This week I’ve enjoyed a chickin sandwich in a local cafe, received advanced warning about forthcoming road works in my area and read the full list of sevices at my neighbourhood dentist.
With a name like Philippa Cowley-Thwaites I am fully acquainted with the typographical errors of people trying to communicate with me.
Phillipa, Philipa, even Filipa. Corley, Cowley-Thwarts, Cowley-Thwaite. The permutations are endless – and, they’re not typos, are they?
They’re spelling mistakes.
Typos can be extremely funny, but it doesn’t exactly do much for your professional reputation if your website is riddled with unfinished sentences and mis-spellings.
As communicators we all ask for a nice, easy content management system on our websites so we can write and upload our own updates. We think it will save us time and money, give us control.
So we write in a hurry, don’t get time to check things carefully and press the ’Publish’ button without a second’s thought. It’s all over in a flash.
We take much more care over printed materials; proof reading documents, going off to the printers to check the proofs on press and withdrawing materials if they are incorrect (I still cringe about the 20,000 Libary Services leaflets we had to withdraw when I was in Local Government) – so why are we so careless online?
Check what you’ve written before you press ‘Publish’ or ‘Print’ or ‘Send’ or even ‘Save’. Please.
I have sat through many a Power Point presentation counting the typos and forgetting what the presentation was all about, but have also produced slides referring to a famous money saving website, MoneySavingExpert.com, as MoneySavingsExpert.com and wondered why everyone was sniggering.
Spell check, grammar check, everything check your communications, especially your online copy.
You’ll sleep easier in your bead at night.
About Philippa