Freelancers.co.uk
 
    Building a credible web presence.
  Pay attention to the smaller details!
                               [This article previously appeared in InternetDay e-zine, August 31st, 1998.]
By "smaller details" I mean your own style of writing and making sure your site contains no grammatical errors, the punctuation is correct, and the spelling is precise. Too many fair-to-average sites, and even good ones, can be "flawed" by clumsy editing and inappropriate "solecisms" of style and grammar.

It used to be common to see this wonderful oddity: "Fish & Chip's"! It's still common to see the personal pronoun "its" spelled as "it's", for example: "Looking at it's salient points from another perspective…"

A good rule to remember is that it's only verbal contractions (it is, it has = it's) that take an apostrophe. The only personal pronoun that takes an apostrophe is "one's" - there is none for hers, its, theirs, ours, yours.

Building a credible web presence means paying proper attention to detail in all these areas. I recently discussed a web site with a webmaster who asked me to take a look with some pride at a panoramic vista (created with ShockWave) he had designed, showing a 180º wide-angle view of an exclusive harbour and residential area. The site had been designed for a firm of upmarket estate agents or realtors. He had overlooked one major spelling error; the view was described as "this wonderful panoramic veiw"!

Being precise and accurate

Yesterday I checked my email folder and looked at yet another business opportunity that was seeking my attention. I got just as far as these words before deleting that particular message: if the creator of the email couldn't be bothered to spell words properly, my attention and interest immediately waned to zero. The following are some examples:

 To succeed on the Internet you need to apply some of those good, old-fashioned principles just as much as you would in the non-virtual world! You probably know that certain words cause spelling problems. Once these have been noted and learned, your ability to notice them with minimum effort improves dramatically. Here's a one-line test to check your spelling skills:

Unparallelled accomodation offerred for embarassed, harrassed comuters.

If you're excellent at spelling, you'll have no problems. But equally, don't worry if you're not 100 percent proficient at it (very few people are). Spelling improves with practice and a good dictionary is essential if you are uncertain about certain words such as, for example, microorganism, millennium, deoxyribonucleic acid, Ljubljana (somewhere in Jugoslavia or Yugoslavia) or even if you think there might be two instead of three h's in Khruschchev. (One-line test: Unparalleled accommodation offered for embarrassed, harassed commuters.)

Use a dictionary to check spellings

A golden rule is always to check a word in your dictionary if you are in doubt about spelling accuracy. In the US, Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary is a useful reference work; if in the UK, try The Oxford Writer's Dictionary. You can't rely on Spellcheckers although they can sometimes help.

Punctuation

Your web site needs punctuation too if you want to make the sense of written words clear. The guidelines are still common sense and readability, and as a general rule you should keep punctuation to a minimum. This subject covers periods or full points, commas, semicolons, colons, quotation marks, apostrophes, parentheses and brackets, dashes, ellipses, numerals, dates, capitalization, time and money, foreign languages, etc. There is no need for slavish accuracy; just make sure that there are no errors or omissions, as these will detract from the attractiveness of your site.

Consistency

Remember the golden rule of consistency. You should not have "15 m" on one of your web pages and "25 metres" on the next. If you want to be taken seriously when you design your site, ensure (much in the same way as an editor would be concerned to achieve accuracy and consistency) you do the following:
                         1. Make your style consistent and strive for clarity of expression
                         2. Check headings and subheadings
                         3. Check grammar and syntax
                         4. Check for layout errors (and cross-browser compatibility)
                         5.  Avoid ambiguities, anachronisms, contradictions, repetitions, etc.
By paying attention to these smaller details, you will ensure that your web site presence is a credible one, and that you have taken sufficient care to deserve to be noticed!

Article by Bill Critchley, Author and Managing Editor of freelancers.co.uk. a NEW website offering courses in freelance editing and proofreading - the complete guide to freelancing for publishers. Ideal if you want to work from home or develop a second income opportunity. A U.S. version (American English) is available too. Whatever your interests, enjoy the stunning views of Santorini, the Greek island in the Cyclades!

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