Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Been a while, time for a chuckle... Ah, that pesky missing "L"

I don't know, is this funny or just sad? Spell Check is obviously not your friend. Just do a search on "Pubic Accountant" in Google.

You will get about 127,000 hits. Many of them listings for actual Public Accounting firms or independent CPA's (Certified PUBLIC Accountants) announcing their services to the web surfing world. Ah, that pesky missing "L".

It occurs in text of city, state and federal goverment sites. For a nice example, text search this page: http://acc.ohio.gov/bdmn0904.html.
They have three instances on the same page!

It is in myriad employee biography pages. In fact, one CPA lists his memberships as -- Member : AccountantsWorld, American Institute of CPA's, Michigan Association of Certified Pubic Accountant's

Why type it out the second time you list it when you've abbreviated it in the first instance? Is this to clarify that in Michigan they really aren't "Public" accountants?

It's in the html page title of many, many accounting firms. Moving too fast to double check this? Got a posting deadline that is looming? Folks, give your text copy or html to someone else who hasn't been typing or reading it multiple times and pay attention to the all too easy error of the missing "L" in public. Seriously, it just doesn't look professional even if it does give someone a laugh when they are stressing out at work.

Foreigners are susceptible to this as well, unfortunately. You will find listings from Canada, Australia & Korea. Just to name a few.

And, to give credit where credit is due, I got onto this tangent by way of a reference to www.webpagesthatsuck.com. An excellent site to look at if you are responsible for any web design or content management. (-:

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