March 25, 2024
Sheet with English words to represent a spelling rule.
Table of contents hide
1 Spelling and respect for your readers
2 Does Google really care about spelling in web writing?
3 To go further: is spelling respectable?
Orthography is the writing of the language, the graphic code that allows the oral language to be transmitted, a bit like scores transmit music. It is a tool at the service of the language.
Maybe you're a little angry with it, a childhood trauma? Or maybe malaysia whatsapp on the contrary, you're your friends' grammar nazi , a real spell checker, correcting them at the slightest slip-up.
But on the internet, Google doesn't really know how to read. So spelling in web writing , we don't care about it, right?
Spelling and respect for your readers
If I arrive on a website, receive a newsletter or read Instagram posts with spelling mistakes and errors, I inevitably tell myself that it doesn't look serious. There's even a good chance that I'll leave the site very quickly. So, there's no chance that I'll buy if it's an e-commerce!
But am I being overly demanding in my job as a web editor or do mistakes really scare away prospects?
Studies are rare on the subject but the trend goes in my direction (yes!): errors are an obstacle to trust, credibility, image and quality of the site and therefore of the brand .
It's a shame to define your editorial strategy , determine your editorial line and create quality and relevant content only to lose customers because of a few grammatical and spelling mistakes...
However, the latest study "what a pity there are so many mistakes" (2018) provides some nuances.
2,000 French Internet users were invited to consult a website created for the occasion. The group was divided into three and each person consulted a different version of the site:
One without any misspelled words,
One with content written with spelling mistakes (conjugation problem, missing s, incorrect spelling of a word, etc.),
One with typos (typos like reversing letters for example).
They were then asked questions to assess their attitude toward the brand, their trust in the site, their intention to purchase and the amount they would see themselves spending .
And the result is quite astonishing!
Few people spotted actual grammatical and lexical errors, even those who claimed to be good spellers. On the other hand, comments were very negative when keyboard errors were detected. Purchase intentions were low, as was the level of trust in the site.
This can be explained by the fact that the attention of Internet users was not focused on spelling mistakes. They were not clearly told to spot mistakes but to evaluate a site. This is called selective attention illustrated in the following video:
The second explanation would be the lack of skills of the French in general with regard to spelling. Contrary to what I thought, checking spelling and learning grammatical rules does not seem to be a hobby for everyone
So, because Internet users (in general) have a poor level of spelling, we can let mistakes pass (but especially not typos)?
I don't think so...
Does Google really care about spelling in web writing?
Internet users make mistakes in queries. That's undeniable.
So if they write nightmare instead of nightmare, humoristic instead of humoristic or even a discussion instead of a discussion, it is normal to wonder if their errors should not be integrated into the keywords of a page to move up in the search results and improve your natural referencing .
I am rather attached to our French language, even if the spelling is not always logical, it is part of our culture and our heritage .
For this reason, I do not want to include mistakes in my clients' editorial content . This is also part of editorial quality for me.
But there are other good reasons not to do it if you don't think like me:
When reading mistakes, readers integrate them and this risks modifying the spelling permanently . Of course, a language is made to evolve with use. But what bothers me is that Google is the master deciding on spelling changes according to the mistakes integrated into the queries… Isn't the search engine already powerful enough without adding this capacity?
Voice search is increasingly used (20% of searches on Android according to a Google survey in 2019, estimates speak of 30 to 50% of searches made by voice). However, by speaking directly to Google, the Internet user no longer makes mistakes. There is no point then in integrating spelling mistakes into the pages of your website.
Google corrects many spelling mistakes made by Internet users during searches. You can see it under the search bar, above the results "try with spelling: [...]" And even if the Internet user makes mistakes in their query, the results are the same as those without mistakes (do the test).
As early as 2011, Matt Cutts, the voice of Google, explained that a good site is first and foremost about impeccable spelling and grammar. Otherwise, Google risks considering the site as low quality and gives it the (bad) SEO rankings it deserves.
