The other day I was searching online for proofreading jobs, and came across Proofreading 247’s remarkable website—or at least one version of it, since they have two different English-language websites, www.proofreading247.com and www.proofreading.co.uk, sites whose writing is equally appalling. Sentence after bungled sentence on both websites involves some mistake or infelicity, errors which would be funny anywhere but are hilarious on a proofreading website.
Before I go on I should point out that the people who did the writing for the website probably aren’t the same people who do the proofreading for it. The reviews for the proofreading itself are positive, so don’t stop buying that tasty kebab from your local takeaway just because someone made a bodge job of their signage. Also, some of the mistakes are so eccentric that they were probably not written by native English speakers. If that is the case, then it might make this article an unpleasant, Jeremy Kyle-esque bear-baiting session, were it not that at the same time as the writer mangles language, he also sanctimoniously badgers readers, informing them in stentorian tones that their bad grammar will result in certain embarrassment. I therefore grin my superior grin with no guilt, I just can’t tell how many of the fish I’ve shot were in barrels all along.
The front page isn’t promising. Do ‘not let your grammatical mistakes detract from your company’s professional image’, it tells us condescendingly, before continuing with delicious irony: ‘In today’s world, good grammar is essential to create first impression of you as of educated and credible person.’ I agree. They are also right, I think, that writing correctly helps you personally get taken seriously, as the Services page tells us in its hectoring tone. ‘As far as I’m concerned, what you write is a reflection of you. If your document is full of errors, people won’t take what you have to say seriously.’ Yikes. Fortunately they offer us advice, ‘When writing your CV, you need to bare in mind …’ which is bare silliness.
If we wanted to point this all out to them we might go to their Contact Us page. ‘Do you need a help?’ it asks politely, adding, ‘We are always happy to help your requirements.’ Well, how can we get our requirements helped? ‘Call us at our phone numbers below and speak to our Proofreading 247 support team who are available 24/7’ is their instruction, with its command to call multiple phone numbers, and its wonderful 24/7 circularity. If you don’t want to call, ‘you can write in the fields below to send your enquiry to us and we will come back to you ASAP possible’.
What is this organisation where people can reply as fast as possible possible? Here are a few paragraphs from the About page:
At Proofreading 247, we help writers reach their highest potential. Our main aim is to help someone in a developing country express himself or herself clearly in English, Proofreading 247 ensures that the work will be judged on merit, not linguistic issues. Whatever maybe the case, we are here to help you out!
At Proofreading 247, our main aim is to provide a high quality proofreading service which is backed by fixed guarantees and years of experience in the business. Our greatest strength is our crew of professional proof readers who come from a broad range of backgrounds, having vast experience. There are many reasons that explain why you can trust Proofreading 247. Below we are demonstrating few of:
- Our very competitive prices are based on the word-count and the time you require the work in but we convince you that the high quality you will obtain will meet respectively the price that you pay.
- Proofreading 247 guarantee to proofread your document right on time before the time-limit that you tell us in your order form.
- Proofreading 247 guarantee an effective service and offer you 100% satisfaction. If you are unhappy with any aspect of our service we will refund your money or proofread your document again gratis.
- With our automated submission process, we can start correcting your essay right away and get it back to you in as little time as 24 hours.
- We respect your privacy; no information that you provide us will be disclosed in any case.
We employ only the best authors for our proof reading to ensure a quality service. All of our proof readers are native English speakers, educated at least to Masters level (some hold a PhD) with extensive university teaching and examining experience
Should that comma after ‘English’ in the first paragraph be a period? Yes it should. Should there be a period at the end of the blue writing at the end? Yes. Why isn’t it there? Who knows. And who knows what the phrase ‘Below we are demonstrating few of:’ means? If they’re saying that below they demonstrate few reasons indeed to trust Proofreading 247, then they’ve done a splendid job of matching form to content.
They also do a splendid job of telling us their main aim: §1 lets us know that it is to help those in developing countries, a commendable purpose indeed. But then they get so carried with their success that they include another main aim in §2, which just seems greedy. I’m not sure what the second main aim is either. Are they aiming to have years of experience, or to back their service with fixed guarantees perhaps? If it’s the former then I’m glad they aim for years of experience, I just wish they’d got that experience before making their website, so that they didn’t have calamities like their first bullet point, …
… which is an unusual sentence encouraging us that although (‘but’) their prices are competitive, their service is really very good value. What? Anyway, though that adversative might be hard to stomach, they kindly reassure us: ‘we convince you [that it really is so]’, a statement of awe-inspiring presumption. The most unusual thing about the sentence, though, is that if you take out the word ‘respectively’ (meaning nothing at all here), you get a nice coordination: ‘1the high quality 2you will obtain 3will meet respectively 1the price that 2you pay’—although they’ve placed the phrase ‘the price that you pay’ in the more emphatic position at the end of the coordination, which feels quite ominous.
What really is ominous is that they’ve massaged the truth in telling us that they will refund any unhappy customers. Their Ts and Cs state that ‘refunds are only given in exceptional circumstances and at the discretion of the reviews team,’ which to me sounds awfully like ‘never’.
You get the point: the About page is a mess, and the site is a mess. I don’t merely want to poke fun, so I had a go at cleaning up the About section. Most of the work was just deleting redundancy. Voilà:
At Proofreading 247, we ensure writers get the credit they deserve, by enabling them to express themselves clearly and accurately. We especially want to help those from developing countries. Whatever problems you have, we are here to help you out!
We reliably provide an effective service and full satisfaction with our fixed guarantees and experienced proofreaders:
- Our proofreaders are native English speakers who hold at least a Masters or PhD, and who have extensive university teaching and examining experience.
- We guarantee that your document will be proofread by the time you state in the order form. With our automated submission process, we can start correcting your essay right away and get it back to you in as little as 24 hours.
- Our competitive prices are based on the word count of your document and how soon you want it processed. If any aspect of our service leaves you dissatisfied we will refund your money or proofread your document again for free.
- We respect your privacy, and will never disclose any of your information.
It’s hardly perfect and it's a little flat on salesmanship, but it’s more-or-less serviceable. It did take a while though, which suggests to me that if Proofreading 247 ever decides to proofread their own website they have quite a job on their hands. I would suggest binning most of the drivel that they link to at the bottom (under vacuous titles like ‘More Useful Information’ and ‘Useful Stuff’), and smartening up key the pages linked to at the top (‘About’, ‘Pricing’ etc. … speaking of which, three of those links take you to the same place). They could make a good start just by deleting all the repeated material.
One last comment. They write, ‘Unlike most other custom writing services, we provide native speaking writers to our North American customers. You can be sure that you will not receive a paper written by Pakistani writer with poor language skills.’ And so just condemnation was heaped on incompetent Pakistani proofreaders, proofreaders so unskilled that they’d never think to make a jingoistic comment like the one above, in the same breath they made a blooper like ‘native speaking writers’. Good heavens. It in these moments of adept hypocrisy that Proofreading 247 really reaches its highest potential.
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