If you’ve heard any pop music at all over the past several years, you’ve probably heard Auto-Tune, seasoning and sometimes overwhelming the performances of the gifted and mediocre alike.

It forces sounds to conform to a particular musical key, eliminating the hundreds of deviant microtones that distinguish the human vocal instrument—which may be why digitally pitch-corrected voices can sound a bit robotic to the ear, if tuneful.

At times, that’s good. Pure entertainment (singer T-Pain in whatever club he’s frequenting at the moment) or philosophy (songwriter Sufjan Stevens ruminating on his humanity in “Impossible Soul”), these trendy, computerized modifications can be legitimately artistic, perhaps communicating a persistent bit of postmodern angst: We chafe at our human frailty, yet suspect that our vulnerability might be our most interesting, meaningful quality.

Then there’s the corrective use of Auto-Tune, the one that calls the singing ability of Glee cast members into question. There’s an important place for that kind of precision—manufacturing and engineering come to mind. But in content creation—and I know this will sound radical coming from someone who reviews content quality for a living—I’ve been wondering if the compulsive Auto-Tuners of the world aren’t killing something important.

Could control-freakitude actually be getting in the way of quality content?

Those of us who steward quality are earnest in our efforts. We list do’s and don’ts, we establish best practices, we devise procedures and processes, aiming for the clean, the bright, the clear and the replicable. I’m down with that, constitutionally so. (Just last week, my mom declared, “I love a manual!” and I could only wryly reflect on the genetic thrall of documentation.)

But I also know that the terrible, the terrifying, and the simply messy can be profound and gorgeous and revealing and rich—and that maybe some of the joy of exactitude comes from its contrast to, its real or imagined mastery of, the disturbing power of the chaotic.

Human judgment—our ability to hear nuance, to see shades, to establish context—is one of our most valuable. It’s why spell check, while useful, isn’t a panacea, and why corrective Auto-Tune will likely continue to be controversial. And as essential as our attention to the technical and theoretical aspects of our craft can be, in the end, content is meant to communicate, to create connections.

The best we can do for our content may be to celebrate and illuminate the unique, very human voices it represents.

If you liked this, try:

1. Lessons Learned from a Twitter Robot
2. Quality Is Love
3. The Year of Living Quality

It seems like common sense: Look over your work before you share it.

But sometimes – especially in the era of “do more with less” – that simply doesn’t happen. In the name of timesaving, we skip the review and let it fly. We hit “send” or “submit” or “publish” without giving work a once-over with our proofreader glasses on.

And it happens more than you may think.

According to a study by The Creative Group, a specialized staffing service, one-third of the pool of marketing and advertising executives they polled found that the most common resume mistakes made by creative professionals were typos or grammatical errors.

Some cringe-worthy (but still entertaining) examples:

• On a cover letter: “My work ethics are impeachable.”
• Under “Duties”: “I was the company’s liaison with the sock exchange.”
• Languages: “I speak English and Spinach.”

But typos aren’t limited to the job application process. They’re pretty much everywhere.
David Weedmark, a Canadian author, compiles some of the highlights on his blog.

• In 1962, a typo by a NASA programmer sent Mariner 1 into the ocean rather than its intended end destination: Venus. (cost: $80 million)
• A typo in a medical publication almost made it to print referring to a professional as “John Smith, the rapist,” instead of “John Smith, therapist.”

Typo Buddy shares more typo horror stories with a bookkeeping error that cost New York City more than $1 million, a New Mexico car dealership that owed eager scratch ticket recipients $1,000 each due to a misprint by a marketing company, and a trader who sold more than 600,000 shares for 1 yen a piece … instead of 1 share at 610,000 yen. Oops.

Typos make readers question credibility, fast-track resumes to the recycle bin, and make brands and organizations look careless and sloppy.

So how do we avoid them?

1 The easiest thing is to check over your work. Don’t finish and assume you made it through the gauntlet unscathed. Force yourself to read it again. And again.

2 Print it out to really make your eyes focus on it. If you can, read it out loud to make sure you’re concentrating on each and every word.

3 If it’s a long article or presentation, break it up into manageable chunks so that you’re equally invested from beginning to end. Avoid the temptation to read the first couple paragraphs diligently and then skim through the rest of the piece.

4 Give it to a trusted colleague (make that three) to check over or someone who’s pointed out your mistakes before. (If you’re lucky enough to have a quality control team, send it their way. If you aren’t, check out some of the resources on this quality mixtape for content creators.)

