Common Spelling Mistakes

Last week I was talking to a friend who owns an air conditioning business. He’d just bought a brand new fleet of vans and was very excited to get them on the road with his new logo. One of their main areas of expertise is refrigeration. Can you see where this is going? That’s right, all the signage on his brand new fleet said ‘Refridgeration’ with a ‘d’. It was one expensive mistake.

Grammatical and spelling errors do happen but the fewer the better. Here are some of the common errors you may wish to avoid in your printed materials.

Their, they’re and there

We often see people confuse these three words. They all sound the same but the meanings are completely different. ‘Their’ signifies ownership, whilst ‘they’re’ is the reduced version of ‘they are’. ‘There’ is used to identify location or attract attention to a particular object.

Where, were, we’re and wear

Very similar to the words directly above, these four sound the same but bring completely different meaning to a sentence. ‘Where’ refers to location and ‘wear’ relates to clothing. ‘We’re’ is the reduced version of we are. Finally ‘were’ is basically the past tense of the verb to be, for example we were, you were or they were.

Calendar

It’s only got one ‘e’ in the middle but it’s an incorrectly spelt word that we come across regularly.

Grateful

We see many thank you letters come through our post, as well as printing them for others. We are always happy when someone is grateful as opposed to greatful.

Its & it’s

It’s quite simple. ‘Its’ suggests ownership whilst ‘it’s’ is the reduced version of ‘it is’.

Whose & who’s

Once again the apostrophe refers to the reduction of who is whilst whose highlights ownership of something in particular.

Licence

In the UK we have a Licence whilst in the US citizens need a license.

Questionnaire

Don’t forget when producing your customer feedback questionnaire that you need a double ‘n’ in the middle and the ‘e’ at the end.

Finally…

Receipt

If you require a receipt with your transaction remember that it’s I before E except after C (although there are a few exceptions, including weird, beige, feisty and neighbour).

It can be very easy to make mistakes on your content, even the best do from time to time. By taking time to have your content proof read before going to print however you give yourself the best chance of identifying any such mistakes. Taking the time to read your proof carefully could also save you plenty of money as well.