Why Sipellng Rellay IS Iparotnmt for Yuor Bnuseiss
'Accdirnog to a reharceesr at Cdabmgire Untiesirvy, it dseon't meattr in waht oredr the ltrtees in a wrod are, the olny irnopmatt tihng is taht the fsrit and lsat lteetr be in the rghit plcae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sltil raed it whtuiot prlebom. Tihs is busacee the huamn mnid deos not raed eevry leettr by istlef but the wrod as a whloe.'
I'm sure you've read this particular piece, or a variant of it since it first exploded onto the internet in 2003. What you see above is the 'proof' that spelling doesn't matter. Well, true—sort of. While you can quite probably read this with very little effort the rule doesn't always prove true.
Try this one for size: 'A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur'. OK. Hands up. Who got 'manslaughter' on first read? I didn't. More on this here.
What these excerpts actually do prove is that while it's possible to understand misspellings (albeit in carefully chosen and simple texts) this doesn't mean it's something you should be looking to incorporate into your marketing strategy. If you did, I'd say you were extremely talented or phenomenally lucky; this kind of approach is something you really should give a Titanic-wide berth to.
'But why so?', you ask.
Because spellings really do say something about your business. Gone are the days of 'spell it as it sounds', such as Chaucer with 'This flour of wifly patience' or the anonymous poet of the 'Avowyng of Arthur' 'I avow bi my life / Nevyr to be jelus of my wife'. This is the twenty-first century, not the fourteenth.
Today, spellings are more or less standard with the occasional variant thrown in to confuse people enough to have them scrambling for the URL to dictionary.com.
'But what does it matter?', you demand.
Well, actually quite a lot. Although everyone may understand what you've written, their attitude to your careless spellings has a real impact on your business. You might, perhaps fairly, start mumbling under your breath about 'The Grammar Police' and 'Spelling Nazis', but that really isn't advisable.
As much as you might think it doesn't matter and that they're being particularly irritating and pedantic about the whole issue, it's your business (and your reputation) that will suffer.
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