The power of a good spellchecker

There are hundreds of factors that combine to make a good Web site, yet only one of them has to fail for you to lose valuable visitors and sales. That’s why a good spell checker is invaluable.

In the days before computers, the Internet and Microsoft Word, a spell checker was known as a proof reader, and rather than being a microchip, was a real human being employed solely for the purpose of checking spelling and grammar.

What hasn’t changed in the modern world of high technology is the fact that poor spelling and grammar can instantly damage your brand, reputation and bottom line as readers switch-off and walk away from your business. You only get one chance to make a first impression and poor spelling could ruin that chance for you.

The first widely available electronic spell checker was provided in the late 1970’s on computers and was a lot less user-friendly than today’s Microsoft Office version!

A traditional electronic spell checker works by taking the words that you have used within your copy and comparing them to a predefined ‘dictionary’ as defined by you or the spell checker creator. Any words that cannot be found within the dictionary are highlighted and in the majority of cases, alternatives are suggested.

Using an electronic spell checker not only saves you from the embarrassment of misspelling simple and not so simple words, but can also save you time. Imagine having to check each word manually on every e-mail that you send each day – it would take an age.

For all of the reasons outlined in the article above, we’ve just released an electronic spell checker within the Intergage Content Management System (CMS).

The spellchecker works in much the same way as the spell checkers that you are most likely familiar with using in you word processing software. Find full details about the update here.

Previously we would have recommended that Intergage clients create Web site copy within a word processing tool before pasting it into the Intergage CMS. This was the only way of being sure that your copy contained no errors. Now however we are happy for you to create your copy within the CMS, saving time and money!

Until the next update,

Gareth

Posted July 1st, 2009