Can You Spell?

Spelling and basic grammar and punctuation drive me mad. This is due in no little part to my grandmother, may she rest in peace, who was a language "nazi". She had zero tolerance for bad spelling, punctuation, grammar and pronunciation. Since I spent so much time in her company as a child it was only inevitable that it would rub off on me to some degree. Other members of the family seem to have inherited the same "problem", if you can call it that. Why do I bring this up? Well it's due to a recent post on Richard's blog. While the issues people seem to have with spelling words might be annoying it's crazy to think that companies that actually print calendars get it wrong. I suppose I shouldn't be overly surprised by this, but I still find it amazing. Spelling and grammar are not the most important things in life, but they are damn important! If you look at a seemingly slick website for a company that is offering you a product or service, do you think twice about buying if they can't even spell common words correctly? I know I do! Yet the number of sites, both professional and personal, that have serious issues with spelling and silly grammatical and punctuation mistakes never ceases to amaze me. From an online marketing / SEO point of view I mentioned the issues some time ago. Of course, if you are doing online marketing you should be aware of typos. It doesn't hurt to bid on typos of your target keywords - while google will offer the correct spelling it can't hurt to try and get the initial search result, can it?