Most of you who know me know that incorrect grammar usage and misspelled words on a web site are bugaboos for me. And my mind will quickly discredit any information I find on the web that contains such things, no matter how otherwise well-qualified the author might be. It’s my belief that if you care about your audience and about your writing, you’ll take steps to ensure that it’s correct in every aspect. Nothing destroys credibility faster than misspelled or incorrectly used words.

So here is my quick and dirty run-down of the top ten most common grammatical errors, misused words and misspelled words to help you on your way to better cred. :)

In this day and age of instant gratification (do you, like me, stand in front of the microwave and holler “Hurry UP!!!!”?), it’s nice to know that there are still a couple of things you can do to improve your web site’s visibility and performance in the time it takes you to heat up a Hot Pocket™! So, what are you waiting for? Get that Hot Pocket in the microwave and let’s get busy!

1. Validate your stylesheets. You’d be amazed at the number of errors that can come to light by just running your stylesheet through a CSS Validator.
2. Validate your HTML. Like with the stylesheet, the HTML validator will point out all your HTML shortcomings. Maybe you forgot to declare a DOCTYPE or a character set? Not to worry. An HTML Validator will shake out those errors and omissions and get you on your way to validating code nirvana.
3. Use ALT tags in your images! If you ran your site through an HTML validator, and you didn’t use the ALT tag with your images, the validator probably let you know it straightaway. Not only will this help your readers who may be using a text-based browser, but it’s also another clever way for you to put relevant keywords into your site for the spiders to gobble up. Be kind to your screen-reading visitors and be kind to the spiders.
4. Proofread your copy for grammar nits and misspellings. Nothing loses credibility with your readers faster than a site with grammatical errors and misspelled words. I can forgive you this transgression if you are a 13-year old with a MySpace page. A reputed authority on [insert your field of expertise here]? Not so much.
5. Have a way for your readers to contact you. They might have a question for you, might want to hire you, or might want to report a site malfunction. Give them an easy way to contact you either with a contact form or a handy email link (and you can munge your email address so it’s invisible to those evil spambots, yet fully functional for your readers to click and open their email client).

Jacob Cass at JustCreativeDesign.com is holding a charity event celebrating his blog’s first birthday (Happy Birthday, Jacob!). And Pixelita Designs is sponsoring a couple of really cool prizes to help Jason and his readers celebrate in style!

Of course we can’t top the $1200 Olympus digital camera, but we can come close! We’re donating one free blog makeover for your WordPress, TextPattern, Movable Type or Blogger blog. This is a $650 value. It includes one custom design by Pixelita’s graphic artist, Ivan Minic, coded to your blog platform of choice, retrofitting any plugins you currently have. We’re also donating one Flickr Pro account, a $20 value!

So how do you get your meathooks on these and the other 66 prizes? Jacob’s made it very easy. Just donate to Blog Action Day Poverty Fund or if you’re short on cash, write a blog post about design, design theory or something similar. So you really have no excuse, and you just might win something. (When people get together to give, EVERYONE is a WINNER; there are NO LOSERS.) So what are you waiting for? Head on over to Jacob’s place and make your contribution now!