Can Spelling Errors Hurt Credibility?

Making spelling or grammar errors on your social media, advertising, websites or emails, could make your customers less likely to trust your business.

Take advantage of Google, Word or a spell checker to make sure you get the right spelling and grammar in your communications. You don't want bad first impressions.

Spelling tips

• Proofread everything before you hit send. This is especially true if you use a mobile device to upload to social media. It's been known to happen that words will change at the submit point!
• Read it out loud. It allows you to hear what you've written and possibly catch a mistake.
• Have someone else look at it. Always a good idea for another set of eyeballs to read it.
• Take advantage of online resources. Most word processing software will alert you to a mistake but not always for grammatical ones. If something is questionable, google it!

typical words that get misspelled

• Accommodate
• Separate
• Definitely
• Equipment
• Maintenance
• Recommend
• Your vs. You're
• Affect vs. Effect
• There vs. Their vs. They're 

Keep in mind, that there are also words that can be spelled correctly even if the spell check says it's not. Canadian (British) versus American spellings, for instance. Examples of this would be colour vs, color, jewellery vs. jewelry, organize vs. organise or centre vs. center.

We are only human, and humans make mistakes but try your best to avoid them. If you're doing it on your own, be aware of the common issues and try to catch them before it's too late. You won't have to post apologies, if you double check.

It's part of my job here at Creative101 to make sure these errors don't happen. You know I'm on it, if you get us to do your social media management or website design. If you don't want to deal with this possibility, ask us about our services. We'd love to put it on our plate, instead of yours.