Due to the fact that the spelling polish in Spanish still has, in the Latin American business environment, low levels of attention, accidents constantly occur in communication that sometimes affect the public image of the person signing the document and other times, cause considerable economic losses. Behind a spelling mistake in a public letter, in an advertisement or in a print, real dramas occur that sometimes have intangible costs when they affect the public image of the person signing or in others, perhaps the majority, they have large economic consequences.
To illustrate these statements we tell three real stories, in which we have changed or eluded the real names of the protagonists for obvious ethical reasons, since it is not about victimizing more those who have already suffered the natural affront of their mistakes. The president of the advertising services agency VAN TWO, Rodrigo González, in a letter addressed to the magazine of the advertising medium M&C regarding the results of a contest, wrote: We feel that you unconsciously made a wrong decision, that you are not going to -do- accepted by us and today the… This error, in a communication from the president of an advertising communication company, which is supposed to use the Spanish language with probity, generated any amount of comments and was the subject of jokes and criticism on FACEBOOK and TWITER, not only by people in the advertising medium but also by university students.
In a full-page advertisement published in almost all the Colombian press, the former rector of a university, who was facing a judicial process, tried to clarify his actions, unfortunately, in a letter where more than 160 grammar and spelling errors were counted, fact which was also a source of ridicule on the Internet and, to add to the shame, analysis material in the Spanish department of another university.
Another misspelling cost a South American cell phone company several million. The Vice President of Marketing went to his President to proudly show him the “beautiful” envelopes already printed where the account statements of more than two million customers were to be dispatched. Unfortunately, on the main face of the envelopes, in prominent letters, appeared the phrase: Choose your postpaid plan. A secretary experienced in spelling showed, book in hand, that the correct conjugation of the verb choose, in the imperative mood was choose and not the wrong one that appeared on the envelopes. The envelopes had to be repeated and the error, which involved the advertising agency and the Vice President of Marketing, cost several million, delays in the dispatch of invoices and consequently affected income flows.
The three facts mentioned above confirm the need to pay permanent attention to the spelling check of all the writings of companies and organizations, especially now, when an error in this field can cause derision in the Internet media (Facebook, Twitter, etc..) affecting, in unknown dimensions, the public image of the entities or people that originate the errors.
