Spelling and Online Marketing

One of my biggest pet peeves is poor spelling – I see it in so many places and it drives me crazy.

One of the worst culprits in in advertising; especially online. With the wide spread of education in the West and the invention of the “spellcheck” function in Word (and its spread to many other software platforms – including WordPress) there are only 2 reasons for something to be spelled incorrectly:

1. The writer is not a native English speaker: this, to me, is understandable. Even with tools like Google Translate you are probably going to make a mistake when it comes to either spelling, grammar or both. I don’t hold this against someone in a direct communication (an email, a support request, etc.). But it is still not an acceptable excuse in sales and marketing. Whatever your native tongue, if you can’t be bothered to check your work before you release it to the public, I am not interested in doing business with you – especially if you offer a service like SEO or SEM! If you can’t write well when you advertise to me, then I KNOW you won’t write well when you advertise FOR me. Which brings me to my next point…

2. Lack of attention: there are any number of reasons why a spelling mistake may have crept into some copy…perhaps the writer is a solo operator who doesn’t have someone to review their work, or the spellchecker said it was OK. Now, we all have bad days, and writing for the web has the advantage that we can often go back and remove or correct our work later (assuming it hasn’t been shared). But it all boils down to a lack of attention. That kind of sloppiness (over and above my personal dislike of poor spelling and grammar) always makes me wonder if the company’s sloppiness extends past their advertising to the rest of their work.

Unless it’s a brand I already know and trust, my default answer is “yes”.

SO! In the interest of helping my fellow advertisers and copywriters, allow me to refer you all to an excellent comic from theoatmeal.com called “10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling“. It’s “edutainment” (apparently that’s a real word now) of the highest calibre – informative and funny.

Take a peek and let us know what you think.