when words count

"Impact PR’s work in crafting the content for our web site paid for itself almost immediately." Rob Fields, MD Fields Tiling Sept 07

As with food, fashion, toys and technology, language goes through fads. However, in business, it's never fashionable to use language incorrectly, especially words with not quite the right meaning. For the people you want to influence, what they see and understand from your web site, brochure, flyer, sales materials or media release creates their perception of you and what you stand for. You only get one chance to get it right. Here are some really common mistakes popping up all over the media, in advertising and on the Internet. CD's  - unless the  compact disc owns something, the correct plural of CD is CDs. The same goes for potatoes, tomatoes, pizzas. It's - English is one of the difficult and illogical languages in the world today. If you put an apostrophe followed by an "s" after "It", it means "it is". If you want to show that something owns or belongs to something like a dog's collar. This means the collar that belongs to the dog. Confusing huh? "Fewer" versus "less" - here's another common mistake cropping on radio and starting to creep into common usage. The correct way to use these two words is to always use "fewer" when describing multiples of actual things and "less" when qualifying something abstract. e.g. As the price of fuel rises there will be fewer cars on the road as more people take public transport. There will be less burden on the road network when people abandon their cars for public transport, now that fuel prices have hit the two dollar per litre mark.