5-Minute Credibility Booster for Your Site

Here’s a five-minute exercise that will vastly improve your site’s credibility: Fix your typos. Use this quick guide to the most commonly misused words and misspelled words we’ve found on websites. Your spell checker won’t catch most of them (you ARE using your spell checker on your website copy, aren’t you?). So go find them and fix them and you’ll automatically smarten up your site.

Wrong	Right
alot	a lot
definately	definitely
should of	should have (would have, could have, etc.)
use to (past)	used to
your’s	yours

nConfusionsnnanecdote A quick story of something that happened, often used as an illustration of a point.nantidote A drug that counteracts a poison.nHe told an anecdote about how they discovered which antidote the patient needed.nncomplimentary Free; or saying nice things.ncomplementary Related to; going well with something else.nShe was very complimentary about the main course and the complementary side dishes.nneveryday Commonplace, not remarkable.nevery day Two words meaning… well… every 24-hour period.nI call it my everyday china, but I eat out so much I don’t use it every day.nnfarther Describes physical distance.nfurtherAnything other than physical distance.nThe farther I traveled from home, the further I came to understand how others live.nnhome in To get closer and closer to a target, as in radar.nhone To polish or perfect.nI’m honing my skills at homing in on a niche market.nni.e., That is… in other words… what I really mean is…ne.g., For example…nnX and I Use “I” when you’re performing an action.nX and me Use “me” when you’re the object of the action.nX and myself Wrong in all circumstances.nSimple rule: if you eliminated the “X and” part of the sentence; which word would you use?nThe tickets were given to Jarrod and me, but Lisa and I went to the show.nnits Belonging to it. Possessive, but there’s no apostrophe.nit’s It is. This a contraction, so the apostrophe takes the place of the missing letters and sticks the two words together.nIt’s rumored that the company will lay off half its workforce.nnlay, laying, laid You lay something down, you were laying something down, you did or have laid something down.nlie, lying, lay, lain You lie down, you were lying down, you lay down in the past, you have lain down.nI always have to lie down after I lay tile.nHe was just lying around when he was supposed to be laying down the rhythm tracks.nAfter the paramedics laid him on the stretcher, he lay there, terrified.nnpeak The highest point, the ultimate.npeek A quick look at something. (So you want to invite people to take a sneak peek, not a sneak peak.)npique Annoyance (noun); to provoke, invite, or arouse (verb)nntheir Belonging to them.nthere Over there, there is.nThere’s a spot over there where they keep their tools.nnwhose Who owns it.nwho’s Who is. That contraction thing again.nAbbott and Costello are the act whose classic bit was “Who’s on First.”nnyour Belonging to you. But almost universially misused in Internet communications to mean…nyou’re You are. Again, it’s a contraction so it gets an apostrophe.nYou’re about to get a big credibility boost to your site if you fix this one mistake. A word about apostrophes. You don’t need one when you turn a singular noun into a plural. It doesn’t matter what letter the word ends with; it doesn’t matter if it’s a proper noun; it doesn’t matter if it comes from another language; it doesn’t matter what part of speech it is when it’s not busy being a noun. Videos have been replaced by DVDs.nThe Cratchits had us over for Christmas dinner.nPetunias are easy to grow.nFastenings gave way in the storm.nPorsches and Mercedes Benzes are in demand.nOpt-ins signed up in droves.nThe ten-year-olds hated the clown.nCafes are open for breakfast. See? Not an apostrophe in the bunch. Finally, don’t capitalize random words. If it’s a proper name of a person, place, or thing, capitalize. If it’s just a regular run-of-the-mill word, don’t. If you’re in doubt, check the dictionary. So there you go! Just take just a few minutes to clean up these very common errors in your copy and you’ll put a professional polish on your site.