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 Maintain Your Voice
in a
Changing World
 With the world fast becoming a global village, we at Write A Blessing Media are very conscious in how we tailor make your document to suit your international audience. More and more we see British expressions finding their way into American idioms and vice versa. Apart from the commonplace “neighbour” or “colour”, British variations for neighbor and color, we add a few more. We have also gone above and beyond in showcasing different words which mean one thing in America and another thing in England. This is not a complete list by any means. It also does not address different vocabulary, which is used in Australia, Canada, South Africa, and India as well as the Caribbean, Africa, and the many other places in the world which use English as the language of commerce or government. We also give you a brief rundown on American
vs. British punctuation.
It is no walk in the park when it comes around to mastering good spelling and grammar. As a result, not everybody gets his or her spelling right the first time around. All of us are allowed a break or two every now and again. Even the renowned New York Times has a few typos in every issue of its paper, if you were to look keenly. But when typos are commonplace, then you run the risk of losing your audience. You could also lose thousands of dollars in the long run. How will you be able to convince a real estate broker to edit and print his marketing materials when you misspelled stationery as stationary in your ad? A sharp broker would think twice before taking her business to you as a new client for a typo as simple as the aforementioned. Grammatical errors can also cause distress and embarrassment to many. However, our proofreaders have no such problems. In fact, we are a bunch of seasoned language experts who can make your documents error-free in no time.
Rid yourself from the burden of proofreading your documents, and turn them over to us. Our eagle-eyed proofreaders will ensure that your documents meet high standards in all genres of writing. We understand general editorial practices and standard reference sources, and have excellent linguistic skills to identify errors and rectify them appropriately. We will also follow your house style to suit your needs. If you need a particular style to follow, we can utilize the Chicago Manual of Style, Associated Press (AP) Stylebook; The New York Times Manual of Style, proofreaders marks, among others.
What We Will Do For You When Proofreading Your Documents:
- Check and correct spelling
- Make grammatical changes whenever those needs arise
- Make document consistent and rectify hierarchy of headings and running heads
- Ensure that typefaces are consistent throughout document
- See to it that correct and consecutive numbering of various elements such as page number, chapter number, numbered lists; figures and equations are in place
- Review extracts and other material such as poetry, quotations, and excerpts of other works
- Verify table of contents with elements such as chapter numbers, titles and subtitles
- Verify appropriateness of in-text displays such as figures and pictures
- In the end, a quality control person goes over the document to ensure that all your changes were made.
Kinds of Document We Proofread:
We pride ourselves on providing proofreading services for a variety of manuscripts. We do legal proofreading, real estate proofreading, essay proofreading, copywriting proofreading, website proofreading, letters and reports. We will scrutinize your document and correct any spelling, language usage, grammar, punctuation or other inconsistencies.
Why ship your work off overseas when you can have it done with optimum accuracy here in the United States? Working with us will make outsourcing proofreading work easy like never before. Unlike a number of proofreading companies, we are not confined to proofreading/editing alone. Whether it’s legal proofreading tutorials, online proofreading, paper proofreading, proofing legal copy, copy proofing, you will hardly find better proofreading work done anywhere else. We are confident enough to say that we are your one-stop shop for English proofreading. To boot, your document will be returned with proofreading and/or editing corrections color-coded and highlighted. This allows you to easily identify any changes. In addition, we will also provide the completed document with all changes incorporated, if that be your wish.
How We Misuse Words
 If you are one of those people who cannot distinguish the following words from each other, then I would postulate that you could benefit from the help of a proofreader:
Picaresque, picturesque; rite, Wright, right, write; principal, principle; rote, wrote; therefore, therefor; compliment, complement; courtesy, curtesy, curtsy; site, cite, sight; their, there, they’re; wont, won’t; cant, can’t; foreword, forward; prostate, prostrate; poor, pour, pore; your, you’re, yore; its, it’s; genus, genius; lightning, lightening; stationery, stationary; author, Arthur; counsel, council, consul; rescission, recision; goal, gaol; canvass/canvas.
Hard-to-Spell Words
Embarrassment; harassment; liaison; acquiesce; bizarre; questionnaire; weird; paradigm; lingerie; boutique; bouquet; amateur; ambidextrous; amphitheater; paean; ancillary; annihilate; anonymous; ensemble; antecedent; anecdote; colonel; boatswain; factotum; entrepreneur; restaurateur; aneurysm; acquit; asthma; auxiliary; bureaucratic; benign; buoy; boycott; brochure; broccoli, remembrance.
We at Write A Blessing Media are very conscious in how we tailor make your document to suit your international audience. More and more we see British expressions finding their way into American idioms and vice versa. Apart from the commonplace “neighbour” or “colour”, British variations for neighbor and color, we add a few more. We have also gone above and beyond in showcasing different words which mean one thing in America and another thing in England. This is not a complete list by any means. It also does not address different vocabulary, which is used in Australia, Canada, South Africa, and India as well as the Caribbean, Africa, and the many other places in the world which use English as the language of commerce or government. We also give you a brief rundown on American vs. British punctuation.
 American Spelling vs. British Spelling
Story/storey; check/cheque; color/colour; neighbor/neighbour; jewelry/jewellery; percent/per cent.; defense/defence; center/centre; theater/theatre; program/programme; ameba/amoeba; analyze/analyse; apologize/apologise; enrollment/enrolment; fulfill/fulfil; ambiance/ambience; anemic/anaemic; key/quay; skeptic/sceptic; afterward/afterwards; tire/tyre; vial/phial.
American Expressions vs. British Expressions
Expensive/dear; tight wad/mean; dress/frock; subway/tube; hit/lick; guy/bloke; apartment/flat; argument/row; baby carriage; pram; band-aid/sticking plaster; bathroom/loo; can/tin; chopped beef/mince; cookie; sweet biscuit; corn/maize; diaper/nappy; elevator/lift; eraser/rubber; flashlight/torch; fries/chips; gas/petrol;
highway/motorway; hood (car)/bonnet; lawyer/solicitor; line/queue; movie theater/cinema; napkin/serviette; nothing, zero/nought; pants/trousers; period/full stop; pharmacist/chemist; sausage/banger; truck/lorry.
American Punctuation vs. British Punctuations
It behooves authors to consistently adopt either British or American spelling conventions throughout their documents (except in quotations from other sources, where the spelling convention of the original should be retained). We find more and more how Britons have been utilizing the -ise or -ize in their spelling. The confusion, though, is when the document is not consistent with either one style or the other. In American style -ize and -yze should always be used. In England, people use single inverted commas, except for quotations within quotations, which have double inverted commas. Punctuation should follow closing inverted commas except for grammatically complete sentences beginning with a capital. American style uses double inverted commas, except for quotations within quotations (which have single inverted commas). Punctuation should precede closing quotation marks (except for dashes, colons and semicolons, unless these are part of the quoted matter). See examples. British style: ‘The 12-year-old
princess is very cheeky’, said the butler. ‘Nevertheless, she is very kind’. American style: “The 12-year-old princess is very cheeky,” said the butler. “Nevertheless, she is very kind.”
Contractions, Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Dates
In British style, contractions will have no full points: (Mr, St, edn), though abbreviated. Contrast that with American-style contractions: (Mr., St., edn.). Well-known acronyms like NASA, UNESCO, GATT, UN, UK, and USA are often used without periods between them. Writing dates is another struggle for some Brits and Americans. In Canada and England, 11/8/2007 is August 11, 2007, but in America, it is November 8, 2007. We could go on and on arguing about the differences between British and American usages, but we trust that you will learn more at your own pace or you can turn over the hard work to us.
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