Have you ever driven by a billboard, read an online advertisement, or seen a spelling or grammar error in a magazine? As consumers, we expect businesses to provide us with ads that are equally informative, entertaining, and free of grammatical or spelling errors. Seeing spelling mistakes or grammatical errors can quickly make a person think twice about doing business with your company. The reason is that no one wants to give their hard-earned money to a company that can’t even take the time to spell check their advertisement. With millions of eyes on the internet, one grammatical or spelling error can go viral in a matter of minutes. So, learn from others’ mistakes, and follow the advice below to prevent a social media firestorm at your front door.
What Are A Few Common Misspelled Words?
There are a few words that are misspelled more than others. These words include, “definitely,” along with the classic “your vs. you’re.” Even as I am typing this, Microsoft is suggesting that “your” is misspelled. That’s right; the word is so commonly misspelled that the spell checker’s default action is to advise you are misspelling it. Below is a list of the most common misspelled words in the English language.
- Accommodate
- Recommend
- Separate
- Your vs. You’re
- Definitely
- Affect vs. Effect
- Maintenance
- Their vs. There
Many tricks can be used to help you remember how to spell each word in a different situation. For example, “affect vs. effect.” This one is tricky, but “affect” is an action word (verb), and “effect” is a noun. Just remember “A” for action, and you should be fine.
How Does Spelling Errors Hurt My Credibility?
This next bit will be particularly vital for you to read if you are a business who advertises on your website, social media, or emails. Recently, a London based digital survey agency asked over 1,000 social media users how they felt about spelling or grammatical errors in advertising. They found that over 40% of them would be influenced not to buy from a company if they spotted a mistake.
Remember, it takes around six seconds to capture a user’s attention when they see your advertisement. It is beyond important to make sure that those first few seconds are not wasted by them noticing a spelling or grammatical mistake. Take the extra time to make your adverts minimize the risk of turning customers away due to improperly edited errors.
How Can I Avoid Spelling Errors?
Now that you know the implications of spelling and grammatical errors, it is time to make sure they never happen to your company.
- Spell Check AND Proofread – You may think this tip is a no brainer, but you would be surprised at how many errors can sneak past your writers because they are in a hurry and fail to check their work properly. Remember, online, and built-in spell checkers are not going to notice every mistake. Take the extra time to check manually. Don’t forget the stakes when you trust a program to catch spelling errors. Like I said above, Microsoft Word doesn’t like anytime I use your instead of you’re.
- Walk Away – The more time you spend on the project, the less you will see the mistakes in your work. It is a bit like snow blindness. You are not focusing on the essential part, and you get lost. If you can, step away from the project for a few hours or even a few days, and you will see that you will approach the project with fresh eyes.
- Peer Review – Once you feel you are ready to publish your work, have a co-worker look over it first. Again, you might be too close to the project to see the mistakes. A fresh set of eyes might be what you need to avoid publishing something you won’t be proud of.
- Read Aloud – I can’t tell you how many times I have had an email or blog post ready to go and just about clicked send or publish, only to see a mistake at the last second. I have pretty much made it a habit that before doing anything, I read the text aloud. I have caught more than a few mistakes this way, and you will too.
- Use the Bottom-Up Method – When you are reading the words as you intend your readers to read them, it can become quite common to inject words into the writing that are not there. The bottom-up method involves reading the work backward. Now you are not going to start from the last word and read to the first word. It wouldn’t make sense that way. Instead, read the last sentence first, and the first sentence last. While it still won’t make much sense, it will root out words or grammar mistakes you never intended on being in your article or advertisement.
- Online Tools – I know that I said you should not rely on online tools to correct your work. However, I am not saying that you should avoid them altogether. They can be a great tool in your toolbox. You don’t want to use this as the only way to correct your work. There is a reason I have put it at the bottom of my list. Once you have adjusted everything and exhausted the rest of the list, send it through an online spell checker such as Grammarly or Hemingway Editor.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, we are only human. People do understand that mistakes happen. Just remember when you are posting things on the internet, your online reputation is at stake. Do everything in your power, use every tool at your disposal, and take all the precautions necessary, and you should be fine. This article was not written to scare you. It was only written to inform you that people are watching what you write, and it can affect your business. You have the power to minimize these mistakes, and I feel confident you now have the tools to avoid common mistakes.