A must read for all

Nice Nice... Good to rephrase all these things !!

Thanks for the read. I totally forgot all about grammar that i learned in high school. But if there's one thing that i do know, it's that good grammar doesn't belong on a sales letter.

One not mentioned that I see all the time -- in fact, even earlier today here in the forum -- lose and loose.

Lose means that you "failed to gain or retain an item."

Loose means that you "set it free."

TBH, I don't think most people who "lose" something did it on purpose. :p

I know what you mean Bill.
In another thread earlier today someone called someone else a looser.......lol

For me, I used to have a problem with principle and principal until I learned the mnemonic that the "principal" of the school was my "pal".

Never made that mistake again.

Thanks for the read. Is anyone else carefully watching what they type just in case they write something that makes them look stupid in a thread about grammar?

Can I ask why? If anything, shouldn't you be as careful as possible to have accurate spelling and grammar in a sales letter?

English is not my mother language. So thanks a lot!

Awesome, thanks! Definitely a good read.

Very good article and an interesting read - thanks.

Will

English buffs (purists) are tormented to no end over the attacks on the internet towards the English language. I think they are getting worn down because the complaints that I see are getting less and less...

I really liked the article and the thread. The use of the word nauseous was a surprise to me. I'm going right back to study the article.

It's true that much of the grammar in peoples copy is awful. But I think people almost expect that of the internet nowadays, so I'm not convinced it does a huge amount of damage to sales/conversions. Unless you're selling courses teaching English I suppose.

"and" let's not forget the mistakes made with "then" and "than" also...
"of" and "off"

I never even knew what the word moot meant until this thread. Fortunately, in most cases, my browser typically prompts me with big red squiggly lines under any words I spell wrong or sentences I construct incorrectly.

I came across this digital product that had gotten massive amounts of high exposure - news media, radio, yet it didn't pull more than 40K last year.

When I checked the sales page it was riddled with spelling errors. I was surprised that this guy had even gotten that much money for that year.

Not that he wasn't bright, or his information wasn't any good, I think most people that bought the product loved it, yet his sloppy page drove most people away.

Earth to warriorforum... not everyone is a native speaker. I totally agree with 'webfuel', "But I think people almost expect that of the internet nowadays".

Point is, as long as you can get a point across, as eloquent as possible [so not tryna wryte lyke dis and hide yo mistakes], there is a big chance that people will just ignore the flaws.

If I had to stop reading every time I'd see freaking spelling errors, grammatical flaws or, and this one is very familiar for not-English speaking members, the mixing of native and English grammar, I can't read a thing OTI.

However, some self-criticism on this front: as a not-native-speaker, I often see my own mistakes after proofreading [if I read once, I already get most of the faults out of my text, if I read twice, there will not be any [maybe 1 or 2] mistakes in the text.


Last thing I'd like to add: you're welcome < -- > your welcome; alright < -- > all right; then < -- > than; genius < -- > genious ; succesful < -- > succesfull ; ofcourse < -- > of course.

That was all from the top of my head. For the people who have absolutely NO problem with piracy, I can just say... oxford dictionary. Download it and you can even know the pronunciation... LOL, IS IT PRONOUNCIATION OR PRONUNCTIATION????

Spelling and grammar do go a long way....it amazes me how much some people overlook it and think that the product will sell itself...people will judge the product based on the sales page and effort the creator has put into things like spelling and grammar. I always have someone proof read and ask for suggestions.

very nice post indeed. But these were common mistakes not now.

Interesting
Thanks for sharing
Lexilou

Nice one, thanks! I always believed that good English makes the perceived value of anything higher, whereas bad English..

However, I have to say that a lot of native English speakers that I know (not necessarily on the forum) fail miserably at grammar, compared to non-native speakers, which I think is quite a paradox.

I am, admittedly, being very particular here, but isn't there a difference between spelling, grammar, and usage?

Than/then, they're/there/their, your/you're, and to/too/two seem to fall under usage (possibly spelling, at times), and not necessarily grammar. A fine point, and it probably doesn't really matter what you call it; just something I was curious about.

All the best,
Michael

Thanks, but what does grammar have to do with marketing?

