Typographical error. How to check text before publishing

All tips

Hello. I tell you what to do with the text before publication, so that later you won’t be ashamed in front of your client and readers.

1. Remove excess

Ask a question for each paragraph and sentence: “If I delete this, will the text become worse? Will it be less understandable or interesting?” If it doesn’t, feel free to delete it.

Some authors perceive this painfully: “I wrote, wasted time, and now delete it? No way!” Don't cling to unnecessary things. During the editing stage, I can remove 30-50% of the text: paragraphs, lists and entire sections. This is fine.

7. Compress images

Images are often the hardest part of content. Because of them, the page loads slower - this is bad for both SEO and UX. Therefore, they need to be compressed - reducing quality and “weight”.

I run all my images through TinyPNG - it compresses them by 30–80%. If I make an illustration in Photoshop, I immediately save it with a quality of 60–70% of the maximum.

8. Write Title and Description

Some authors think that this is the job of a SEO specialist. I disagree. This is the text that people see: in search results, in social networks, in instant messengers. The title and description help you understand whether it will be interesting or worth reading.

You can't put such important things on others. This is part of the author's job.

Checklist for checking text before publication

Remove unnecessary
Subtract out loud
Find errors or give it to a proofreader
Remove extra spaces
Remove empty lines
Print
Compress images
Write Title and Description

I don’t check for uniqueness and other nauseous things, so I didn’t write anything about them. Good luck.

Typographical errors are found in the work of many copywriters - both beginners and quite experienced ones. Having studied the basics of SEO rewriting and gotten used to filling the text with keywords in the order required by the customer, the “authors” begin to be indifferent to numerous errors, since they believe that all texts on the Internet are intended only for search engines. However, this is fundamentally wrong. Not a single owner of a website for people will allow himself to post articles with errors and typos on his resource. On a high-quality project, a separate specialist checks texts before posting. And if the webmaster is working on the site alone, then he also does the proofreading of articles before posting.

Errors and typos in the article are extra time that will be spent by the site owner on correcting them. That is why customers prefer authors who are able to write articles that do not require even the slightest edits, and some article exchanges even remove from sale texts that contain many typographical errors.

What are typographical errors

Typographical errors are violations of the rules by which printed text is formatted. Like any other type of errors in the text, they take time to correct, so if it is important to you to have regular customers who will be satisfied with your work, try to avoid them in your work.

Typographical errors in the title

All headings and subheadings in an article must begin with a capital letter. You should not put a period after the title, but question marks and exclamation marks are allowed. However, putting two or three questions or exclamation marks in a row is prohibited. So, the subtitle “How to promote a site after all???” will be wrong.

Another common mistake is typing the entire title in capital letters. This not only looks very ugly, but can also be perceived by search robots as spam. In addition, such typing has long been considered bad form.

Typographical errors in spaces and punctuation

Each punctuation mark must be followed by a space. However, the first and middle initials next to the last name are not separated by a space. There are a number of other exceptions. There is no space between the closing parenthesis and the last letter of the word in parentheses. After the bracket is closed, there is a period, but there is also no space between the bracket and the period. The exact same rule applies to quotation marks.

What is the difference between a hyphen and a dash

A hyphen is a spelling sign that is placed between parts of a word, for example, before the particles either, or. A dash is a punctuation mark needed to connect words in a sentence. The hyphen is written together with the words, spaces are placed before and after the dash. Dates indicating years are preceded by a dash without spaces.

On the keyboard, the same key is used to represent both a hyphen and a dash, and when pressed, a hyphen appears in a Word document, deforming into a dash after a new word is written after it and separated by a space.

1. Don't use fancy fonts

If you don't have enough experience and knowledge, don't even try to use unusual, fancy fonts. Keep it simple.

2. Forget Comic Sans

Imagine that you have never seen him at all.

3. Don't avoid standard, default fonts

Seriously, if someone tells you that standard fonts are boring, they simply don't understand typography. How the font will look depends on how it is typed. Times New Roman can look really cool. And most importantly: it’s better for the text to be boring than ugly or unreadable.

