The importance of good spelling online
Wed, 19. May 21
When?
Date: Wednesday, 19. May 2021
Time: All day
Where?
Location: Detroit, Michigan, United States
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Zip and city: Detroit
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It's true: gone are the days of rooms full of transcribing secretaries and huge desks covered with dictionaries. Today we do much of our work typing at full speed on our small devices, with the pressure to respond faster and faster to chats and emails. By this, the chance of making mistakes is even greater. Or, worse: the autocorrection system may put in the wrong word without us noticing it - a common situation that everyone experienced at least once.
Many websites and online publications are full of these mistakes, even those of world leaders who sometimes fail to pause before sending their messages. Who can forget President Trump's infamous tweet with the word "covfefe"? And while these mistakes may sometimes seem funny or harmless, many are not.
Not only do these small mistakes have the power to make us look less intelligent than we are: poor spelling can also create confusion, lacking clarity, and inconsistency. It can lead to the loss of millions of dollars in sales or a job opportunity in extreme cases.
These flaws can destroy customer relationships or ruin the chance of finding love on the internet. But, if no one is immune to this and technology makes misspelling commonplace, can it be said that spelling is no longer necessary? Do I still need to mind the Grammatics if I am not an essay writer online, an academic, or even a student?
Have we become accustomed to misspelling?
Autocorrect tools seemed to be the solution, but in reality, they have created another problem. It's better to look a bit fussy and old-fashioned than to try to look more relaxed and end up annoying everyone with all the basic mistakes you've made.
An extensive comparison of the mistakes made by university students in their essays showed that the most common error was the use of the wrong words.
As most people know, automatic spell-checking sometimes corrects our mistakes by replacing the word we originally intended with a term of a different meaning. If the text is not checked afterwards, the error created by the computer will go unnoticed.
If you look at the development of technology, its goal has always been to synchronize with the pace of ideas in your mind faster. Unfortunately, the modern state of autocorrection is not perfect, so it cannot be safe to trust its suggestions blindly.
Eternal mistakes
Autocorrection software may explain why even an official White House communiqué can have errors. There used to be a process of editing and proofreading texts to avoid any slips, but now content goes straight onto the internet with such speed that mistakes often slip through.
People see your short-term messages as temporary, but the truth is that one of the characteristics of the internet is that things stay there forever, so no matter how many years go by, people will still read them.
Yes, you are being judged.
A 2016 survey of 5,500 US singles on online dating site Match.com found that 39% of users judged candidates' compatibility by their command of grammar. This element was valued more highly than their smile, style of dress, or even the condition of their teeth.
Other research shows that as soon as people identify spelling mistakes in the text of a website, they immediately abandon it because they fear that it is a fraudulent site.
According to Roslyn Petelin, a writing professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, corporations are aware that part of their image is based on good spelling. Nothing can make you lose credibility faster and make you look ignorant than a spelling mistake.
Bad spelling in business can also lead to severe court cases. Among them is the Taylor & Sons case in the UK, a multi-billion pound legal battle, which arose from a mistake linked to a missing letter.
In fact, a lack of good language skills can prevent you from getting a job. Many companies all over the world have included a writing test in their recruitment process. Young candidates coming out of university may have all the interpersonal tools, but companies won't give them the job if they can't write coherently.
It would be a mistake to tell young people that spelling is not important in a particular profession because those basic skills are the actual pathways to other positions or to developing new skills.
If you're processing a customer service request via Twitter, that may be the only interaction that person will have with the company. The quality of that message, the use of language, is very, very important. Sometimes, it's as important as that friendly face in the shop or the voice on the phone.
Allowable faults
However, sometimes misspellings or abbreviations are allowed. For example, in English, you use "bizz" when you tweet as a way of shortening the word "business."
There are specific contexts where informal language is required. If you send an email to a 21-year-old vice president with your first line as 'Dear Mr. Jones' and you continue with a formal tone, you may end up in trouble. Despite this, in the world of social media, self-proclaimed "grammar Nazis" are vociferously denouncing the mistakes they see.
Some try to anticipate this situation and justify themselves when they send emails from their phones, posting phrases such as "Sent on the run from my phone. Please excuse me for any typos".
Social conventions
While there were once agreed social norms for letter writing, in the online world, the rules are unknown.
On the one hand, in Facebook and Twitter content, spelling, grammar, and punctuation rules are relaxed. On the other hand, in the text of emails, it is not so easy to find a boundary between what is allowed and what is not.
Just as we adapt our speech depending on whether we are teaching a class, interviewing for a job, or just talking to friends, we need to adjust to the digital world. So what's the best way to know how to adapt?
It's better to make sure you use the language correctly and sound a bit fussy and old-fashioned than to try to sound more relaxed and end up annoying everyone with all the basic mistakes you've made.
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Written by aljnsn.
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