I recently read - via email, the significance of which will become apparent shortly - that over 50% of adults felt their intelligence was being judged by others based solely on the way they write emails. To counter this, large numbers of people are adapting their style of writing and language, thus creating a kind of alter-persona who exists only as an email correspondent.

Interesting. Not because it’s surprising, but rather that it would be surprising if we believed we would NOT be judged by poor grammar, non-existent punctuation and nonsense sentences. After all, we’re judged by so many criteria these days.
Have you ever tried to pick the meaning out of an email or blog completely devoid of capital letters or full stops? The feelings of “Ahhh...bless...a novice on the keyboard...” soon dissipate and a much less charitable notion soon takes over.

The well-written word still means a lot, even in these days of electronic supremacy. Whilst the delivery systems have changed, much of what is being delivered has not. I found these lovely examples of mass dyslexia at GetReading.co.uk....

- ‘people lossing jobs’ (careless lossers!);
- ‘gullable’ (a naïve bird perhaps?);
- benifit (used twice so not a slip of the fingers);
- ‘suprise suprise’ (er ditto);
- propergander (having a good look at?);
- I new five girls (as opposed to I old five girls?)
- In countries such as Italy, which has higher morale values (happy Itis!)
- Alchol (hic!);
- Escape goat (I blame whoever left the gate open);
- Speach (or sapple or spear?)
- Opertunity (to be had at an opertune moment).

As you know, spotting howlers isn’t a new sport - it has a long and distinguished history.

‘So what?’ I can hear you say.
Well, quite a lot actually. Your company’s credibility (let alone your sales potential) is being affected by everything you email, communicate or upload, so it’s worth making the effort to ensure it’s not dangling participles in the faces of your readers.

We at B&V spend a huge amount of time and effort minimising errors (often in client-supplied copy), so that our communications make sense. Of course, in the perfect world, a spelling mistake would never exist. And when we all move to this much-anticipated ‘perfect world’ we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief. But until then, it’s back to the usual methods - sharp eyes and read it again and again and again....and then a bit more.
Incidentally, many years ago we used to keep a folder, titled The Studio Bok of Deliferate Mistales, into which all our howlers went. Amongst the gems was a series of 6 visuals, all for the same advert, all containing a different spelling of the word ‘refrigerator’ and proof, if proof were needed, that artists and designers cannot spell - never have been able to, probably never will.

Posted by Jenny at 12:07 PM

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