A few years ago writing consultant Judy Rose put together this list of common word use errors, and unfortunately it holds up very well today. If you’re one of those people who’s not sure whether it’s it’s or its, you’re or your or who’s or whose, print this one out and stick it next to your PC.

If everyone who made the errors identified in Rose’s list were to correct them, editors everywhere would breathe a huge sigh of relief.

photo by valeriana solaris

Guess I’m on a spelling/grammar/punctuation kick this week. I’m sure it will pass.

Way back in the dark ages of the early ’90s, I picked up a little book called The Mac is Not a Typewriter. Along with the dictionary, thesaurus and The Associated Press Stylebook, it has proven to be one of the more valuable reference books on my bookshelf.

Unfortunately it must not be on enough bookshelves. Some of the most basic lessons set forth in this guide to the rules and techniques of professional typesetting are routinely ignored by people whose occupations involve tapping at a computer keyboard eight hours a day. Here are two of my biggest pet peeves:

One period between sentences. Seriously, do you still double-space after the period before starting a new sentence? If you learned typing on a typewriter, you might. On a typewriter the characters are monospaced, which means each takes up the same amount of space and a period requires two spaces to separate sentences. Characters on a computer are proportional, which means each takes up the amount of space appropriate for that character.

The one-space rule also applies to colons, semi-colons, question marks, quotations marks and any other punctuation you might be tempted to follow with two spaces.

Use hyphens, en dashes and em dashes appropriately. I think more people get this wrong than right. There’s a reason all of these symbols are available for your use. The hyphen is used only to hyphenate a word or line break. The en dash is used between words to indicate a duration (thin space before and after). And the em dash is used to to indicate an abrupt change in thought (no spaces before or after).

The Mac is Not a Typewriter has more good information than its 72 pages would suggest. You should seriously consider adding it to your bookshelf.

photo by daquella manera

I’ll admit it. Anytime I see “professional” writing that includes misspelled words, bad grammar or misused punctuation, I wince. I recognize that in the new Democratic Republic of Social Media, there are those who shrug off such errors. “The important thing is that people are getting out there,” they say. “They shouldn’t be intimidated by their lack of writing skills.”

Lord knows I wouldn’t want to intimidate anyone, but … uh, no. If you didn’t master sixth-grade English class, hire someone who did. Or work to improve your own abilities. Good communication is best done by professionals. When my pipes leak, I hire an experienced plumber, not some guy who’s enthusiastic and has decided to “get out there” and do a little plumbing.

Sounds a bit snotty, coming from a so-called communications pro? Maybe, but consider this: Every misspelled word, misplaced comma and badly crafted sentence says something about you, whether writing is part of your job description or not. It says, “I’m not much for detail,” or, “I’m pretty casual about this quality control stuff.” Your poor writing suggests that maybe there are other things you’re a bit sloppy at. Like your plumbing.

It’s not just communications, of course. Everything you do says something about your work ethic, organizational culture, quality of service, etc. Your brand grows out of every point of contact you have with your stakeholders or customers.When I see your poor communication, I wonder what else you’re not so great at. And that should worry you.

photo by wildxplorer

Time once again for a quick roundup of the 10 most popular links I tweeted last month. Twitter continues to be a fixation for many of us, but there also was lots of interest in storytelling, internal communication and social media in general. In order of popularity:

Advice From the Pros: Telling It Like It Is courtesy of Brain Traffic, noted content strategist Kristina Halvorson‘s firm, preaches the gospel of short, sweet and simple (my kind of sermon).

Content Creation Strategy for Nonprofits is a slide deck from Kivi Leroux Miller on how you can effectively manage all the content you create in support of your marketing and communication efforts.

Peter Shankman, the man behind HARO, asks the eternal question, Is Your Social Media Expert Really an Expert?

Time for a Twitter Reality Check, courtesy of yours truly, takes a look at the reality behind the hype that is Twitter (and I’ll be reviewing some of the feedback I received in my next post).

6 Lessons From the Best Marketing Campaign Ever looks at how an unlikely underdog stunned the marketing world at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Wild Apricot did us all a real service in compiling Social Media for Nonprofits: 26 Presentations. Now there’s no excuse for not being ready to explain this stuff to your organization.

Kevin Spacey Explains Twitter to Letterman pretty much sums it up. Watch it. It’s funny stuff.

Use of Social Networking Tools Growing in Nursing, Medical Schools looks at a new study that finds growing popularity of Web 2.0 tools in health curricula.

How to Tell Your Story in 100 Words or Less is my take on the value we all can derive from having an elevator pitch.

Internal Communications and Twitter is me again on how Twitter might be used to support an effective internal communications program.

That’s it for July’s tweets. I’m out there every day in search of useful info on communications, marketing, social media and more, so be sure to follow me on Twitter so you don’t miss the good stuff.

photo by psd

Despite the persistent predictions that email is not long for this world, those of us who actually live in this world continue to be plagued by it. So until the bell finally tolls for e, we all need to do a better job of writing emails people will actually read.

David Silverman recently wrote that the average email requires anywhere from two to 50 revisions (depending on the audience) before it’s ready for dissemination. In theory it may sound reasonable to expect someone to edit an email 40 or 50 times when it’s going out to thousands of employees, but I guarantee you it doesn’t happen with most emails in most organizations.

That said, Silverman does share a great checklist to consider when making those theoretical revisions. You’ll find it here. This is another one to print out and stick near your computer.