I spend a good portion of my workday reviewing résumés and other written candidate submissions. Occasionally, I come across a misspelled word here or there, such as
responsibilities missing the last
i, or letters mysteriously switching places, such as with
teh rather than
the. (I plead guilty over and over to that one. My fingers sometimes moves faster across the keyboard than does the thought in my head.) Those types of errors can be corrected easily enough by using tools like Spellcheck. In fact, many word processing programs have such tools built into their systems so that as I'm typing this in MovableType, anything that might possibly be spelled incorrectly is automatically underlined in red to make certain that I notice it.
The problem with this is that many people think Spellcheck catches all the errors and then send documents without re-reading them. That's why I stumble across more and more instances of homophones. You remember those from grade school? A
homophone is a word that sounds like another word but has a different meaning or a different spelling.
The most common examples that I encounter over and over:
To, Too and Two
To is most commonly used as at the beginning of a prepositional or a verb phrase:
to the left,
to each person,
to be or not
to be.
Too is an adverb, usually indicating that something is more than enough (Mark's
too precious for words.) or is in addition to (He's smart,
too.)
Two is a
number.
----
Than and Then
Than pops up when comparing something: His eyes were bigger
than his stomach.
Then is most often used in discussing time or a sequence: Mark ate the apple,
then threw the core onto the compost heap before heading to his Brother and Sister-in-Law's new apartment.
----
There, Their and They're
There indicates a place or point (in action, in speech, in time): Mark traveled
there with his suitcase in hand.
Their is a possessive pronoun, usually indicating more than one person or thing: To Mark's surprise
, their apartment building sat across the street from a vacant lot.
They're is a contraction of the "they" and "are" and appears at the beginning of a phrase: "
They're paying how much for this place?" Mark said under his breath.
----
Stationary and StationeryStationary is an adjective used to describe something that is in a fixed position or unmoving: Mark remained
stationary on the sidewalk, staring at the dilapidated apartment building.
Stationery refers to writing materials, including letterhead and envelopes: Mark pulled the letter out of his pocket to re-read the address on his brother's personal
stationery, the one with a skull and crossbones across the top.
The point of this post? Take the time to re-read your résumé or any correspondence before sealing it in an envelope or clicking the Send button. Better yet, have a friend take a look at it. A different set of eyes might catch something that you missed. And it will make my job much easier.
One aspect of customer service that should be on every website is the Help Text. And it should be easy to understand and to use. I've tried the Help section on a certain search engine and found myself ready to toss my laptop off the balcony and into oncoming traffic because the help prompts locked me into a never-ending loop of "not quite what I was looking for". To make things worse, they didn't offer an easy way to contact them with queries; everything had to go through their click-button, automated help system.
Social Bookmarks
It's actually true, as you can judge by this picture of me. Too many hours spent in front of the computer, on the phone, running back and forth to the fax machine to the copier to the testing room and back to my desk not only makes someone dull but grumpy, as well. And not nice to work with at the office. All that stress can make a person snippy with co-workers or negatively affect how a job is done or even wreak havoc on phone conversations with disgruntled customers.
But such usage can also have negative effects for a business or corporation, and that's humorously depicted during the last 15-20 minutes of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latest film 
