Write!

Nothing turns me off more than a spelling mistake or a typo. When I seek someone’s writing, be it on the web, newspapers or books, I expect that any spelling errors have been taken care of prior to publishing. When this doesn’t happen, it makes me question the person’s credibility. Too harsh? Maybe. But just think – if this person is being so careless with their writing, why should I believe they are any different regarding their work/business/whatever?

I don’t know if it has been by coincidence, but today alone I have spotted spelling mistakes from three different sources: a newspaper wrote down Nicolas Narkozy as France’s president, a business tried to lure me into their strategy by confusing “you’re” with “your”, and a magazine mentioned a band – Death Cub For Cutie – in their “most listened to” page. Needless to say I was not impressed; in the case of the business, I clicked away from the page, and as for the other two – they were put down, left somewhere in the gigantic black hole that is my university hallway.

How can we avoid such awful, silly (and often embarrassing) mistakes?

  • Pay attention while you’re actually writing/typing, so that spelling errors are kept to a minimum
  • After adding a section of text, re-read the previous section. Kill two birds with one stone: check the flow of your writing AND fix any spelling mistakes!
  • Try to get someone else to take a peek at it – we’re often so consumed in our work that we overlook tiny (and sometimes not so tiny) mistakes
  • Take the time to read your work at least once before you submit/publish/print it!
  • Do not rely on spell-checkers! A spell checker knows that “your” and “you’re” are both words, and not all of them can tell whether you’re using them right! (Ditto for their v.s they’re, then v.s than, bare v.s bear…)
  • When in doubt…use the dictionary! Even simply typing the word into Google will suffice
  • Make a list of words you commonly misspell – for each time you misspell a word, put a tally next to it
  • READ! Devour any form of writing you have around you – books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, subtitles! (Subtitles are actually a great way to improve on a foreign language)

Check out Write Better English’s How to Improve Your Spelling: Techniques That Work.

Writing to communicate is no different than speaking; if anything, writing is a guide for speaking, but that’s another story. Any grammar and/or spelling mistakes need to be looked to before publishing. It is your (and perhaps your company’s) image that will suffer if you let these slip.