OmegaTransFer / Depositphotos

Mixing fonts

4. Don't use more than two fonts at the same time

It’s not worth experimenting with a large number of fonts at the initial stage. Two is enough. You don't want to turn the text into miscellaneous nonsense, do you?

5. Mix only contrasting fonts

Serif sans serif, handwritten with art nouveau. It is important to maintain contrast. Two similar fonts next to each other look sloppy.

6. Choose fonts with uniform letter heights

The height of lowercase letters without descenders is the distance from the base to the top line of the font, in other words, the point value of the lowercase letters. When choosing the fonts you want to use together, you need to make sure that the height of their lowercase letters is the same. This will help maintain the same level of paragraph saturation. In addition, such text will be easier to read.

Typing text

7. Font size

The text size on the web should not be less than 13 pixels. In my opinion, the best choice is within 14–18 px. Not too big and at the same time readable.

8. Choose the right line length

Don't be fooled by rumors that you can get the correct line length by multiplying the font size by two. This is bullshit. Just try to keep your line length between 45-75 characters. GOST for printed publications recommends a length of 60 characters, but this, of course, is a difficult ideal to achieve on the web. And yet it is worth striving for. Use your eye to see if a line is too long or too short.

9. Leading should match the font size

To achieve a balance between text and air, make the line spacing approximately one and a half times the height of the lowercase letters. There is another simpler method: set the leading to 125% of the font size.

Paragraph

10. Align Left

If you are not sure which justification to choose, choose the left justification: the “Right” and “Justified” options on the web rarely pay off. There's nothing wrong with a jagged edge. Left-facing text is easier to read because the eye sees a clear visual ending to each line. But in Russian such text is convenient to read if the line is not too long. Therefore, if your string is more than 60 characters, try disabled typing. Just remember to hyphenate and check that everything looks good: several hyphens in a row will definitely make it difficult to read.

11. Avoid too many hyphens

In general, hyphenation on the web should be avoided whenever possible. Try moving the word to a new line or slightly changing the letter spacing. If there are too many hyphens, change the font size or spacing. And when switching to the left, do not use word wrapping at all.

12. No indentation

Do not indent the first paragraph from the title. If you break paragraphs with blank lines, do not use paragraph indents. It's redundant and tasteless. On the other hand, text without any indents or spaces at all will be more difficult to perceive. In general, choose one of the methods: either a red line or a spacer - and use it throughout the entire text.

13. Narrow column

If you need to type a small column of text, try using a narrow font. This way the text will not only look better, but also be easier to read, since more characters will fit into the line.

14. Hanging punctuation

You should place quotation marks, brackets, hyphens, periods, and commas outside the typing line. This always looks elegant and helps keep the paragraph in proper shape.

15. “Widows” and “orphans”

We are talking about hanging lines. "Widow" is one word on a whole line at the end of a paragraph, or a very short line at the end of a text or page. An "orphan" is a dangling line that ends up at the beginning of a new page or column. They must be avoided. Try reducing the letter spacing, moving lines, or adjusting the font size - in general, don't let "widows" and "orphans" sneak into your text.

16. Don't overuse spaces

To start a new line, press Shift+Enter. To start a new paragraph, press Enter. It's that simple.

Words

17. Kerning

If you are an inexperienced designer and do not have an eye for the smallest details, do not kernel text by hand.

18. Tracking

Remember: when you increase the font size, the space between characters also increases. Therefore, if you set a large heading in the text, we advise you to proportionally adjust the distance between characters and words.

19. Highlights in the text

You can highlight an important idea or word that you need to pay attention to in a variety of ways. Don't overdo them. You should not highlight an entire sentence with capital letters alone - a beginner cannot always do this appropriately. Just use bold font style.

20. Lowercase without space

You should not increase the space between lowercase letters. The reason is simple: readability is reduced.

21. Capitals with space

Increase the space between capital letters. In this case, readability increases. Increasing letter space by 10% usually works well.

22. Don't write everything in capitals.

Do not overuse capitalization. The length of such a set should not exceed one line.