5 Lastly, let the project sit, so you can look at it with fresh eyes and catch anything that might be off.

And if you want to make sure you’re doing your breast work, don’t just rely on autocorrect.

Er, uh, best work, that is.

Related articles

• What is Typo Squatting? (eset.com)
• Typo time (100w.wordpress.com)
• Would the Real Experts Please Stand Up? (engage.tmgcustommedia.com)

If you liked this, try:

1. Don’t Worry, Be Content: 10 Rules for Creating Quality Editorial

Some of my most memorable musical discoveries were made thanks to meticulously compiled and lovingly decorated mixtapes, created for me by friends with the eclectic tastes and artistic fervor of adolescence.

I know I’ve just utterly and irrevocably dated myself, but I don’t care; just thinking about those tapes makes me happy, reminds me that the world can be a surprising, challenging, delightful place.

Nowadays, my discoveries are more likely to come from Pitchfork or Scott Bolgiano’s weeks-long iTunes playlist. But there’s still nothing like the moment when someone guides you to a masterwork, the one that perfectly resonates, fills your need, and invites you to make it your very own.

So in that spirit, I flipped through my web bookmarks—the vinyl, the cassettes, the CDs, and the MP3s—and put together a mix of online references and resources for you, the ones that surprise me with their comprehensiveness, challenge me to think more broadly, and delight me when they offer up arcane details.

Sometimes, a good tool is all that’s needed to strengthen quality: Here’s hoping you discover something that makes your content creation a little easier and the world seem just a bit friendlier.

1Kuler
http://kuler.adobe.com/
Gorgeous—and inspiring—5-color themes, hosted by Adobe

2Mental Floss Trivia
http://www.mentalfloss.com/trivia/
A companion to the kicky magazine; arcana galore

3Ready America
http://www.ready.gov/america/index.html
Are you ready for a disaster? I’m not ready. But when I get ready to get ready, I know where to look.

4Still Tasty
http://www.stilltasty.com/
Not sure about that can of tuna you put in your Ready America kit last decade? This “Ultimate Shelf-life Guide” can help make that late-night desperation snack possible.

5Classic Reader
http://www.classicreader.com/
Trying to remember who said “My kingdom for a horse!”? Type it into the search at this free repository of public domain books, stories, plays and poetry, and savor the quote in its dramatic context.

6Pew Research Center for People and the Press
http://people-press.org/
Those ubiquitous poll stats have to come from somewhere.

7Bartleby—Great Books Online
http://bartleby.com/
I was crushed when the American Heritage Dictionary was withdrawn from Bartleby’s library, but this is still an easily searched paean to Western literature.

8Epicurious Food Dictionary
http://www.epicurious.com/tools/fooddictionary
Here’s the thing: I don’t know the French diacritics for crème brûlée off the top of my head. But thanks to the exuberant and hunger-pang-inducing website Epicurious.com, I won’t try to frizzle my friseé.

9Web Design Ledger
http://webdesignledger.com/resources/18-seriously-helpful-cheat-sheets-for-easier-coding
A Mr. Henry Jones compiled this list of web-coding cheat sheets. Download a few and improve relations with your favorite developer.

10World Wide Web Consortium’s Site Validator
http://validator.w3.org/unicorn/
w3.org is the home of much essential, carefully documented history and information about the web. But it’s the tools, especially the site validator, that have saved me hours—hours!—of work. As easy as entering a URL.

11Adobe BrowserLab
https://browserlab.adobe.com
Test your site in a variety of browsers/platforms, all with one convenient online app.

12Speakeasy’s Speed Test
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
Wondering if that slow load is your connection or a server-side problem? Speakeasy has an online bandwidth speed test that may help.

13Reverso language tools
http://dictionary.reverso.net/
Created by the publisher Collins, this is a stunningly good collection of online language translation and reference tools, including audio pronunciations.

14Signum’s Lenguaje.com
http://www.lenguaje.com/english/tools/tools.php
¿Habla usted español? If you write, or simply work with, Spanish text, visit the fantastic Signum online Spanish grammar tools. Here you can double-check spellings and verb conjugations, correct word breaks and verify regionalisms.

15Self’s Nutrition Data
http://nutritiondata.self.com/
User-friendly and good for a long, deep dive into the subject matter

16USPS ZIP code lookup
http://zip4.usps.com
ZIP codes are among the kind of info you need 15 minutes ago by the time you’re looking. Here they are, straight from the source.

