Many people will tell you that the message is more important than spelling or grammar – and it is, but only to a point. A great message is lost if the spelling and grammar are poor.

Last night, I saw a page on a website that shows how important spelling can be – as even one wrong letter can make a big difference.

We make real-estate CD’s. [Business] can also make and host your web site, with promotion as the key fucus.

Using a u instead of an o is not just a typo we can ignore – the new word is too close to another word and that is what now catches our attention – not the original message.

It also changed the reader’s interpretation of the ‘presenting in a unique way’ in the following sentence, creating giggles instead of interest in their professional services.

It comes back to proofreading your work – not just a quick glance or use of a spell check, but a genuine check of what you have written. And the best proof reading is done a day or so after the writing or by another person. The quality of your content will improve through this simple process and maintaining a ‘focus’.

The heading or title of a blog post is usually the first thing someone will see and has a huge impact on whether anyone reads the actual content of the post, and therefore on the success of that blog post. Making it enticing is worth spending some time on, and you don’t want to undo those efforts by using inappropriate grammar and spelling.

So what is the correct format for a blog heading?

1.  Do not write it all in capital letters – that is considered to be yelling and therefore arrogant, plus it is harder to read anyway
2. Unless you have a formal and old-fashioned brand style, use sentence case rather than title case for the heading – that is, use as few capital letters as is necessary
3. Use basic grammar and punctuation rules such as a capital letter for a noun, match plural/singular nouns and verbs, and put apostrophes in the correct places
4. Check all words are spelt correctly
5. Make sure the title makes sense. Titles can sometimes have fewer words than an equivalent sentence (e.g. ‘the grammar of blog headings’ is fine for a title but in the body of a post I need to add more such as ‘the grammar of a blog heading can impact on your credibility.’) but include enough words to convey the meaning (I couldn’t use ‘The grammar blog headings’ for instance)

suit: (verb) to be acceptable to or enhance something
Will it suit you to meet at 10am on Wednesday?
Does your pricing strategy suit your business needs? 

suit: (noun) a set of clothing, generally consisting of a jacket with pants or skirt; legal action; one of fur divisions in a pack of cards club, diamond, spade, heart); a romantic interest.
Most men wear a suit to a funeral.
Jason was very pleased when he won the law suit against his competitor.
Rachel’s hand of cards included every suit.
After three years, Elizabeth accepted his suit. 

suite: related things together as a set, such as a group of rooms in a hotel or a set of furniture for one room; music in one key but several parts
Jane ordered a new bedroom suite at the sales.

A sign in our motel during last week’s trip to Canberra read

Due to “health regulations” no pets allowed in rooms

The quotation marks are completely unnecessary and mean either the person writing the sign didn’t know that (not a great message to send out, but common enough) or they were making a point about the regulations. That is, the writer thinks the regulations are silly, inappropriate, ineffective, irrelevant or such and therefore calls them “regulations’ to point out they are not well accepted.

Maybe disagreeing with the regulations shows some support of pets and pet lovers, but to me it is not very professional or reassuring. If you have no respect for the regulations, how can I be sure you are sticking to them in ways I would want you to? If a health inspector visits, how will they respond to implications of inferior regulations?

When you consider every word you write, remember to also consider the surrounding details such as punctuation, images and placement so that you are not giving any unintended messages.

Although not generally used in business writing, ellipsis points can be used to show a continuation or an undefined idea. This allows for the reader to complete the sentence in a number of ways which can create interest or indicate uncertainty.

“I wasn’t sure what she meant, maybe it was a mistake…” (shows some confusion about how to react to her words)

“Sally called me yesterday and told me the news…” (makes the reader curious as to what the news is)

Ellipses are also used to show some missing information in a quote. When quoting some text from elsewhere, it isn’t necessary to quote every word but it is also important to not misrepresent the text as being complete. Adding … between words indicates that part of the original is missing.

“Australians all let us rejoice … Advance Australia Fair” shows that some words are missing between those quoted.

However, do not use ellipsis to change the meaning of the original text.

Compare “The root of all evil is in the love of money” and “the root of all evil is … money”

Note that the use of the ellipsis removes the need for other punctuation. If the original quote has a comma or full stop, this isn’t included next to the ellipsis. A question mark, exclamation mark or quotation marks, however, are included with the ellipsis.

Word processing packages often give four styles to choose from:

• all lower case
• ALL UPPER CASE
• Title Case
• Sentence case

The first two are fairly self-explanatory but here is a definition of the other two common case styles.

