One of the most interesting aspects to two jobs I’ve held was being able to peruse resumes for other job openings within the company. I was able to “screen” candidates before putting them into a pile for a higher authority to peruse. It was also a good opportunity to check out how others were representing themselves: The resume should be the selling point of you. It’s the one place where you can feel free to go all-out and list all of the awesome things you’ve accomplished without feeling cocky. This is why you should hire me and this is why I’ll be an asset to your company.
However, there’s been an alarming trend that I’ve noticed recently: Horrific misspellings. Misspellings that a common spellchecker should be able to pick up. Although nobody is perfect, isn’t stating that you’re from “New Jarsey” a glaring error? I’ve even dealt with people misspelling the job title that they were applying for.
These errors aren’t just in resumes – I’ve seen them in ads for businesses, invoices and flyers. Certain websites laugh over misspelled tattoos – things that will be on your body forever. What gives?
Not to sound like a curmudgeon at the ripe old age of 27, but I think that text acronyms might be to blame. Back in the day, before unlimited text plans, I could understand why “before” might have to be “b4” – those extra letters could cost you ten cents! Nowadays, texting is a popular way of communicating – heck, I’d rather text to make plans for the night instead of calling someone (I have a fear of awkward phone pauses). Perhaps now, people are so dependent on text shortcuts that they forget how they shouldn’t be applied to professional documents. Or maybe, some people feel as if “CUL8R” has made its way into the lexicon. Quite honestly, shortcuts take more time for me to both type out and process – the fact that they’re slowly becoming more and more acceptable is somewhat of a bummer.
Back in my day, spelling used to be fun. Before you call me a square, let me introduce an old friend of mine. His name is Speak and Spell.
"THAT IS CORRECT!"
Speak and Spell made learning fun as a kid and I cherished mine. I brought it with me on trips and played with it for a decent amount of years growing up. Again – I’m not saying that I’m a world-champion speller but growing up, I knew how important it was to be able to know when “I” came before “E”. Speak and Spell also had a lot of fun games, like “Say It” and “Mystery Letter”, which, unfortunately aren’t represented on this online version I found. Just hearing that robot voice takes me back.
I could argue that good spelling is actually a sport – I’m sure all of you have at least caught a small clip of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. In 2002, the movie Spellbound came out, which documented eight Scripps competitors in 1999. I was so moved by the intelligence of these kids that I actually own the DVD. See? Spelling is awesome.
Granted, some of us just aren’t natural spellers – or have a small handful of words that constantly get misspelled (Embarrassingly, I always misspell “embarrassing”). Here are some tips, if it’s something you want to brush up on. After all, good spelling is a virtue in every profession and with every class you take.
1. Scrabble, Words With Friends, or any other game that will grant you massive points for wordplay. Again – spelling can be fun! (Just try not to cheat. That defeats both purposes.)
2. Try to lay off of acronyms. We’ve all used them, but let’s face it. How many times have you actually laughed out loud? Or ROTFLMAO? I have yet to witness this act in person. By breaking the constant use of acronyms and shortcuts, you can get to your point more swiftly. Added bonus – the use of a simple “K” in a text can really be misleading. Not only can it come off as being snarky and insincere, if someone asks you if you want to catch the 7:30 showing of a movie instead of a 9:30, a “K” response would read to me as, “Are they upset that I changed things around?” “Okay, sounds good!” is the response you should be sending.
3. Read More. This is a tip that I don’t utilize as much as I should, but reading more books – as opposed to celebrity tabloids – will enhance your writing. If you’re not too motivated to pick up a book, try to set personal goals for yourself or enlist the help of friends to start up a book club.
4. Always Proofread. When you write something important, take the time to glance it over a few times before submitting it. It’s not a weak move to have someone else read it over as well – after all, while spellcheck is an amazing technology, it won’t catch “to” when you meant “two”.
As mentioned before, your resume should be flawless. This is the one document that will determine whether or not a future employer will want to schedule a meeting with you, which is when they’ll realize how fabulous you are. Even if the job might not be Administrative, if your resume is riddled with typos, one might think, “If they were so hasty to submit this, how hasty will they be in making sure the job gets done correctly?”
5. When In Doubt, Dictionary.Com Is Your Friend. Thank to the Internet, I’m sure dictionary sales have tanked. Choose a reputable source, and remember that it’ll take two seconds to find what you’re looking for. Dictionary.com has a “Word of the Day” feature, which is oddly fun for us word nerds.
