Courtesy of Marcia Yudkin, The Marketing Minute:

Occasionally I encounter marketers who insist spelling doesn’t matter. “No one really cares,” their argument goes. “Typos humanize the copy, and besides, everyone knows what we mean.”

Oh, really?

* In 2004, Judge Jacob P. Hart of Philadelphia slashed the fee due an attorney in half because of overabundant typos.

The lawyer lost $31,350.

* In Britain, DDS Media had to destroy 10,000 spelling game DVDs whose cover misspelled a popular TV anchor’s name.

* A Wisconsin-based editor paid an executive recruiter $1,720 to spruce up her resume and send it to 200 potential employers, only to learn that the resumes went out containing a section of gibberish. The editor sued the headhunter for more than $75,000.

* In 2005, a trader on the Tokyo stock exchange intended to trade 1 share at 610,000 yen, but instead placed an order for 610,000 shares at 1 yen each. The firm’s loss: around

$18.7 million.

* A spell-check service whose motto is “no more embarrassing errors” itself uses “then” where “than” is correct. Will potential clients really laugh this off?

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READ MORE: For additional stories about the high cost of typos and a checklist on how to avoid them, go to:

http://www.yudkin.com/typos.htm