So, this is a message that I recently received when I clicked on the notifications icon on my Facebook account. My first reaction was to laugh at the ridiculous simplicity of the statement. My second was to think that this is the reason why good technical writers keep the user experience in mind. The ambiguous “that” in the Facebook message leaves the user wondering exactly what it is that they are not permitted to do, why they aren’t permitted to…

A little editorial oversight could have saved Sears.com and its customers from a very frustrating experience. According to this article, a pricing typo has many Sears customers up in arms: A [sic] online Sears ad that mistakenly advertised the 16-gigabyte, Wi-Fi-only iPad 2 for $69 — and got shoppers’ hopes up and orders placed — was retracted by the retail giant, which blamed a third-party seller of Apple’s popular tablet for an advertising typo. Since the ad came out, along with…

To Rule, Control, or Shower Upon – That Is the Question. Let’s talk about reign, rein, and rain – three homophones that are often confused. Recently, I came across this little snippet on the web in which David Beckham talks about his wife’s pregnancy and the problem with choosing a name for the new baby. The problem is in the first sentence, where he says that his boys “have taken the reigns.” (I’ll pretend I didn’t see the “when we…

Recently, Mashable.com ran an article titled “5 Marketing Jobs Worth Paying For”. According to the author of the article, Anna Lindow, “there are some areas of marketing in which the experience of a professional — administered at the right moment — can really make the difference between a polished, awesome product and a complete mess.” Guess what the top 2 jobs on the list are? Copywriting and copy editing, both of which are near and dear to yours truly. About…