Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will harm you.

For one week, I collated the emails addressed to me: Marylyn, Marylin, Merrilyn, Mariilyn, Merilyn, Sir/Madam, and many others with nothing at all. And the winner is Marylyn. It was used more than 15 times. My favourite was ‘Dear Sir’. Yes, I am a ‘Sir’.

You’re probably reading this and thinking, ‘Oops, that was me!’. I am also not exempt, as I misspelled a client’s name recently, too. I was in a rush that day. However, if you do it all the time, that’s when I begin to wonder.

Words, grammar and the structure of your CV and emails can harm your career prospects.

As I addressed in a recent Pro Bono News article, companies are looking for outstanding candidates with excellent soft (or enterprise skills). What is your soft skill of ‘attention to detail’ like if you keep calling me names?

The Google online dictionary describes attention as ‘the action of dealing with or taking special care of someone or something’.

You are letting yourself down before your CV is reviewed or progress to interview. Incorrect addresses or spelling infers that you need better attention to detail and that you don’t really care about your application to that organisation.

In addition, if you’re not writing correctly to me, then what are you going to be like writing to or for the clients of the business that you want to work for? It puts a question mark against you immediately.

When it comes to grammar checks, please don’t be completely reliant on the spell check, as it may change the word that you had spelt wrong into something that has no relevant meaning.

Additionally, simple inadvertent replacements such as ‘there’ or ‘their’, ‘great’ or ‘grate’, ‘weather’ or ‘whether’, ‘no’ or ‘know’ may change the whole meaning of a sentence or make it unintelligible.

Technology is still not quite a substitute for human proofreading.

So, take your time, slow down and read the client’s name properly, read the position properly, and read everything carefully. And please stop calling me names.

Oh, and that’s just emails this week that had my name wrong. I have not even started counting up the cover letters or other incorrect information.