GrammarPhile Blog

Most businesses have produced a lot of content across a wide variety of channels. Between social media, blogs and website content, it’s difficult to keep track of everything that’s out there. It’s important to remember that the value and appearance of your content are a direct reflection of your business and can significantly impact your reputation.

Everyone makes typos. Yes, everyone! World leaders, university professors, famous authors and (gulp) even professional editors occasionally miss a keystroke or three. The very best writers make the same mistakes as the rest of us. What sets them apart is that they understand the importance of having others review their work for grammar, spelling, punctuation, style and structure.

With the advent of instant messaging and texting, it may seem like we’ve lost all sense of the English language.

Sometimes the use of “u” instead of “you” or saying “gotta” or “wanna” instead of “have to” or “want to” can easily creep into things like email or memos. But here’s the question - is this okay in a business setting?

If you’ve ever had someone else edit your writing, you probably know the feeling: The draft you receive from the proofreaders no longer has any spelling or grammatical errors – but it also bears little resemblance to what you wrote. Your voice, in other words, has been stripped out.

These days, businesses can flourish or fail based on websites alone.

Your website encapsulates your world. If a potential customer wants to understand who you are and what you offer, he or she will likely visit your website to find out.

For that reason, glaring errors on your website are not peripheral issues—they are right hooks to the body of your brand. If the first impression you give is “weclome” on your home screen, you’re not exactly proving how precise and trustworthy your work is.

In our latest video Phil Jamieson explains when to use AM or PM and why writing "12:00 am" is wrong. 

While there are those who say grammar doesn't matter, surveys keep bearing out a simple reality: consumers actually do care about grammar.

Global Lingo found that 59% of adults in the U.K. would not use a company that had obvious grammatical or spelling mistakes in its content.

Standing Dog Interactive conducted a similar poll. It revealed that 58% of people are “very” or “somewhat” annoyed by typos and grammatical errors.

Many of our readers are marketers who employ a variety of methods to reach their target markets. Today, I want to address one of those methods: email.

For the most part, floods are considered negative events.

Nobody likes to have their house swept from its foundation by endless rain. Or their livestock carried off by raging rivers. Or their basement full of family heirlooms transformed into a swimming pool.

Nobody likes a flood of emails either.

Here are some more questions we've received from readers who are unsure about something they're writing. See their questions and test yourself against our experts.

After you've completed your answers, please click the link at the bottom of the post to see our Grammar Experts' answers.

We thought we'd do something a bit different today. We often receive questions directed to our Grammar Experts and reply to them privately. I'm going to share some of these questions today and give you an opportunity to test yourself against our experts. Names have been changed to protect the innocent!

After you've completed your answers, please click the link at the bottom of the post to see our Grammar Expert's Answers.