17HowStuffWorks
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
Want to know what goes down on the Ben and Jerry’s Factory Tour? A little inside scoop on NORAD? Start here. Or, don’t listen to me and start with Wikipedia. No skin off my nose.

18Grammar Girl
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/
Accessible and sassy, this site offers written and podcasted answers to grammar FAQs.

19Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL)
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
Clear, practical and supportive, OWL covers almost all the bases, free.

20Grammarly “English grammar checker, proofreader and plagiarism scanner”
http://www.grammarly.com/
Created for students and their teachers, the plagiarism scanner feature makes good sense for people working with freelancers or hoping to litmus-test their own work.

What are some of your favorite resources? I admit it—I’m a reference junkie. Feed the beast in the comments, please.

[image: tylerburrus]

If you liked this, try:

1. The Quality Hustle
2. Don’t Worry, Be Content: 10 Rules for Creating Quality Editorial
3. The Year of Living Quality

2010 is a droplet trembling on the rim of space-time, and I think I’m ready for it to fall.

This is the one time of year that I feel justified in reviewing the preceding 12 months and asking navel-gazing questions about accomplishments, miracles, snafus and “I’d-better-not-let-that-happen-again” craziness.

It’s an arguably cerebral manifestation of our chronobiological urges: noting growth, counting up hard-won provisions, strategizing world domination, or maybe just dominion over our own little pillow-fort in the corner. But almost without exception, it is utterly life-affirming: There is a future and we expect to participate.

That future is also likely to be full of challenges: we know this. If 2010 has taught us anything, it’s—how to meet 2010’s challenges. But history has shown (heh!) that what we notice about the past can help us prepare for or even affect what’s to come. We actually seem wired to think that way.

Good thing, too, because that wiring is the foundation of quality assurance. We know the outcome we’d like. We notice what gets us to the outcome. We do those things, reviewing and tweaking until we get the desired effect. Aaand repeat.

But we’re lucky enough also to have been packaged with rational intent. And we can assure the quality of our craft by recognizing and engaging that intent, with all its nuanced impact, and making sure that the people, systems, workspaces and tools, and policies we’re working with support it. So simple, so difficult, and worth everything if you want next year’s review to top this one’s.

So I’m off to look over the year’s work; the good, the painful, the stuff that makes me want to change my identity and run off to another country, and the satisfying. I’ll survive it and be the better for it. So will you.

As cornball as the sentiment may seem, the year to come is the very definition of potential and hope and opportunity. Let’s make it quality.

[image: pagedooley]

If you liked this, try:

1. The Best Year-End Lessons Don’t Come From Top-10 Lists (An Office Meditation)
2. The Tao of Quality (Or, What I learned from Auto-Tune)
3. Quality Is Love

“Did you hear what some flight attendant in New York did?”

From offices to college campuses to airports, it seems everyone was talking this week about Steven Slater—the JetBlue flight attendant who had just about enough with one rude passenger.

After getting hit on the head with a piece of luggage and cursed at, he reportedly cursed back (over the intercom no less), grabbed some beer and made his escape by employing the emergency evacuation chute.

While everyone was talking about whether Slater was an idiot who just ruined his career or a hero for service employees everywhere, a young woman named Jenny quit her job, too. She emailed her co-workers several photographs showing her holding a white board with a series of messages ratting out her boss for spending nearly 20 hours a week playing Farmville.

Although funny and clever, the photos appeared a little too snazzy, the girl a little too cute. Alas, we learned on Wednesday that Jenny was an actress and the quitting was a hoax.

I applaud theCHIVE.com for pulling off the Jenny prank, which harmlessly entertained the masses, who linked to the photos of Jenny on their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. However, I expect more from the major news organizations who fell for this hoax, reporting Jenny as a disgruntled employee in the Slater vein.

No one was suspicious of the timing, right after Slater quit in grand fashion? Where was the fact checking? Or, at least, where was the disclaimer that said, “This is something funny we came across today. It may be a hoax—we’re looking into it—but enjoy it.”

One morning show I was watching simply mentioned they were looking for Jenny to interview; you could almost see them salivate at the thought of getting the first live interview with her. (These are the same organizations who fell for the Balloon Boy hoax, although that was not all in good fun.)

The Jenny prank first appeared on theCHIVE.com, a photo entertainment website, that admits on its “about” page that the site is responsible for the hoax about a teenager who lost her virginity on a beach and accidentally texted her dad about it.

