It can make you or break you.

The spell checker on your computer is great, but it doesn’t always pick up sound-a-likes. Their, there, they’re for instance. How important is it? For the majority of people who can spell it makes all the difference. In one instance, I recently observed an employer scan an applicant’s resume remarking delightedly that the person had just about all the credentials she was looking for; but then along came the spelling errors. The employer’s eyes glazed over and the resume was tossed on the outbound stack.

Spelling errors seem to be rampant, and can be as bad as a stain on your shirt when dressing for an interview. And before you shrug me off as a frustrated old English teacher (I’m not), you might want to consider that if all you have are your words to represent you on the Internet and you don’t choose and spell them carefully, you are quite apt to lose your credibility.

Although regular use of a dictionary will help, and a spell checker will find many, the sound-a-likes are quite elusive. Sound-a-likes are called homophones. They are words that sound the same but have different meanings. For example: there - their - they’re; meet - meat; stares - stairs; fare – fair; herd – heard; currant – current; buy – by – bye; rain - rein – reign. Its and it’s are similar errors, but for different reasons.

You can buy a grammar book in paperback for about $5.00. Most of them have the common spelling and grammatical error pages right in the front. If you familiarize yourself with those, and it reflects in your articles and web pages, then you have just made a huge step in giving yourself a more knowledgeable and competent appearance.

For a business person, it can make all the difference.