“… an economy fueled by current inflation and perceived labor shortages…”
Notice the spelling errors in the above statement? A company staff member may have started their business document from an online template, or a document used previously for an American client. In this case, they failed to realize that the template used American instead of Canadian English. For example, the Canadian spelling of fueled is fuelled; labour is the Canadian alternative to labor. Business documents need to promote a professional image. Whether it’s a Business Plan being submitted to a financial institution, or a Request for Proposal to a potential client, it’s important the document be clean of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary will be the best reference when in doubt of the Canadian spelling. The link below has some common variations of Canadian/ American spelling.
http://www.lukemastin.com/testing/spelling/cgi-bin/database.cgi?database=spelling
MS Word automatically shows incorrect spelling, however most computers use a US keyboard. Never rely on spell cheque to validate language differences as legitimate words may not be identified as an error (example above in red). The only true method is to read and re-read.
Stay tuned for more business writing blogs.
