Have you ever seen a billboard with a misspelled slogan?
The only impact you can expect from a post with with a spelling mistake is a reduction of your credibility. How did you react when you read this post’s title? If your mistake is more critical it can even make it to the news, but not in a positive way. Check this example about pubic schools… Not what you want for your blog, right?
All text editors include spell checking features. I use Firefox on Mac OS and everything I type in my wordpress post editor is automatically spell checked on the fly. I double check with the wordpress built-in spell checker, just in case.
One note here: don’t forget to also spell check your post’s title. In Firefox, the text field for the title in WordPress is not spell checked. It happened to me a couple of times on my main blog to find a spelling error in my title only when reading it in Twitter or Facebook. Too late. Not to mention a mail from a reader to notify you of the error. Facepalm squared.
It is not because editing your blog is not your main job that you must not do it like a pro.
If you can not have someone proofreading your posts you should at least read them a couple of hours after writing them. Don’t forget that it’s not only about spell checking. This post’s title would not trigger a spell checker. Nor would the billboard in the example above. Identifying one’s own mistakes is really hard and the best way is to have sufficient time between writing and reviewing. Unless your post MUST be published immediately because you’re breaking important news, you should take the time to make a good review.
First impressions are important. Your readers make their first impression from your titles or first paragraphs. And you have only one chance, so make sure you don’t scare them with stupid mistakes.
Let me know in comments how you reacted to this post’s title.
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