That story was picked up as a real story by news organizations and late-night comics, including The Today Show and Jay Leno. And according to the Media Memo blog at All Things Digital, the creators of theCHIVE.com are the same guys behind a 2007 spoof that claimed Donald Trump left a $10,000 tip on a restaurant bill.

So, what happened to fact checking? Have we become so quick to get the story out before our competitors that even the most basic fact checking has disappeared?

I’m not naïve enough to think this is a new problem, and I realize that the Jenny prank is not going to destroy the world.

However, it points to the bigger picture: Why is it considered acceptable to “borrow” news items from other websites and news shows and report them as your own? Why is it acceptable to ignore even the most basic fact checking—like looking for the original story source?

How much fact checking do you do for articles, blogs or the soundbites people provide you? Is fact checking a part of your regular review process or do you only do it when something so egregious jumps out at you?

Fast, cheap, good: pick two.

You may have heard the adage, and it makes lots of sense applied to the world of media. We’ve already examined the exigencies of fast and relished the comforting ripples good can generate… but can cheap ever fit in with a quality ethos?

Fortuitously, three editorial up-and-comers seemed to be wondering the same thing when they announced the 48 Hour Magazine project last spring.

The editors aimed to crowdsource a print magazine in just 2 days, keeping costs low and readability high. They revealed a theme to the public at 12 p.m. one Friday and shut down submissions the next afternoon, just 28 hours later. By noon Sunday, completed magazine files were on their way to MagCloud, a print-on-demand publishing service.

Yeah. Pretty fast.

Turns out the magazine was good, too. I make that claim in part because I’ve read it and also because it immediately earned the attentions of a big, bad corporate legal department.

Helpfully shooting a little fire-retardant foam on my assessment was a project-manager colleague, a veteran of round-the-clock press checks, who liked the paper but was unimpressed by the saddle-stitch binding. “This,” he intoned, balancing the 60-pager on his hand so I could see its cross-section bowing like a palm leaf, “is what fast gets you.”

In the end, graceless binding notwithstanding, 48 Hour Magazine was fast and good, but not cheap. The value represented by a gang of accomplished writers, editors and artists—likely toting their own equipment—by the donated workspace, by comped coffee and printing services cannot be ignored. Nor can that of the 1500+ submissions from the global crowd.

It seems instructive, though, that the currencies of new technology, creative vision, hard-core skill and mutually respectful relationships were apparently strong enough to trade for those choice contributors and sponsors, and the connections and resources that came with them—appropriately, the best kind of hustle.

So, can cheap ever jibe with quality? You tell me; I’d love to know what you think. I think finding fast, cheap and good in a creative project remains as rare as the ivory-billed woodpecker.

But if 48 Hour Magazine is to be believed and cheap can denote the capacity to use your own hard-won skills and reputation to attract and acquire other resources—maybe we’re all richer than we think.

If you liked this, try:

1. Is There a Future for Quality in Media?
2. The Quality Mixtape: 20 Web Resources for Content Creation
3. Don’t Worry, Be Content: 10 Rules for Creating Quality Editorial

Remember the cozy, protected feeling that came with barricading your little-kid self inside a homemade fort?

So do the architects at Build LLC, a firm in Seattle, Wash., who analyzed a selection of couch-based battlements.

Besides catapulting me back to a long-ago basement rec room where I “fortified” a couple of low-slung, eggshell-hued sofas with my rambunctious little brothers—the post reminded me that the quest for quality knows no bottom limit. Even seemingly trivial actions can affect the perception of your brand.

Build’s playful critiques are both instructional and informative: the staff’s agile application of architectural standards to workaday kid stuff cleverly suggests that the firm’s putative core competency actually is.

At the same time, it suggests that the firm understands the drive that underlies the interest of any prospective client: a primal need for shelter and demarcated, defensible territory. It lets us know that Build architects value the creative purity and joy of childhood and invites us to share in them.

Not bad for a pile of couch cushions.

[image: blog.buildllc.com]

Somewhere in the world, right now, there’s a robot folding hankies.

Seriously. Take a look at it.

OK, they’re not really hankies; rather, “rectangular pieces of cloth.”

But, just focus for a moment on the the geek-love expressed by the title of the accompanying post (“Adorable Laundry-Folding Robot Gives Your Towels Fastidious Attention”). The robot isn’t simply an intriguing technological accomplishment, it’s “adorable”. What’s that all about?

I have a theory. Stay with me on this: Maybe observing our attention to quality makes others feel cared for even if they’re not the direct targets of the attention.

