncommon to see un-checked messages making it to the world, only to be pulled back at the last minute after an angry email from customers, partners, or someone who should have been involved in the sign off but wasn’t. The joke is that there’s a bug in web logging software that introduces errors into the published copy only after the author hits the publish button. It’s not funny if you’re at all concerned about how your writing appears. I know that I make typos, but they’re mine, damn it. I’ve learned to use the “Save and Continue Editing” button in WordPress so that I can scroll down and check out the formatted page; this combined with a FireFox plugin that lets me spell check the text area help me reduce my errors, as I don’t have a staff of human proofreaders on standby.

Sometimes the mistake affects the message in a drastic way through the simple lack of a comma, or by using a word that sounds right without being correct; I see ‘penultimate’ often used in such a fashion. “Our solution is the penultimate choice in the industry!” Thanks, but I’d hold out for the ultimate choice. Maybe the message that gets out isn’t merely embarrassing, but cause for action; termination, lawsuit, or arrest.

Unfortunately, you can’t expect your tools to do your work for you all of the time. Spell check alone won’t save you from using ‘their’ incorrectly, and that ‘publish’ button on your blogging software or on your CMS upload page doesn’t function as a proper gatekeeper should. Sure, some system allow you to maintain a line of signoffs, but that requires that the system is setup correctly; can you trust that?

Produce quality work, paying attention to detail, and publish when it’s ready. Don’t assume that the next person in the chain will catch your mistakes; don’t give them any to find.