by Mar Junge

Use a spellchecker at your own risk! "Satcom" can become "sitcom" in the blink of an eye. (Not far from the truth.) Beyond spelling, there are other writing faux pas just waiting to trip you up.

Why should you care if your content isn't perfect? Because your customers do! Errors, typos and improper grammar are little things that make a big difference in how professional your company appears. If your content's full of errors, what does that say to your customers about your other services?

Good content reads like people talk. Using incomplete sentences and sentences that start with "and" or "but" is fine. But there's no excuse for sloppy copy. The ten errors listed below are the ones I see most often as an editor and content creator.

1. Horrible, Handy Hyphens
E-mail or email? As soon as you think you know the rule, it changes. That's because many new word combinations start out hyphenated, then as the term becomes more familiar, the hyphen evaporates. Generally, a hyphen is used when needed for clarity. (Is it a single-chip solution or a single chip-solution?) Hyphens are also used when two adjectives combine to modify a noun. Technical content with strings of multiple adjectives can quickly become hyphen-hysterical: low-cost, high-power, high-quality, small-footprint widgets. (The exception: adjectives that end in "ly" do not require a hyphen, for example, highly integrated circuits. If you're not sure whether to drop the hyphen, search the Web for the most common usage and go with the flow.)

2. Compound Wordiness
Online or on line? Website or web site? To decide whether or not to compound, consider how you use the words. If it's a verb, it's usually two words (set up the system, log on to the site and back up the data), while a noun gets compounded (he realized that this was a setup so he destroyed the backup copy).

3. Capitalization Catastrophes
The most common mistake is capitalization of titles. If the title proceeds a name, capitalize it, but not after the name, no matter how important your executive says he or she is. Vice President Barney Fife, but Barney Fife, vice president. The exception is a title that's also an acronym. CEO and all the other C-level execs are ALWAYS capitalized. As far as capitalizing words for emphasis as I did in the previous sentence, less is always more.

4. Grammar Goblins
My favorite Grammar Goblin is "affect" (always a verb) vs. "effect" (sometimes a verb, sometimes a noun). "Good grammar can affect the readability of my content. It will have a positive effect." Effect can also be used as a verb, as in, "You should effect these grammar rules immediately." Personally, I never use effect as a verb. It's simpler that way.

5. Amazing Apostrophes
It's (a contraction for it is) and its (a possessive noun without an apostrophe) confuse many writers. This same possessive-exception rule applies to whose (no apostrophe, as in "Whose content is this?") and who's (a contraction for who is). English is an exceptional language!

6. Interesting Italics
Unfamiliar foreign language words and Latin words, newspapers and magazine articles often appear in italics. But then, so do many other words we want to emphasize. Be a trailblazer. Use italics as it pleases you. The editors will take them all out anyway, as they will the names you put in all CAPS if they're not really acronyms.

7. Which Hunts
It's usually not the witch (a.k.a. Wicca) vs. which (as in which one) that causes confusion, but "which vs. that" usage. If the phrase sounds better with commas, or if you can substitute the two-word phrase "that which," use which. Or use "that" whenever possible and then go have a cheese sandwich, which you've made with bread that you bought.

8. To Comma, or not to comma
Do you really need the comma after the word "and" in a string? No, unless it enhances readability. For example, you have a list of rules, a list of groceries, a list of your favorite restaurants, and many things to do today. But you have Gary, Murry, David, Robert and Mar (with no comma) here to help.

9. Qiviut Quotations for Qintars and Qophs
In the above words, "Q" is not followed by a "U." Interesting, but notice that the last punctuation mark in a sentence is INSIDE the quotation marks. While it may looks strange, this hard and fast rule is a throwback to the days when it was easy to lose a little piece of moveable type, such as a period. By the way, for non-Scrabble™ fans, Qiviut is an Eskimo word for musk-ox wool, qintar is Albanian money and qoph is the 19th letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

10. Absolutely Awful Abbreviations and Acronyms
This isn't really an abbreviation issue, but it's something I see so often, I have to mention it. Spell out any number less than ten. One, two, three, etc. Ten and over, you can use numerals. As far as acronyms, high-tech companies love 'em. Acronyms were abbreviations that were supposed to make things easier—thus television became TV. Unfortunately, there are now hundreds of thousands of recognized acronyms. Spell out the first mention (no need to use initial caps), followed by the acronym in parenthesis. (The voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) in located on the printed circuit board (PCB).) For a mind-numbing list of acronyms, visit the Sensors Directorate Air Force Research Lab Web Site at http://www.sn.afrl.af.mil/acronym.htm. Want to make up your own acronyms? Go to http://www.acronymfinder.com/buzzgen.asp?. As will many other rules in grammar, use it often enough and it may become the new standard.

Remember, even professional writers never edit their own copy. Before you publish a document, run it by CommPros Group. We may find that tiny error that could have jeopardized the entire campaign.