Caught this one before it got away today. 
We need a report “bloopers” thread!
Good one Cam!
Lol… I sent a text using voice recognition to a top realtor and told them I wished them good LUCK with the electrician… Needless to say my system misunderstood me and I had some embarrassing explaining to do… Never been so embarrassed !!!
Based on the many sample reports that inspectors have online, I would say that improper grammar, punctuation, and spelling are pretty common. As a consumer, if I see a sample of work like that, I immediately go somewhere else.
And it’s not just their sample reports, it’s their websites as well. A couple of years ago, an inspector now turned vendor asked for input on his revamped website. I pointed out many spelling and grammar mistakes. He claimed that he had multiple people checking his sites, there were no mistakes, and for me to take a hike. Most of the mistakes remained for many months following. I still find them on his site from time to time (yes, I check). Always wondered how many potential clients went elsewhere due to his arrogance.
In critiquing reports for and visiting the websites of both new and experienced inspectors, I see many basic mistakes and they always make me question the capabilities of the inspectors. Those who are good and established don’t have to worry about it so much, but proofreading is crucial for an inspector who is not yet established, and so is the format of their report.
Amen to that. A sample report online should be perfect. You have all the time in the world to correct it.
I’m just glad I didn’t recommend my client have a plumber violate a pressure switch.
[quote=“canderson5, post:7, topic:83197”]
Amen to that. A sample report online should be perfect. You have all the time in the world to correct it.
I’m just glad I didn’t recommend my client have a plumber violate a pressure switch. :)/QUOTE}
I don’t know I’ve seen a few that have been violated, by someone.
Texting is easier to screw up.
Texted a client something like “stop being a suspicious bit-h”…opps was in middle of a text argument…wrong person.
I personally think that it has a lot to do with the fact that home inspectors do not charge to produce an inspection report, they charge for time on-site and square footage.
There is a never ending endeavor to complete the inspection report in the shortest amount of time possible (because they staying up too late at night and working on weekends).
I was a Special Agent for the Department of Army’s criminal investigation command and my bosses used to pound me to death about my inspection report. I had one of the highest solve rates in the command but in their opinion that wasn’t worth squat unless I could write a good report about it.
It’s basically the same here. You can do the best inspection on a property but if you can’t put it into black-and-white (which is really all your client gets to see) it reflects that you did a crappy inspection.
You never see a thread “how do you get off the inspection site quicker?”.
Proofreading just adds more time to your inspection reporting(especially if you have to correct something). You’re asking a lot!
Constant struggle for me. I agree totally on the perception others can have when there is grammar errors, especially more than one.
Something we all need to constantly be reminded of. Great feedback and advice here… Thanks for the reminder that in the end, our report is a direct reflection of our continued quest for excellence and should hold a high level of importance in serving our customers well.
If you want a good place to practice proofreading and correcting grammatical errors on the fly, just start getting picky about how you type on this forum.
Some guys on here could be linguistic geniuses at this point… But they’re not. 
Lots of peope have trouble with grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. One piece of advice I commonly give in the inspection critiques is to use word’s spellcheck if your software doesn’t have spellcheck, or sometimes even if it does. The advantage to Word’s is that it will pick up on all three problems, not just misspellings. It won’t catch everything, but it gets most of the obvious.
I often compose in Word and then paste to the email, or whatever I’m writing. It’s just a matter of keeping a document open. You wouldn’t want to do an entire report that way, but it’s easy to switch over to the document if something doesn’t look or sound right.
About 6 years ago I was hired by an attorney to try and take on a long-time, old-time inspector in another state. He was a past National President of another home inspector association, and none of the guys in his area were willing to go up against him. I also was not enamored with hammering another inspector. BUT after I looked over the facts of the case it was fairly obvious they had botched the job BIG TIME and cost the buyer a bucket of $$$$$$.
They got me several of the guys reports to review OTHER than the one in question. I read for 30 minutes and then laughed my head off. The man bragged at many inspector meetings about how he didn’t use no hand-written checklists OR boiler-plate computerized reports BUT he typed EVERY single report on his old PC (his reports were custom fit to that property).
Reading his reports however showed he was using some boiler-plate language, that must have been “cut & pasted” from report to report AND low and behold that was his BIGGIE mistake.
In EVERY report he typed he basically started out and said “This report should not be construed as a guarantee OR waranty” … On the report he was being sued for 1 word was left out of that sentence … Guess Which Word Got Left Out.
The attorneys had overlooked that sentence … Once I pointed the ommission out to everyone, the case got settled out of court very quickly.
“not”
I just love Expert Witness work. I wish I could get more of it.
YEP …
I had one go out, it was intended to state the shed was in overall poor condition. Voice recognition changed shed to $#!t
The client still got the point, contextually. Not the most professionally delivered, she was fine we all got a laugh out of it.