Inevitably, interns make little goofs and mistakes here and there, and my response is always to offer them a course correction and a bit of advice—and a tale that will help them feel less silly and inexperienced.

I have a few stories up my sleeve for this purpose, all based on my own goofs and mistakes; each has its own moral.

I realized I should offer these stories up via my blog because it’s good for all of us to remember that we are always learning, and the anecdotes are also good for a laugh.

When I see interns who have confidence issues, I sit them down and let them know what I see as their strong suits and the skills they bring to the table. I tell them they need to trust themselves and work on mining their self-assurance. I say I had a serious lack of faith in myself when I was in college, and I tell this story:

I was a senior at Westfield State College. It was 1985, and I had spent the semester working at what was then called the Springfield Morning Union. (This paper later became the Union-News when it merged with the Springfield Daily News and later became what we know today as the Springfield Republican.)

My journalism professor, the late and fabulous Dave Humphrey, had arranged the internship for me and well-guided me in my four months in the Living department, where I wrote wedding and engagement announcements and also wrote a few feature stories.

Dave was the assistant managing editor at the Morning Union. One day, he told me that a man named Tom Haggerty would be calling me. Dave didn’t explain that Tom was an important guy, then the paper’s managing editor, and he didn’t tell me that Tom was going to offer me a job.

So, I’m in my on-campus apartment one afternoon, and Tom calls me. He offers me a part-time correspondent job covering Granby and South Hadley. I felt he might as well have asked me to climb Mount Everest or orbit the moon.

I said, “Oh, thank you so much, but I don’t think I’d be very good at that.”

There was an awkward pause on Tom’s end. We made polite small talk, and then he said thank you, and we hung up.

When I saw Dave next, he hollered to me from down the hall in Bates, an academic building I had many of my classes in at Westfield State.

“Beetle. In my office,” he said.

Dave gestured for me to sit, and I did.

“Did Tom Haggerty call you?” he asked me. He was clearly in a snit.

“Yes,” I said.

“Did he offer you a job?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you say no?”

“Yes,” I repeated.

“You’re an asshole,” he said.

Dave explained that I had spent four years preparing for such a job and that I was a qualified candidate and a good writer. I did not know this.

“What you’re going to do,” he said, “is you’re going to call Tom back. You’re going to tell him you’d be a great reporter and that you would be ecstatic to have the opportunity to work for the Springfield Morning Union.”

“Okay,” I said. And I called Tom back, and I got the job, and here I am today, very thankful that someone had my back so long ago. I honestly can’t say where I would be without Dave and his faith in me and my abilities. He was right. I was a good reporter. I was fast and accurate, and I had compassion.

I wish Dave were still alive, so I could take him out for a drink or a cup of coffee and thank him for being a good mentor and guide and tell him what that support has meant to me. Instead, what I can do is try to also be a good mentor and guide myself.

The post Giving Back for Good Mentoring appeared first on Beetle Press.

If you are a business owner, you write every day. Emails, notes, newsletters, articles, blog posts, Facebook updates, you name it, you’ve gotta write it. And as far as writing correctly, you either chew your nails over “its” versus “it’s,” or you don’t—you write what you think is right and hope the reader will forgive you if it isn’t.

You might think that it’s easy as an editor to proof my own stuff, but no. It’s even more painful, because I check everything I write thoroughly and still make mistakes. I’m here to tell you, though, how important it is to make sure everything you write is as accurate as possible, because it all reflects on you as a business person and professional.

I have seen much in my years of editing for businesses. Believe it or not, I have seen people misspell their own company name—which to an editor is like fingernails on a chalkboard! So here’s my advice.

Don’t trust your computer program. Forget spell check and grammar check; you won’t like it when they turn “publick” into “pubic,” only to notice after you’ve sent out that letter to your local historical society. Do the work. Use Merriam Webster for spelling and a free online writing guide like Paradigm.

Check for more than spelling and grammar. Check font for consistent size and weight; check headings (a typical place for errors); check your phone number, email address, and company name. Proof also for clarity and tone.

Read it over. Don’t ever, ever, ever send anything out without reading it carefully first. The simplest email can turn off a customer if it’s full of errors, an attachment is missing, or you sound angry or perturbed when you really aren’t.

Let it sit. The best thing you can do, if you have 24 hours, is to let it sit and read it again tomorrow. Pretend it’s wine and let it keep aging. You won’t believe what you find if you read it with fresh eyes.

Get a second set of eyes. Have a colleague or a trusted friend read it.

Get help. If you aren’t good at writing, or don’t have someone else who can give it a clean read-through, get someone like me to do it for you. Proofreaders are fast, reasonably priced, and we’ll help you look marvelous. Good luck!

The post Proofreading: Feel the Pain appeared first on Beetle Press.