No matter who you are or what business you’re in, spelling counts. The more savvy the client, the more they care about pesky little details like the official lexicon of the English language.
Additionally, since spelling is one of those taken-for-granted attributes of the world, good spelling won’t help your brand. But bad spelling can hurt it. (Boo, I know. But it’s true.)
You’d best get your spelling right when it comes to:
Web copy. If you can’t spell things right on your website, that platform you created for allowing the entirety of the internet to get to know you, your brand is in trouble. Your website should be perfection that has been raked over with a fine-toothed comb by at least five people before going live. (Why five? At least one of those five has got to be a spelling maven.)
Need help with this? Most anyone with an English degree will look over your work for a small fee. (We’re talking spelling errors, not copy writing or Rocket Science.) If you know this person well, they might even accept cookies as payment.
Your blog. Since this lives in the search engines of the world forever and ever, get it right. If you use a browser like Firefox, it will actually suggest words to replace your misspelled words. Right in your blog-creating interface. Boom. Let’s say I’m trying to spell a tough word, like entrepreneur, and get it wrong. It will underline your error — right click, and choose the correct spelling. Come on, it doesn’t get any easier than that.
Printed materials. Whether you’re leaving postcards at the local coffee shop or drumming up business with fancy-schmancy 20-page brochures, you’re going to need to get it right. When you view the proof of a piece, send it to a few of your friends, colleagues, employees, and/or coworkers. Ask them to check for mistakes. This is much less painful than discovering the error after that run of 5,000 shiny new marketing pieces.
Ok, smarty pants, where can I get help?
I thought you’d never ask. Some spelling resources for the not-so-linguistically-inclined:
dictionary.com Yes, I know it made no sense when your third grade teacher sent you to the dictionary to look up a word you didn’t know how to spell. But with the grace of modern technology, if you enter a word you believe to be correct and it turns up no hits, you’re spelling the word wrong. If you spell it correctly, you’ll be rewarded with definitions galore.
SpellBoy This is spelling heaven for your mobile phone. Bookmark it, and boom! Easy spelling on the go, with a simple, ad-free interface.
Miss Spell’s Class It’s an iPhone app that tests your spelling skills against the most commonly misspelled ones in the English language. The perfect way to kill a few minutes and boost your brain power.
Now go forth and spellcheck, lovely people. (Also, due to Murphy’s Law, I’m sure there’s a spelling error in this blog post. I apologize in advance for not catching it.)
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