It's not that hard to press F7

I'd love to say that when I go meandering through the personal ads in my local weekly rag's electonic version, I look at humor, sense of adventure, personality, and the values. I'd also like to meet Stephen King in person some day and ask him, writer to writer, man to man, what the hell screwed him up when he was a kid. And while I'm dreaming, I'd like a pony. A demon pony. Named Sprinkles.

Shockingly, I tend to look at the surface to decide whether or not I'm interested in someone or something. When I pick up a book I've never read (and there are many, many books I've never read), I flip to pages one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred; never the front two chapters. I read those pages, and if I like them, then I buy the book. If I don't, it gets shelved somewhere awkward, preferably where an employee can fume silently about its placement. (To be entertained by the sheer frustration on the face of an easily infuriated librarian or dedicated bookstore employee, slip an Amy Tan into the Maxine Hong Kingstons).

The same really does go for the people I choose to do business with. You may have the most fantastic sell in the business; the most brilliant concept alive, the most creative team in the universe...

...but you mispelled "hot dog" by typing it "hot dpg".

So, when I look at personal ads on the Internet, I also tend to look at how often the writer uses proper English, good grammar, or stock phrases like, "LOL", "ROFL", or my personal favorite, "but whatevah". I tend to snag on mispelled words, poor grammar, punctuation errors, and the like. The occasional mispelling can be overlooked.

The same is true in any business proposal I get. A mechanic cringes when the gear shift moves from first to third and grinds; I cringe when I hear a native English speaker write with the grace and skill of a well-trained chimpanzee on hard hallucinogenic drugs.

I will concede the saving graces of dyslexia, dysgraphia, and simple, "Oh, it's the Internet!" attitude prevalent over the last ten years in business society. The Internet was a toy; not a business tool. But when a well-known author publishes a book for teens first on the Internet as a free PDF download BEFORE it is sold to a publisher, one might treat the medium with a bit more respect.

I also should note that it is a sad day when a man who spoke nothing but Mandarin five years ago now writes better English than my former landlord, and speaks it beautifully; just with a thick, thick Mandarin accent. Yet my landlord is far more incomprehensible in both spoken and written language. Those who choose to communicate choose to do so with caution; those who babble just babble.

I comprehend the stated needs of the denziens of Twitter; MySpace, FaceBook, and other social networking applications in the Web 2.0 environment, who believe that since it is a SOCIAL networking site, one can't possibly hold the sloppy language (and certainly not the photos of someone doing a tequila bong) against the individual professionally. I just think they're completely, naively, destructively wrong.

I know that the phase shift from the litter box of social networking sites to the clean sandboxes of social and business networking like Biznik require a bit more than the dashed-off blog post. Hence, my admonition, my request, my upon-bended-knee plea:

Take the two calories of effort to extend the social finger of your right hand a scant four centimeters north, and depress the key that on most standard English keyboards, reads "F7". Take the next thirty seconds to follow through on the spellcheck. Hundreds of software geeks laboriously hand-coded it into a standard on nearly every software program in existence. Use it. It's like the turn signals on a motor vehicle; they are meant to be used. Not left off while your vehicle of thought goes skipping in and out of traffic. You may know EXACTLY where you're going, but your cohorts on the road think you're an idiot.

To wit: there is no time out of your day that is worth skipping the one simple step of setting your spellchecker and giving your emails, your blog posts, your brief notes a fast, quick, spellcheck once-over.

I always wonder why the people who see me show up in jeans and a t-shirt to meetings sneer at my appearance before I pass over a manuscript drenched in purple ink (I choose to use purple for basic "you're wasting your money on me" edits, green for suggestions, orange for changes, and red for critical errors).

It may be one of the most important things you ever do at the end of every email, every blog post, every single communication you ever do. Reread your words; scan them twice, and then hit F7 to start your spellcheck. Have a dictionary bookmarked in your favorite browser, and a thesaurus linked as well.

It's as simple as remembering to pull your skirt down or zip your fly when coming out of the bathroom. Most professionals are as cautious with their professional appearance as a runway model; not checking the language before you hit "send" is about as silly as not checking your shoes for toilet paper.

Hit F7. And remember to flush (your cache).

(A side note: if you can find the four spelling and grammar mistakes in this article, you may have both a cookie and a ride on Sprinkles.)