Beware the dreaded spelling mistake

9th December, 2009

I might just be picky... or maybe there's a primary school teacher inside me screaming to get out. But every time I read a seemingly well written blog or a high-flying website with a typo or spelling mistake, a part of me dies inside from utter disappointment.

Proof read everything you send out to your clients. They will judge you.

OK. Dying inside is probably a bit of an exaggeration. It does make a company seem unprofessional though. And if it annoys me a little bit, there are other people who probably take it a lot more seriously- my dad won't entertain any company whose sales literature incorrectly uses an apostrophe. He can't be the only one.

It's not just roadside cafes selling "burger's" that get it wrong either. A last minute quick adjustment to a website can leave you with a grammatical error that makes you look unprofessional... and a bit dim. Take a look at the image below and you'll see a screenprint of a Twitter homepage. Twitter has millions of users every day. Every single one of them will have seen this error. "Set up your phone up now!"- does that make sense? Not everyone will have noticed it. But at the time of writing this it was still up there for the world to see. And Twitter's one of the biggest names out there in the social media industry at the moment.

How can you stop this from happening?

 

Do a spell check: Microsoft Word and some other Rich Text Editors will have spell check functions. Use them but don't rely on them as they don't pick everything up.

 

Proofread your copy: Read and re-read your work until YOU are sure there are no spelling and grammar mistakes or punctuation errors. This is just good practice.

 

Get someone else to read it: Once you're sure there are no errors, get someone else to have a read through. Once you've read over the same material a few times you can become blind to errors that might be obvious to somebody else.

 

Hire a copywriter: If you really want to cover yourself, hire a copywriter. It's their job to make sure there are no errors in their work. And if there are it gives you someone to shout at. You are paying for professional copywriting services after all.

 

Putting these practices into place will help you prevent errors like the one above appearing on your site, but it won't eradicate them completely. Where there are humans there are errors. And as I proof read this blog to make sure there are no punctuation errors that might brand me as some kind of hypocrite or grammatical joke, I remind myself that we are only human... but our customers expect more.