F7 your way to a better career

I find typos in e-mail annoying. It’s a distraction that makes it hard to concentrate on the content of the message.

Some people don’t care about e-mail typos. They either don’t notice them or don’t mind them. Perhaps the majority are this way. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the case.

Should you care about typos in your e-mail? Perhaps you should, for a few reasons. While you may not mind typos in e-mail, some of the people reading your message might. If that person is your boss or someone else important then you’re making yourself look bad. Typos in my opinion just make you look sloppy and less smart. People who are perceived as sloppy and less bright tend to not do as well in terms of career and salary advancement and job security.

Also, e-mail has a way of being read by people other than the original recipients. So your message may end up being posted on a department Wiki, or forwarded to people you didn’t expect to see it. e-mails can be distributed much further than originally intended. If your e-mail ends up “broadcast” out then I’d think you would want your writing to look crisp and polished.

There is an easy solution. You can make yourself look good with virtually zero effort. Before you send that e-mail, just click F7 in Outlook to run a spell check. It’s fast, and Outlook does all the work. The image you project at work is important. This is a very modest investment in your time that could pay off well for your career.