Title case - traditionally used for the titles of everything (books, plays, movies, etc), title case has a capital letter for the start of every significant word – where words like and, of, the and a are not counted as significant. {If every word begins with a capital letter, we call it start case.}
The Little House on the Prairie
One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest
Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Sentence case – just like you use in most sentences, only the first word and any proper nouns start with a capital letter.
The little house on the prairie
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Sentence case is the default now for most writing, including headings.

I just came across a perfect example of someone not proof reading after using a spell checker (at least I am assuming they used a spell checker!) Too often people let a spell checker do the proof reading for them but it just isn’t a safe option.

I hate to use the word “disguised”, simply because you’re NOT hiding anything from your prospects, nor are you tricking them. But the bottom line is – “disgusted” *best describes* what your “free information pack” really is. It’s disgusted from THE FACT that it’s an ad, or that it WILL BE selling them something.

{That is an exact copy – capitals, punctuation and spelling are not mine!}

Easy enough to make a mistake while typing disguised and having a spell check suggest disgusted as the closest word. Very easy to ignore that and give a silly message, too, unless you proof read properly after using the spell check.

Of course, some of us may be amused at a marketing eBook referring to marketing techniques like information packs as disgusting, but I doubt that was their intent!

Proof reading is more than checking everything is spelt correctly – you also need to check the correct word is being used. And having a habit of proof reading everything you write, even the shortest emails and blog comments, will make it easier to project a professional and caring image for yourself and your business.

Having said that, what is your favourite story about a failure to proof read?

As I wrote a few days ago, some repetition of stuff is necessary to succeed – either because it takes a few goes to really understand it or the timing wasn’t right initially or even just as a reminder that it is still important.

I agree with Jack that looking professional is important – and that includes care with grammar, spelling, effective links and care of details. So I write about those topics quite often, which may seem boring to some I know, but I do try to cover a range of topics within clear and professional communications.

Given the amount of poor writing I come across every day, I see there is a need for a repetition of grammar and spelling tips, too!

If you are good at grammar and spelling – my apoliges for repeating what you already know! But why not take this opportunity to tell me what other topics you would like me to write about?

Samples of the release (identifying features adjusted for the sake of their client):

“We’re fine tuning the offer for them.” XYZ managing director Fred Nerk said.

“There’s lots of ducks that need to be lined up in terms of how the groups support the plans”.

“Now they’ve thought ‘hang on, we need to provide for this”.

The rules they don’t know are therefore…

1. while what the person is saying may be at an end, a full stop is not used at the end of speech if it is followed by details for the speaker. Apart from anything else, they have created XYZ managing director Fred Nerk said.as a stand alone sentence which is incomplete. A correct example is ‘I am working on it now,’said Mary.
2. punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, except if the punctuation is part of the surrounding sentence rather than part of the quoted material
3. if a speech includes a quote, two full sets of quotation marks are required, and generally the second set will be different to the first (i.e. if one quotation mark is used, the inner set will have double quotation marks). So a correct example is “I spoke to the officer in charge who said ‘this is a major catastrophe,’” said the reporter

If we add in the incorrect spelling of the client name (yes, really!), typos and words like ‘throught’, this media release is a very poor return for the client’s money. To me it shows an absolute lack of respect to their client and is unprofessional.

Media outlets will often use a media release as the basis of any reports and they obviously don’t expect to have to spend time correcting silly errors like this. If they have two equally promising stories to run, the better presented media release is likely to win so I would be very cross if a PR company sent out a release about me in that state.

Would you expect a PR company to get the writing elements right, or would you be comfortable checking it for errors yourself?

Over time, I learnt they are called quotation marks and that there are a few simple rules associated with their use. One of the rules about quotation marks is that you don’t close them until the person finishes speaking.

It isn’t often I come across examples of this in business writing – it’s generally more relevant for fiction or story writing. However, I did come across a media release recently which completely ignored this rule (and a few others but that’s a different story altogether!)

How do we use this rule? I’m glad you asked!

John said ‘It is hot today.’

John has finished speaking so we close off the quotation marks – easy.

John said ‘It is hot today and I would like to go the pool for a swim. The pool is just around the corner.

‘I wonder if Mary and Susan would like to come too? I will call them before I leave.’

In this example, John’s speech is divided into two paragraphs but he hadn’t finished speaking so I didn’t close the quotation marks. For clarity, however, I opened them again to show he is still talking (and I hadn’t just forgotten to close them!)

However, if John’s talking was interupted  by text, we would close the quotation marks:

 ’It is hot today and I would like to go the pool for a swim. The pool is just around the corner,’ said John.

‘I wonder if Mary and Susan would like to come too? I will call them before I leave.’