As a digital content writer and manager I love to read and write beautiful content. That said, I also love to read content writing fails. A fail could be anything from incorrect spelling, an inappropriate phrase or a poor translation of an English sentence. I believe that having a sense of humour is crucial when you are working in digital marketing so with that in mind here are my favourite 3 content writing fails:
#1 Word Document Fail
Recently a colleague of mine, also a writer was busily editing a word document upon which she burst into fits of hysterical laughter. She had decided to swap every mention of the word “can” for the word “may” for compliance reasons using the “replace all” feature of Word. Awesome she thought… it will save me tons of time. Upon re- reading the article she found that EVERY word which began with “can” had also been swapped resulting in some amusing substitutions…
candidate= maydidate
cancel= maycel
cant= mayt
#2 Google Translate Fail
Ok, so I’m now going back around three years to a more innocent time. A time when I believed that Google translate actually worked. A time when I believed that Google translate could be used for business translations… yes I know I know! I had written a message to a colleague in English but as he was Romanian I decided it would be a delightfully personal touch to write the translation for him instead.
Original Message
“I wish you a very happy birthday- you are a wonderful colleague and deserve to have a great day”
Google Translation
“Boy, I wish you a happy pregnancy for the rest of the day”
The end result… complete hysterics in the office and an eternal vow never to use Google translate for any external work…. EVER.
#3 Proof Reading Fail
My writing team and I handle a lot of proof reading and editing tasks from freelance writers around the world. In most cases the standard of writing is very high and few errors are detected however the following list proves that there is always a need for a professional writer to edit a document.
“It was the holey grain of investments”
“Disc*nts on all our products until September 20th”
“No need to sugar cone the truth”
“Learning English is important for business, no exeptions“
“We invite our clients to join us for a glass of wind”
“Our pubic health system is the best in the world”
“Receive your certificate and plague at our awards ceremony”
Even professional writers make mistakes from time to time and all you can hope for is a brilliantly amusing end result. I hope you enjoyed reading “3 content writing fails” and invite you to tweet me your funniest ones on Twitter @Charli_Says