A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about how an email from the Web Marketing Association included far too many hideous misspellings.

Here’s another similar situation that crossed my screen recently.

GoogleLady.com seems to be a pretty good site. You’re likely to wind up there sooner or later if you’re Googling for AdWords tips, because GoogleLady has posted a free e-book: The AdWords Quality Guide. It’s suitable for beginners and it’s packed with tips on how to get the most out of AdWords.

Here’s the thing: How can anyone trust GoogleLady’s tips for writing ads when GoogleLady can barely spell? The contents page spells beginners with two g’s and one n. The question asked on the contents page lacks a question mark. Sentences seem like they got chewed up by Babel Fish: “31 Killer Writing AdWords Ads Tips.” (By the way, that’s the one place on the contents page where “AdWords” was written correctly, i.e. with the capital W. The other 12 places on the page, it’s written “Adwords.”

There’s probably a lot of good information in this 47-page guide, but the sloppiness undercuts any authority it would otherwise have.

What’s really troubling is that a lot of people probably don’t care. When basic standards of consistency, spelling and style don’t matter, though, what’s next to slide?

Takeaway for marketers: Don’t head down that slippery slope. Spelling counts. Good writing is just one component to making you look professional, but bad writing alone can make you look foolish.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways, Rants 'n' Such.