Leave aside the fact that PopSci readers probably comprise a sample that skews heavily robophilic; casting adorableness on a mechanical valet bears notice.

Perhaps what the poster found truly compelling is the time the ’bot takes to examine, analyze, align, fold and smooth. It gives its full, considerable attention to a task many of us would prefer never to have to do again. It seems to…care. Those unremarkable quads of fabric seem to be in quite good hands—er, impactive end effectors.

But the very existence of this sophisticated device tells us something else: habituating quality is not easy.

Why else would someone spend valuable brain power and grant money, activities that on first blush seem far more difficult than folding, to create such a machine? Because the simplest things are often the hardest? Because they force us to strip everything down and face what we truly value, to face our challenges, our fears?

You’re giggling at me, aren’t you? Trying to wring all that philosophical bull from a laundry-folding robot, you’re muttering to yourself, shaking your head. I know…just stay with me a bit longer.

Amy Maclin, in a recent issue of Body + Soul Magazine, examined the quality of her home environment and found it wanting, pugnaciously wondering why dishes wouldn’t stay done nor soap scum scrubbed. She consulted Zen Buddhist priest Karen Maezen Miller, who boiled it down to this:

“Only you, with your own attention, can change your life. Attention is love. Pay attention to the dusty floors, the dirty windows and the cluttered closet. There are no cleaning secrets, and there is no hidden meaning. Your own attention is what transforms your life.”

Am I suggesting that the robot, in its relentlessly careful folding, is engaging in biomechanical self-care? Nah; lucky stiff, its life purpose is preprogrammed, no judgment required. Am I making the claim that creating quality is like housework? In a way, the same way housework is like a daily run, or meditation, or feeding a baby.

People, organizations who steep themselves in quality are communicating that what they attend to matters and what matters will be really well-cared-for. Your attention informs those watching—your vendors, your colleagues, your clients, your members—that they are in good hands indeed.

If you liked this, try:

1. The Tao of Quality (Or, What I learned from Auto-Tune)
2. The Year of Living Quality
3. Is There a Future for Quality in Media?

Does this very question set me up as a nostalgia-sodden, elitist Luddite?

Of course I don’t think so: I believe that there can be no high art without low. I even realize that my use of “high” and “low” smacks of my own convenient and possibly specious value judgments.

But it seems indisputable that the question of quality should underlie every decision organizations make as we look into the compelling, Doppler-broadened future of human communication.

While media and their dissemination have always relied on technology of one kind or another—everything from sticks and cave-friendly pigments to the printing press to the telegraph to the binary code that gives form to these very words—Web 2.0 has made immediate, easily digestible digital media primal. We’re all expected, and expect, to be content creators, relying on the “crowd” to bully, praise or ignore our creations to obscurity or relevance.

It probably shouldn’t be surprising that a kind of Darwinian quality control has emerged in this postmodern media environment. Many traditional publishers appear to be embracing it, slicing away at copyediting staff, borrowing material directly from the amateur blogosphere, and suggesting that extra vigilance by good writers or social editing can adequately counteract any unfavorable effects.

The thinking behind those moves, leaving aside the financial incentives, may be part of what Robert Capps, writing in the August 2009 issue of Wired magazine, identified as the “Good Enough Revolution”:

“The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they’re actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as “high-quality.”

But the rise of the apparently “quick and dirty” might obscure a startling fact: Even quick and dirty has a gestation period.  Everything we are: the ideas we’ve studied, the vocations we’ve pursued, the TV we’ve watched, the company we’ve kept—informs, shapes and permeates the impressions we leave on the world, particularly the data-speed variety that digital media makes inevitable.

I would argue that those impressions serve us best when they are grounded in intention and attention—nothing that inhibits or stifles, but the kind that cradles and buoys. Good magazine recently discussed this notion with the artist, designer and computer scientist John Maeda:

“Maeda sees the benefits of fast and slow: problem-solving “with dirty hands” at rapid speeds, as well as critical thinking and critical making at slow enough speeds to allow for the contemplation of the implications of art and design to the greater world.”

So, perhaps the future is a kind of Third Way, an approach that blends determined excellence with clear-headed flexibility and adaptability, that allows us to duly contemplate the implications of what we say as organizations while keeping our movements nimble.

Perhaps our very attention to the question of quality—deliberately defining it for our communications and, then, committing ourselves to its practice—will reveal the answer.

[image: Todd434]

If you liked this, try:

1. The Quality Hustle
2. The Tao of Quality (Or, What I learned from Auto-Tune)
3. Quality Is Love