And finally:
6. Cutesy Misspellings Have To Go. Back when I was younger, I really thought that “kewl” was a really neat way of writing “cool”. Now, it makes me cringe. If you have any bad word-habits similar to this, you should work on breaking them. Even if it’s a private joke that you swear won’t go outside the joke-boundary, you might let it slip someday. Similarly to people who proclaim “LOL” in actual, non-text conversation.
While you shouldn’t be kicking yourself over a typo or two, writing helps establish your voice – and you don’t want your voice to be misrepresented.
Image Credits: wikipedia.org, pedestriantype.blogspot.com
I’m wondering if “witches” is really misspelled on that cake; “witches” would kind of go with the whole motif of the cake. I wonder if somebody was trying to be funny. Anyway, I totally agree with this article, although I’m a sinner too; I use more acronyms than I should (which is just another way of saying “I use acronyms”) and I CANNOT spell “physical” to save my life. Anyway, nice article.
I was dangerously close to submitting a resume that stated I was VP Finance for Engineers Without Finance, rather than Engineers Without Borders. Glad I double checked that one!
Karen, LOVE your post and we are fellow Lancaster-ians (don’t worry about the spelling and don’t pull out a dictionary either because I made that “word” up
)!! COOL!! PS we also have the same first name (I don’t believe I have yet met a Karen who I didn’t like)
Nice! I’m honored to meet another Lancaster-based Karen. Thanks for digging the article!
What a timely article! I just had this discussion with my colleagues at lunch today, who were saying that they can easily screen out 80-90% of applicants for a job due to poor spelling and grammar. If you can’t spell, I will judge you. I think that’s perfectly fair since, as Lauren pointed out, all it takes is a quick Google to ensure you don’t embarrass yourself through egregious spelling errors!
Great article! I’ve always been a good speller and also someone who wants to spell everything correctly so even if I’m typing something online and it doesn’t look right then I’ll type it into Google to make sure I’ve got it. However, I don’t always proofread things and sometimes my hands move faster than I think, so I can’t promise that I never make typos! But some people I know could probably benefit from reading this article!
Bad spelling and grammar really, really bug me! I get a bit nasty about it sometimes and I know I shouldn’t, but it is so frustrating. Good article!
AGREED. The written word is just too precious to be treated like we treat it today. Also, people need to read more books. Seriously.
i am a horrible speller, but i know this, so i take extra time to proof read and have others check my work. however, what really gets me is when people write in incomplete sentances and have no concept of proper grammer.
Awesome article!
omg, Speak and Spell was my companion piece for 2 years. I was addicted.
You guys should check out Cake Wrecks for some other awesome cakes!
lol! The cake was funny.
Thank you for this article! One of my favorite web-activities of late is going to happyplace.com where people have posted snarky responses to misspellings and grammar mistakes on facebook. A warning: it is HORRIFYING (and addictive and hilarious.) And now I have a question: can/should I ‘LOL!’ in blog comments and facebook statuses in addition to texts? What’s the protocol there?
I think I might have been born a bad speller. I love scrabble, hate acronyms and read more than most people I know (and I’m an English major). Luckily I’m really good at editing (specifically other people’s work), but one slip up and I look silly! I have always hated ‘writing on the board’ or in front of my boss, because I can’t look it up or spell check! I’ve tried everything, really I have.
I have the dictionary.com app downloaded on my blackberry
Good! I’m not the only one who hates acromyns! You should also mention that twitter only letting you use up to 140 characters therefore making a lot of people shorten words is contributing to this. I hate the internet/texting language!
Despite my bitter attitude towards spelling bees (seriously, who makes a 6th grader spell “snifter”? As in a brandy snifter glass… 6th graders shouldn’t know what that is?! They shouldn’t know anything about alcohol let alone how to spell special glasses you drink it from! I digress…) I am right there with you on this, Belz. Brilliant article.
Can I tell you what it’s like to grade two hundred essays each semester post-text msg.-apocalypse? It’s an uphill battle for sure.
THANK YOU! I intern for this REALLY cool company that a ton of people want to work for and I’m the one who receives emails from all the potential interns/employees. It amazes me how many people leave HUGE misspellings in their emails. Considering they are probably using chrome or mozilla which spell-checks FOR YOU, I don’t know why people do it.
Great article! I once received a resume addressed to “Mrs. Maklas.” I am single and sensitive about it, and that is not my last name. Another woman had 5….yes, 5 spelling mistakes in her cover letter and demanded to know why I didn’t even interview her for the job. The job, incidentally, was in Communications. I told her, gently, and she never responded.