|
The
Importance of Spelling
Whenever
I ask if spelling is important in business documents, most
people immediately say that it is not so important any
more. However, upon reflection they begin to change their
minds and recall their pet spelling peeves. I find that
while spelling may not matter to writers, it certainly impacts
readers.
The results
of a 2006 survey by OfficeTeam support this. Two hundred
and fifty executives in the United
States were asked, “How
many typos in a resume does it take for you to decide not
to consider a job candidate for a position with your company?” The
result: more than 80 per cent of the executives surveyed
said they would lose interest in a candidate if they found
two
typos. Of this number, forty-seven per cent had a tolerance
level of only one typo.
With spell-check
there is no excuse for blatant errors. However, spell-check
cannot catch words that are spelled
correctly but are not the right words for the sentence, e.g.,
typing “form” instead of “from.”
To pick
up your personal keyboarding “finger slips” in
lengthy documents, I suggest you identify the words you
frequently mistype and then use the computer’s search
option to check for and to correct those particular “typos.”
Spelling may differ from country to country. As discussed
in an earlier Biztip, we have American, British and Canadian
spelling. Use the spelling the reader is familiar with, and
then you will not distract him or her from your message.
In addition
to resumes, I am sure executives are equally disappointed
when they find spelling
errors in other business documents.
|
