Business In Washington - Business Operations & Management Consulting

I just received an email newsletter from a local business (who shall remain nameless, but not blameless) with this statement: “SMILE your on CAMERA!” I groaned and decided it was time for a blog entry. This was one time too many. Ignore the poor punctuation, with the badly needed but missing comma after the word “SMILE”. It’s the misuse of “your” that has caused me pain.

The last time I saw this blatant error was on a sewing show. I love to sew and am addicted to the Saturday morning quilting and sewing shows on PBS. The show in question was focused on a project combining quilting and embroidery. It used the following saying (with their spelling): “In the crazy quilt of life, I’m glad your in my block.” The mistake stuck out like a sore thumb to me, but apparently the show hostess and guest both missed it. This was not only printed, but machine embroidered on a detailed project - on silk, no less. I winced.

This isn’t that hard, folks! “Your” is a possessive. Your stuff. Your project. Your whatever. “You’re” is a contraction of “you are”. Very simple, right? It amazes me how often these two very different words are mistakenly interchanged. Perhaps it’s because spell checkers don’t catch this.

The Word Cop sympathizes with the challenge of correct word usage and spelling in a rich and complex language such as English. But she also deplores the sloppiness that allows so many errors, and in business documents! Lots of us do spot these errors, and what kind of impression are we likely to have of your business?

Business owners, take heed!