Real Estate Web Design

I recently saw this blog post, which I found to be hysterically funny, over at Agent Genius. Go read it, it will make your day. It made me realize how often I see mistakes in other blogs, as well as in emails and other types of online communication. I think that typing makes people less worried about misspellings, incorrect word usage, and improper punctuation than if they were writing by hand. You know, like we all did back in the day... "which was a Wednesday, by the way," according to Dane Cook.

Anyway, here are the first three tips in a series of three. In case your math is worse than your grammar, that's nine tips total.

1. Don't Space Out Over Spaces

All sentences and paragraphs need spaces, and you should probably use them properly to avoid irritating your readers. One thing that I see frequently that annoys me is spacing that changes throughout a document. For example, I have seen documents where the writer uses double spaces after each period until about halfway through, and then switches to using a single space after each period. That annoys me, and I can't imagine that I'm alone on this one. So here are the rules for spacing.

• Each word gets one space after it.
• Sentences can have either one or two spaces after the period, as long as you are consistent. The rule used to be that you needed two spaces but it has since changed. I think either is acceptable. Personally, I do two spaces because that's what I'm used to.
• Colons get two spaces after them, like a period.
• Commas, apostrophes, quotations and all other punctuation get one space after them.

For more on spaces, check here.

2. Spell Check is Your Best Asset

I know you thought it was your amazing ability to balance a spoon on your nose, and while that might impress the ladies (depending on who you're dating!), it certainly won't help you look like the polished, educated, professional real estate blogger you are. When your blog or email or, yes, even your property listing, is littered with misspelled words, it makes you look careless and rushed, and possibly even less intelligent. Just to clarify, even one misspelled word can cause that impression. That's why I so highly recommend spell check. I know for a fact that Outlook and Word contain spellchecks, and so do the most popular blogging platforms. So there really is no excuse. Which brings me to my next tip...

3. The Importance of Proof-Reading

As we all know, spell check is not fool proof. Sometimes you can accidentally allow it to replace a misspelled word with a word that doesn't make sense, you can accidentally type a word correctly correctly twice, or you can leave out a word altogether and that can cause a lot of confusion. I always reread everything I type after I run spell check, just in case. Also, if it doesn't make sense written down, read it out loud. Yes, the person in the cube next to you may think you're temporarily insane, but at least the recipient of your letter (or your blog readers) will have a good impression of you!


If you're looking for spelling errors, you won't find any. But have fun looking anyway. Who knows, you might find something else that's wrong *wink, wink*. Check back next week for more of these cool tips, and let me know if there's one in particular that you want to know more about.

Labels: Blog Mistakes, Grammar Errors, Real Estate Blog