subject: Good Spelling and Why It Counts [print this page] Good Spelling and Why It Counts Good Spelling and Why It Counts
While it is your own page and you may design it however you like, keep these facts in mind when you use a free website generator.
Hard to Find
Ask yourself why you are taking the time and effort to build your own free website. If you are just looking for a place to express yourself, spell however you like. That said, even a personal website can build your web presence and even make money for you through advertising. When you publish something on the internet, you usually want it to be found. This can be problematic if your site is called "Rebecca's Darck Layre" and most of the words are misspelled. Search engines use web crawlers that analyze the text on your site and use it to rank your page in the search results. Nobody will find your page searching for "dark lair" if you don't spell those words correctly.
Spelling also counts when you host advertising on your page. Your friends and family visiting your page will not be enough traffic to make advertising pay. To make any kind of money from your site, you need to direct web traffic to your site. This is why search engine ranking is important. Not that you need to cater entirely to the whims of bots and crawlers, just make sure your site is search-engine-friendly by spelling properly.
Errors in Translation
The web is a busy place full of people from all around the world. Many people speak English, but many more do not. Fortunately, there are online translation programs and sites like Google Translate that can allow interested parties to read your personal website in their native language. The text may loose some meaning in translation when properly spelled, but it can become indecipherable when spelled poorly. Translated to French, "Rebecca's Dark Lair" becomes "Antre Sombre de Rebecca," or "The Dark Cave of Rebecca." The meaning is largely the same. However, "Rebecca's Darck Layre"cannot be translated into French at all because the dictionary used by the program does not contain the words "darck" and "layre." Likewise, all misspelled words will remain untranslated. The final result will be a hodge-podge of translated and untranslated words, impossible for anyone to understand. Learn how to make a website translation-friendly, and you will increase web traffic.
Easy Readers
Believe or not, most of the people on the internet do not read very well. This is partly because so many people are not native speakers, and English is a difficult language to learn. Even native English speakers may be poorly educated or have reading disabilities. Whatever the reason, the average internet user is not reading at a college level, and many aren't even reading at a high school level. For this reason, it is important to keep things simple. Remember that you want to attract new readers, and people who can't easily read your website will probably leave quickly and never return.
Keep it simple. Spell properly, use smaller words, and keep your sentences short and noncomplex. Don't get too carried away, you aren't writing for small children here. Just make sure that your paragraphs are short and that you explain the bigger words when you can.
Does That Word Mean What You Think It Means?
When using particular words and turns of phrase, you may want to Google them before publishing. If you are trying to sell a wheel barrow, listing it as a "wheel barrel" is not going to help much. Song lyrics and certain phrases are frequently misheard and then written incorrectly. These miss-hearings are referred to as mondegreens. One of the most common mondegreens seen on the internet is the phrase "for all intents and purposes," which is frequently misheard as "for all intensive purposes." Learning how to make a website is easy, but watch out for silly mistakes.
