Did you know that typos are one of the three fastest ways to undermine website credibility? The others are out-of-date content and amateur-looking design.

Typos are particularly off-putting to users who are new to the site. Imagine you are congregation shopping. You find two equally attractive websites for churches. The theology of both churches is similar and both are the same distance from your home. However, on one site you notice a couple of typos. Which congregation are you more likely to visit first?

Yesterday I subscribed to my own blog newsfeed. To my horror, reading it in a different presentation (Google Reader), I discovered three typos. While this will never be my strong suit, I am resolved to do better. And let me share some techniques with you, so you and your church webmasters won’t make the same mistake.

A Priority Checklist for Trouncing Typos

  1. Have a good, reliable editor. Cherish that editor. Two (or more) sets of eyes are always better than one. Alas, this isn’t a viable option for my blog, but you better believe I always run copy for my congregation’s site past one of our wonderful editors.
  2. Spell-check in Word. It’s a pain copying and pasting Word documents into blogs and content management systems, because of the nasty formatting code that is likely to carry over. However, in my experience, nothing else is as good. (If you know of something better, please do tell.) To shed the odious formatting, I use a series keystroke commands, so it’s very fast:
    1. Copy all with Ctrl-A (Apple-A on a Mac) and then Ctrl-C (Apple-C).
    2. Paste into a text editor (like Notepad or TextEdit) with Ctrl-V (Apple-V).
    3. Copy all from the text editor and paste into the blog or CMS.
  3. Wait a day. If you don’t have an editor, postpone your final proofreading. Sometimes that’s not possible. But for someone like me, it’s a best practice. Try not to do a lot of stylistic edits on the final proof. If you do, it’s advisable to wait yet another day.
  4. Read it in an alternate format. You could print it out. Or if your blog application has a “Post Preview” feature, you can use it. The catch with this is I often find things I want to edit, but then I do it in the blog, skipping Step 2. That’s fine, as long as I do one final copy and paste from the blog back to Word before pressing the “Save” button.
  5. Read your copy backwards, one paragraph or sentence at a time. You’ll be less likely to start skimming.
  6. Practice. Write regularly. The more you write, the better you will get. That’s actually one of my motivations for doing this blog. I love to write, but don’t have many opportunities.

The bottom line is don’t do as I’ve done. Please do as I say.