White Papers For Dummies
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No matter how many times you check your white paper, you can always miss something. Any mistakes that happen during the design steps can be especially tough to spot. When you get the final PDF of the white paper, arrange to have two or three team members who’ve never seen it before give it a careful proofing on hard copy.

Item What to Watch For
Bullets All formatted the same? All the same size? All the same shape?
Colors All match or harmonize? All from the same corporate palette? All print out clearly in black and white?
Contents All entries match the actual headings? Any missing entries?
E-mail addresses All correct? Did you test to make sure they work?
Footers Every page has a footer? All formatted the same?
Footnotes All formatted the same? All lead to proper references?
Graphics All figure numbers, titles, and captions correct? All formatted the same?
All graphics print clearly in color? In black and white?
Headers Every page has a header? All formatted the same?
Headings All headings formatted correctly? All the proper size?
Lists All numbers in correct order? All items formatted the same?
Logos All used properly, not stretched or squeezed? All colors correct?
Margins All the same on every page?
Math All figures add up? All formulas work out correctly?
Page numbers Every page has a number? In correct order? All formatted the same?
Phone numbers All correct? Did you dial them to make sure they work?
Style sheet All styles applied consistently?
Tables All table numbers and titles correct? All formatted the same?
Text All formatted correctly? Proper fonts? Proper sizes?
web links All correct? Did you test them to make sure they work?

By this point, all the text has been reviewed and approved many times, but if your proofers spot any text that they find inconsistent or hard to understand, you probably want to make some final fixes to those passages.

About This Article

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About the book author:

Gordon Graham — also known as That White Paper Guy — is an award-winning writer who has created more than 200 B2B white papers for clients from New York to Australia. Gordon has written white papers on everything from choosing enterprise software to designing virtual worlds for kids, and for everyone from tiny start-ups to Google.

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