A great read Kim and I'm probably guilty of some of these. I love the 'anxious' one - I'm anxious to see my friends - what are you scared of them?????

Lose/loose - is one that I HATE! I have a website in the weight loss niche and when I visit other sites or forums I hate when I see people say that they want to loose weight! It's LOSE weight dummy!!!! Yeah I'm sure you want your pants to become loose, but you actually lose weight you don't loose weight!

I think most people who are native speakers forget grammar. For marketers, its important to have good grammar when communication by email but for the purposes of sales letters, sometimes breaking those rules will serve you better.

Thanks Kim, great read.

English is a second language to me as well, so this article comes at the right time. I always try to write and speak correctly so some of the mistakes outlined in this article are an eye opener.

thanks

Good article, especially for me, since i'm not native English speaker and most of this language I have learned not in school but from the Internet.

If you have more articles like that I will be happy to read them ;-)

Kim,
Great read. I even bookmarked it for future reference. The ones that bug me are usage errors, such as your/you're, which are all too common. Too/to is common also, but that could simply be a typo.

I came across this earlier in FB, and found it very intriguing.

There are so many rules in the English language (and exceptions as well) that it'd be pretty difficult to condense everything down to a short and manageable list.

When you add the different spelling and word usage in the different variants of English, that compounds the issue even further.

Hey this is really good share man... I make some of the mistakes here... Thanks...

Yes, but did all you guys know that there is actually a psychology to a sales page letter with maybe 1 or 2 misspelled words that are there intentionally to get your attention? Advanced IM 101 .. not sure where I found the info it was years ago.

Case in point. Just for the fun of it

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are in; the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a ttoal mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

Great read.

Another one is alot, there no such word in the English language, is should be a lot.

I have heard that English is the hardest language to learn to write because of all the exceptions.

This was an interesting piece of information. Really helpful for me specially!

I like the weigh or I mean the way Michael Oksa thinks. Very funny!!

To all those who are trying to convince themselves that grammar, spelling, and usage isn’t all that important, I go back to the old adage that airline passengers equate coffee stains on the seatback serving trays with shoddy engine maintenance.

In my own defense, and perhaps no-so-secretly the defense of others, I would like to take this opportunity to disclose that most of the time when I am on the Warrior Forum it is in the middle of the night, after a couple of glasses of wine.


Also, when it comes to spelling errors, I am originally from Oklahoma, and now live in Texas... And sometimes I spell words the way they sound.


I'll never forget my heart breaking at 5 years old, when I found out that Kindergarten was not a garden named Kinder, and "pillow" is not spelled "pell-o" :p

It always amazes me when I read a sales copy or product that has gotten rave reviews or is well known but has terrible spelling and grammatical errors. I can't say that I'm always correct in my writing but you would think you would catch such things like receive/recieve or to/too.

Seen / saw are ones I hear often. Regardless / irregardless, is another.

Thanks for sharing.

On the other hand:

I once read in a book by John Maxwell the story of a company who had hired a new salesman. It goes something like this.

They sent him off to Chicago to sell the company's product and he was to send in a written report every day. His manager (who also hired him) was astonished when he got the written report. It said "I just finshed sailing the product and they rellly liked it. The said they want to by a milun dolars of it. Tomorrw I will go to New Yark and see if they want to buy any of them".

The manager couldn't believe it. He had hired an idiot. He was torn on what to do though because his new salesman had just sold a million dollars' worth of product. But at the same time he couldn't let this illiterate keep working there.

So he decided to explain to the CEO that he had made a mistake and let him make the decision.

The next day the manager was astounded again when there was a big written note on the bulletin board from the CEO. It said "it has come to my attynshun that we've been spending too much time worring about speling and not enough time worring about sayling. We need to sayle more!"

can't believe they missed;

there, they're and their.

..but as mentioned, that article was about poor word choice, not grammar!

Thanks for sharing, that was a good article. I'm glad to see they listed "affect" and "effect".

If they would have gotten into common misspellings and not just grammar, they would have listed "alot" since that's how a lot of people spell it, it should be "a lot" with a space between. And yeah Bill, you're right, I see a lot of "loose" and "lose" confusion.

RoD

Nice post! A must read article.