At Coracle Group, our business is to make your business look good. Our experts help you create great branding and support it with consistently polished public relations and marketing campaigns.

We’ve noticed that the same few usage errors keep popping up in published content including website copy, sales presentations, articles, white papers, blogs and advertisements. These bugaboos can cause even experienced journalists and large companies with huge ad budgets to goof occasionally in public.

This may look like small stuff, but what good is a great idea or product if it isn’t described in a way that builds credibility for your brand? Factual accuracy is important, but so is execution. Would The Wall Street Journal  be as trusted if every page contained a dozen mistakes in usage?

Here is our list of 10 common usage errors, which a computer spell check won’t always catch. Avoid them to look like a star and say what you really mean. (Of course, we’re glad to help you draft and edit your marketing and public relations copy–digital or print. If you have a specific usage question, post a comment or email us, and we’ll try to answer it.)

1)     Its/it’s. These two words are frequently confused. Although they look interchangeable, they are very different. “It” is a singular pronoun standing for, or referring to, something else. She grabbed the tablet computer and dropped it in her briefcase. “Its” is an adjective indicating a possessive. The smartphone was missing its protective case. “It’s” abbreviates two words, “it is,” so use this contraction only when you could just as easily substitute both words. It’s too late to catch that plane. Read the rest of this entry »