Secure tommorrow for our children. A valid and honourable call to action. This particular message was found on a desktop calendar of the leading South African printing company, Shereno Printers.

We’re filing this error under businesses that published information and messages incorrectly on their official stationery. What makes this error all the more grave is that it can be found on the desks of client staff for an entire year! It is almost tantamount to an electronically disseminated message in the physical realm.

Misspelling a word may seem to be a minor error, but it can reflect poorly on the business associated with its publication. In this case of course, it becomes a reflection on both the printing company and the client company on whose desks the spelling errors rest.

Here’s the rub, a spelling error on official documents suggest one of two things: the topic is not understood well enough by the writer to properly spell words related to it, or the author does not care sufficiently about his work to proofread the work. Either way, spelling errors will make a reader less interested. Even if it is at a subliminal level.

Sometimes, a writer may not know how to spell the word that he or she wants to use. This comes from possibly being a native speaker of a language other than English or might be because the word is jargon. In other instances, it might be a name that has not been encountered before (unlikely).

Here’s some appropriate advice from brides.com :
To prevent this nightmarish situation, “we strongly encourage our clients to have someone who has not yet seen a single version of the invitation proofread their invitation proof,” says calligrapher Laura Hooper. “It is important that someone — or a few people! — see it with a fresh set of eyes, because once you’ve been looking at it over and over again, you start to see and read what should be there, instead of maybe what is *actually *there!”

Anytime you would like to use a word but are even remotely unsure of how to spell it, don’t guess. Rather, check a reference function on the computer or a dictionary to find its spelling and speak proper.

Source: Speak Proper Blog