Yes, Poor Spelling Costs Companies LARGE (Here’s How to Avoid It)

Take a quick look at any job board and you’ll soon see that growing numbers of businesses are near-manic for job applicants who can spell properly and understand punctuation and grammar, and the reason is simple.

Research shows that something as seemingly small as a wrong word choice can cost companies large in lost sales and damaged reputation.

Case in point:

Some while ago, an online Toronto magazine removed all content from its website as part of a redesign. To let readers know the magazine had only shut down temporarily for re-tooling, the company posted the following message on its homepage:

Really look closely at the above image.

Once you look past the Frankenstein sentences and rapid-fire exclamation marks, you arrive at the phrase, “Bare with us.”

In common usage, the verb “bare” (according to Oxford) means “to uncover something (a part of the body or other thing) and expose it to view”, as in:

• He bared his emotions before the court.

• She bared her teeth to show she meant business.

The word “bear” (the word the company should have used, or meant to use) relates to carrying or supporting something, as in:

• He arrived bearing a tray laden with cakes.

• She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving.

And “bear,” of course, is also the name of an animal, as in:

• Yogi was smarter than the average bear.

By using the word “bare” instead of “bear,” the magazine had basically said to readers:

“Come and get naked with us. Trust us. It’ll be worth it.”

Now if you happen to operate a nude beach, the above sentence just may be an awesome slogan and perfectly accurate message. Yet for anyone else, using “bare” instead of “bear” just may earn you the kind of laughs you don’t want and cost you large in lost sales and damaged reputation.

How large?

In one poll of 1,029 U.K. adults by the translation service Global Lingo, for example, 79% of respondents said they notice the quality of the content on a company’s website, and 59% said they would not buy something from a company whose website has grammar or spelling mistakes. And it doesn’t take much to put someone off.

According to internet entrepreneur Charles Duncombe, Director of the Just Say Please Group, a single spelling mistake can cut measured website revenue per visitor in half.

So spend the time to review your copy closely before your customers do.

When you’re done, put it away and review it the next day. A good night’s sleep and fresh set of eyes can catch mistakes you absolutely couldn’t see the day before.

Yes, there will always be people who’ll “know what you mean” if you use the wrong word. There will be those who won’t care or even notice a wrong word when they see one. Yet there are untold numbers of other people out there who can spot an incorrect word, spelling mistake or punctuation error as easily as spotting bug splat on a windshield.

Some of them, of course, instantly become lost customers. Yet others (much like this writer) will point out the mistake, not to embarrass people but to help...

...which is the important side note to all of this.

You see, poor spelling and grammar skills have been classified as predominantly a Millennial deficiency, and because of this, I understand why many Millennials blame the Baby Boomer generation as having made the world “a worse place.” Millennials may be a tech-savvy and social-conscious generation but traditional language-arts education completely let them down. So Millennials can’t really be blamed or shamed for lacking certain language skills that are now costing companies large.

Yet Millennials can adjust their eyesight to see something.

Many Baby Boomers are also disappointed (and perhaps even angry) at other Baby Boomers who once embraced ideals of making the world a better place but abandoned it all as impractical, unworkable and even silly. If they hadn’t, language-arts curricula in education would have remained intact, and that loss has completely disserved Millennials. Yet many Baby Boomers hung onto their “impractical” ideas about making the world a better place. And some of them are only too happy to offer their help to a new generation...

...even if that help is just a blog about spelling and grammar to help people better optimize their businesses and lives.