Our proofreading course students find that many small businesses have temporary errors on their websites, for purely practical reasons. They are caused by a problem that confronts many organisations that publish on the web.

Their webeditors don’t usually proofread the webpages. This means the proofreader checks them when they are published.

But this means there is a delay between publication and checking … and errors remain uncorrected in the meantime.

Obviously, this doesn’t happen in print. By the time something is published, it’s too late to change it.

Some websites use control panels with a “Preview” facility, which enables checking before publication.

But using this tool adds another layer of organisation that many small businesses can’t cope with.

We advise our proofreading course students to arrange to check completed pages as soon as they are published.