Celebrated each year on March 8, National Proofreading Day is a reminder to 
strive for error-free writing.
Everyone makes typos, grammar mistakes, and spelling errors, so proofreading is vital.
Typos, grammar errors, and spelling mistakes make us look bad.
Mistakes make us look unprofessional. Our words are a representation of ourselves, and mistakes say we either don't know much, or we're too lazy or sloppy to check our own work.
I'll admit, proofreading what you wrote isn't easy. You KNOW what you said, so it's easy to miss mistakes. If you can get a friend to read what you wrote before you send it out into the world, do it.
And if you want to BE a friend, offer to proofread someone else's work.
"Six seconds is all it takes to catch a customer’s attention upon opening up your internet portal. Imagine if in that first six seconds the first thing she’ll notice are the spelling errors?" (from Coggno.com)
And since agents represent the brokerage...
If you happen to be a broker or manager, it would be a good practice to offer to proofread your agents' work.
If you know your grammar or spelling skills are lacking - take time to learn!
If there are words you often have to look up, or if someone is constantly telling you about your grammar errors, it's time for some study.
Real estate agents seem to have a set of commonly used grammar and spelling errors. You see them repeatedly in blog posts and in the letters they send out. That's why I wrote a Grammar Guide for Real Estate Agents. (If you need it, get your copy today!)
Looking bad is only part of the problem. Errors can also cost big dollars.
The first recorded lawsuit stemming from a proofreading error dates back to 1631, when a reprint of the King James Bible had an error that resulted in a huge lawsuit and damages to the publisher.
And such lawsuits are not uncommon today. Just a little research led me to these two websites:
The story at https://futurism.com/the-byte/man-sued-grammar-facebook is about a real estate agent who complained about his former workplace on Facebook. Had he proofread his words, he might have realized that he left out an apostrophe. And then he might not have landed in court.
That article also references the missing comma that cost a trucking company $5 million.
This article: https://coggno.com/blog/how-companies-lost-millions-due-to-spelling-mistakes-and-typos/ lists a good number of lawsuits, some of which cost the lazy writers millions:
If you're selling property that was divided prior to today's strict regulations...
I once ran into a situation that could have led to a lawsuit. Fortunately, I was able to find the people involved and get a deed corrected before it was too late. In this case, a couple had sold half of their 5 acre lot, but wrote the legal description themselves. They just said "the E 1/2 of..." and copied their description. Unfortunately, that description included a semicolon and something along the lines of "Less the W. 30' thereof, which is County right-of-way."
No one noticed that error until we listed the property that was that East half. When we called for a preliminary title report, the title agent saw it immediately. He also drew up the papers to correct it. It took 3 trips back to see the original seller (the husband had since passed away) to get her to understand, but we finally got it done.
If you copy legal descriptions when you take listings or write offers, be careful! Check your work. Then check it again!
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