Reading and spelling – red flags of communication issues
I was delighted to discover that a local cafe have changed the huge sign over their shop from ‘Breakfast-Lunch-Diner’ to ‘Breakfast-Lunch-Dinner’. Prominently displayed for a year, I wondered what message it conveyed about the shop AND the local community to prospective new shopkeepers thinking of moving to the town. Last year a take away restaurant in nearby Cambridge changed their window poster menu from ‘desert’ to ‘dessert’. For a moment I wondered if it might be too ‘dry’ for my taste. Whilst initially one just has to laugh, there could be a serious and unpleasant aftertaste to their communications, and those certainly need to be avoided. Embarrassment should NEVER end in SHAME, but it might.
An empty local shop still gives a phone number for ‘enqueries’. I thought about calling them to say “the word is spelt with an ‘I’ ” . I feared the response might cause a change to ‘inqueries’ rather than ‘enquiries’. Confusion can occur very easily but it can be avoided using professional help. For many in the UK where we are blessed with a great multicultural and accessibility aware population heritage, a readers first language may not be English, they may be more familiar with ‘US English’ or they may have dyslexia. In the latter case, whilst there’s a lot of help for dyslexics in schools, these challenges do not disappear when the student becomes a worker. Awareness needs to become action, so that we build on initial understanding. The English language is so bizzare! One would naturally think that the stem of writing a query, asking a question, should mean this typo is correct – but it is not. So, what about nquiry or inquiry? Our language is still developing. Usually asking a question is enquiry and a formal INvestigation is inquiry. Sick and ill used to be the same meaning, but now they have diverged in meaning. It can become quite confusing.
An empty local shop still gives a phone number for ‘enqueries’. I thought about calling them to say “the word is spelt with an ‘I’ ” . I feared the response might cause a change to ‘inqueries’ rather than ‘enquiries’. Confusion can occur very easily but it can be avoided using professional help. For many in the UK where we are blessed with a great multicultural and accessibility aware population heritage, a readers first language may not be English, they may be more familiar with ‘US English’ or they may have dyslexia. In the latter case, whilst there’s a lot of help for dyslexics in schools, these challenges do not disappear when the student becomes a worker. Awareness needs to become action, so that we build on initial understanding. The English language is so bizzare! One would naturally think that the stem of writing a query, asking a question, should mean this typo is correct – but it is not. So, what about nquiry or inquiry? Our language is still developing. Usually asking a question is enquiry and a formal INvestigation is inquiry. Sick and ill used to be the same meaning, but now they have diverged in meaning. It can become quite confusing.
There are two things you can do when you find issues arising:
1 Source HR courses about dyslexia for managers to understand the issues a worker might have and what, as an employer, you can put in place to help. For some, coloured screen filters might help. Access to an ‘challenged spellers dictionary’ might be more useful than a standard dictionary, because unless you can spell quite well, accessing some standard help is not easy. Testing the employee to find out exactly what their dyslexia is like for them. It is your duty as an employer to provide reasonable adaptation for people with ALL accessibility issues, not just physical challenges. For translation issues, don’t assume there are never simultaneously going to be dyslexia issues too. There are helpful ways of correcting errors over time – at a pace the foreign student of English can cope with and appreciate, not fear and stop communicating. Offering and receiving help, like communication, is a two directional medium.
2 Employ or contract a company to proofread your output copy – especially for nigns, notices, leaflets, brochures and powerpoint/slide presentations. Most printers will put the onus to check details back on clients responsibility to approve a sample before they commit to print. You could end up quite embarrassed by readers getting the wrong impression about your company AND with two full run printing costs – for the original mistake and the replacement leaflets or catalogues. In this paragraph, I will use all three versions of ‘to, too and two’. Writing or texting in note form might create additional expenses where using ‘two’ inappropriately might in itself double your costs again potentially giving you a 4x cost! Do not assume that the printers must employ expert spellers! They don’t, and with predictive text generating some howler alternatives and human nature tending to ‘read what we want to read’, rather than the actual words, mistakes do occasionally develop. There are occasions too when two words next to each other printed too closely together, convey a different meaning. The end of one word joined to the beginning of the next by inappropriate font and spacing, could in itself cause embarrassment. A trained copywriter will be more alert to potential issues and help you convey your message clearly.
If you want to get it right, ask for a copywriter who understands your business language. Right?
Leave A Comment