If you don’t find yourself squinting awkwardly at that headline, you need to install Grammarly immediately.

Typos and grammatical errors matter. I know it’s ‘hilarious’ to brand people as ‘Grammar Nazis’ but correct spelling and grammar is a powerful tool, not something to joke about.

I can assure you that many is the time I’ve whittled down a pile of applicants (individuals and companies) to a more manageable pile by immediately removing anyone who didn’t appear to understand how apostrophes work or hadn’t bothered to spell-check their output.

Apart from personal opinions, there’s also data to support the incredibly negative impact errors can have. One study looked at 5,000+ site visits over a two-month period. Two nearly-identical landing pages were presented to visitors, one containing typos and one ‘clean’. The error-ridden page experience bounce rates 85% higher than the correct version. 8% less time was also spent on the landing page with errors. Google Ads data also supports this, reporting that users are 70% less likely to click on ads containing typos.

So it’s not just me (although it’s mostly me) that punishes those without the skillz to pay the billz (don’t worry - I did that deliberately to make our more stupid visitors feel at home).

You could argue that we’re all human, and everyone makes mistakes - and that would be true - but in a world of spell-checkers and Grammarly, if you send me a presentation hoping to secure business worth thousands of pounds, showing that you care about the details says a lot to me about the way you work.

And no I’m not sponsored by Grammarly (I’m just a big fan).