Major Grammatical Errors that Could Cost You Customers

The stereotype may be true—most of us with a background in accounting are better at numbers than we are with words. But there's still good reason to pay attention to your outgoing communications.

Writing mistakes can cost your business dearly. Here are five common mistakes to look for—and how to avoid them—in your business.

1. Misspelling the Client's Name

You might get a giggle out of this one, but it's no laughing matter. We have an employee named Terri. She often receives email messages addressed as “ Terry or Terie”.  It is very important to get your customer’s name spelled correctly. If you don’t take the time to know their name, how much do you really care about them?

 2. Failing to Proofread Everything

It's easy to forget to proofread e-mails because they are so informal and so quick. But they are still customer communications. If you make a major error, that's business lost forever.

3. Computer Literacy Mistakes

You might be surprised at how many e-mails with text in all capital letters that I receive. For more than ten years now, this is considered bad e-mail etiquette and the equivalent of shouting. Make sure you use the proper djajf;asjf;lajfjs;jf;a

4. Verbosity

On a frequent basis, it is probable that you will be exposed to a sentence written by an engineer, scientist, attorney, or CPA or some reason that simply has an overflow of words compared to how it could have been written, that is, in a more concise manner.

Wasn't that hard to read? Some professionals equate their intelligence with how many long words they can write. However, that's self-defeating behavior. Keeping your message simple will make sure you are understood.

5. Grammar Errors

Here are the two most common grammar mistakes we see on a regular basis.

It's, its

Sample usage: It's time for its audit.

Grammar rules:

• It's is a contraction of it is and always needs an apostrophe to replace the missing "i" in "is."
• Its is a possessive pronoun and never takes an apostrophe.

An apostrophe is only used to replace missing letters. You can always test to see if you need to include the apostrophe by replacing "its" with "it is." If the resulting sentence doesn't sound right ("The dog looked for it is bone"), you don't need an apostrophe.

Who, that

Sample usage: Companies that treat their employees right have people who care working for them.

Also, pay attention to "companies who…" and "people that…"

Companies are objects and should be followed by that and not who. People are humans and all humans should be followed by who and not that.

You probably won’t much business over these grammatical errors but why take the chance? When you can put yourself in your customers’ shoes for just a moment, you'll understand the point of this article. Don't let writing mistakes cost you business.