Why Grammar and Spelling Are Just as Important as Great Design

Most of us speak with poor grammar or misuse a word on occasion, and it generally goes unnoticed. But what about the written content of your website? What happens when your text is filled with typos, grammatical errors, misspellings and inconsistencies? Does it make your information less valid?

In a word, yes.

A great design for your website or magazine can draw eyes to your content, but typos and grammatical errors can destroy your credibility.

Your website is your public face to the world. Faulty grammar and poor spelling make for a bad first impression, and on your website you want to look your very best.

Say you’re looking online for a school for your child to attend and the school’s website has typos and misspelled words. You may think, “If this place doesn’t have the attention to detail to get its course descriptions right, is it going to lack the same attentiveness to the academic classes themselves?” That may sound like a stretch, but it’s the little things that count when making an impression. Although a typo-free, grammatically immaculate academic website is no guarantee of a great education for your kid, it can make a parent pause to consider the school’s credibility.

Clean, well-written content shows that you and your organization are educated, intelligent and motivated, and that you care enough about your products or services to present them in a sensible way that’s easily understood, user-friendly and enjoyable to read. You want to send a message that will be met with respect, not disdain.

Nothing makes a page look more unprofessional than spelling errors.

Design and content must inspire and complement one another. No matter how beautifully designed and well organized your website or magazine is, your organization loses points in the eyes of readers if you don’t take the time to make the language perfect.

When people are looking at your organization’s website, they’re making snap judgments about the merits of your organization. Typos, misspellings and improper grammar make understanding your message more difficult. These types of mistakes can even harm your SEO by making it harder for people to search for specific information.

With abundant free online dictionaries and grammar guides at your fingertips, there’s no excuse for misspelled words on your website. Here are a few links to resources that can help you with spelling, grammar and style:

• Dictionary.com
• Merriam-Webster Online
• AP Stylebook – the Associated Press handbook, with fundamental guidelines on spelling, grammar, punctuation and usage; if your organization doesn’t have one, get one!
• The Elements of Style – a classic reference book that focuses on the rules of usage and the principles of composition most commonly violated
• Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips
• 100 Fun and Informative Blog Posts Every Grammar Geek Should Bookmark

Take the time to carefully proof what you’ve written. Check your grammar, usage and spelling. Think about how your ninth-grade English teacher would grade your content. And then make sure someone else reads your work.

To help you and the person proofreading your work, here are some tips to fix common website content errors that can make your readers cringe and your competitors smile:

• The word it’s is a contraction for “it is” and its is a possessive pronoun just like hers, his, ours and yours. If you can replace its with his or her, there’s no apostrophe.
• When using a compound modifier, do not use a hyphen to link any adverb ending in –ly with the word it’s modifying (e.g., freshly baked bread)
• Don’t use an apostrophe to pluralize an acronym (e.g., PCs). Apostrophes are for possessives, not plurals.
• Use a colon only after a complete sentence. Never use a colon after a sentence fragment (e.g., It would be wrong to say, “Her hobbies are: reading, eating and drinking” because “Her hobbies are” is not a complete sentence by itself.)
• Use one space after a period. Use one space after a colon.

Just remember, people place significant value on appearance. Some readers may be able to look past a few simple mistakes, but others may not. When you take the steps to ensure accuracy throughout all written content, you are also ensuring that you will never lose a potential client to a common spelling error or grammatical blunder. A little extra proofing of your website content is well worth your time and attention.

Read more posts by Joe Feese