There are a million sophisticated tools out there to help us to catch our written mistakes, and for the most part we use them gratefully, for everything from writing emails to preparing work presentations.

If the DeLorean were to spit me out in 2122, I wonder what the role of proofreading might look like – and would I recognise any of it?

Zombie grammar rules are the so-called ‘laws’ of language that are no longer, or never were, valid. Yet, like the undead they refuse to lie down and die, and so continue to haunt those of us who work in editorial services, probably until we, ourselves, pass away.

Imagine a world with no capitals. In fact, that world exists – certainly in the text threads with my two daughters, which read like some kind of free verse, or avant-garde poem (well, their halves do, at least).

Yves Saint Laurent famously said that ‘Fashions fade, style is eternal’. Obviously, he was talking about the clothes we wear, but the words we choose to use – and how we use them – are enduring signifiers of our editorial style.

As a company providing proofreading and copy-editing services to government departments, large corporate entities and charities, we encourage our clients to do everything they can to ensure their work remains error-free across all their communications.

What links child marriage in Bangladesh with HIV viral load suppression in southern Africa and living with disability in Palestine?

It’s nearly that time of year, the time when you know all eyes will be on the tree; or rather, on the pile of presents underneath the tree.

Content checking in foreign languages, in order to support the proofreading process, sounds like it could take years of study to hone and perfect. In reality all it requires is some common sense, a lot of attention to detail and an excellent understanding of how editorial services work at every stage.