Is your workers' writing creating wrong impressions? - poor spelling, grammar, and other writing errors can be an embarrassment to the company and should be corrected - Managing Your Small Business - Brief Article

Nation's Business, Dec, 1995 by Roberta Maynard

Thanks to computer technology that has led to e-mail and the ability to write business letters almost instantly, it has become increasingly easy for employees' poor grammar and spelling to slip out the door unchecked.

"This means an employee who is a poor writer could embarrass you and your organization," says Don Bagin, publisher of Communication Briefings, a business-communication newsletter in Alexandria, Va. "Poor writing could lose a potential client or alienate a current one," he says.

Here are some tips from Bagin to help you keep employees' writing in line:

* Conduct quality checks from time to time to find out what kind of writing goes out from your organization.

* Offer training for employees who need writing help.

* To head off problems, consider giving job applicants a short writing test, even something as basic as writing a business letter or summarizing a report.

* Equip your computers with programs that can check text for errors in spelling, grammar, and style. Remember that spelling-checkers are no guarantee of accuracy because they can't catch correctly spelled words misused in context. So encourage employees to check all written communications the old-fashioned way--by proofreading them carefully.