What's worse than a missed spelling mistake or word-o which gets published?
A missed spelling mistake or word-o that gets published in five foot high letters.
While such errors in a presentation are temporary (thankfully the next slide is just seconds away) the shame seems to endure forever. How often do we switch "to" for "too" or forget which witch is which?
And is that witch over "their"? Or is she over "there"?
Did we mean to say we should unite, or untie?
Simple mistakes, which once made, suck the professionalism right out of your presentation. It doesn't matter how well you present or how brilliant your conclusions are - you are henceforth from the moment the error appears on the screen branded as "the one who did not spell check".
So damaging. So embarrassing. So why does it happen?
It happens because we rush. We rush to make a last minute edit and spell something wrong. We rush when reading through our slides and so our mind seemingly inserts the word which should be there - and so we don't see the incorrect word which actually is. We rush. So we make mistakes.
While rushing is sometimes unavoidable - last minute changes do happen, we can avoid most mistakes by simply giving ourselves time to do the job right. Just as we must allow time to rehearse, we must allow time to review and edit our slides.
To maximize the value of the time you have - here's a tip. Instead of reading your slides properly, read them in reverse. From bottom to top and right to left. This will force you to see each word as a word and not as part of a sentence. This will help prevent word-o's (which, by the way, are properly spelled words used in a grammatically incorrect way given their context) as well as other all-to-common careless errors caused by rushing.
THE POINT: Everybody makes "misteaks", but public humiliation can be avoided if we allow enough time to catch them.
