Overview
Mistakes happen, especially in the realm of written communication. Whether it's a misplaced letter, missing punctuation, or the infamous "there" vs. "their," errors can slip into our writing without us even noticing.
But does it actually matter, particularly in professional settings? With spellcheck and auto-correct at our disposal, one might wonder if a few typos could truly impact our image. We decided to find out by running an experiment that measured how readers perceive individuals who make typos in their emails.
Mistakes happen, especially in the realm of written communication. Whether it's a misplaced letter, missing punctuation, or the infamous "there" vs. "their," errors can slip into our writing without us even noticing.
But does it actually matter, particularly in professional settings? With spellcheck and auto-correct at our disposal, one might wonder if a few typos could truly impact our image. We decided to find out by running an experiment that measured how readers perceive individuals who make typos in their emails.
The Experiment
We conducted a survey experiment with 400 participants from Amazon MTurk. Each participant was presented with a scenario involving a hypothetical work email from a boss named John. The email either contained three minor typos or was free of errors, randomly assigned.
Participants were given the following instructions. "Imagine that you work as a customer service representative at a furniture company. Your main job responsibility is to respond to customer emails about the company's products. Your boss, John, just sent you the email below." The email containing typos is presented below, for reference.
From: John Quentin
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020, 9:37 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: New Products
Good morning,
The company has decide to launch 3 new products, so we mihgt see an uptick in customer emails . Let me knw if you have any concerns or questions.
Best,
John
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020, 9:37 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: New Products
Good morning,
The company has decide to launch 3 new products, so we mihgt see an uptick in customer emails . Let me knw if you have any concerns or questions.
Best,
John
After reading the email, participants rated their perceptions of John using 1-7 survey scales, answering the question "To what extent do you think each of the following words describe John? (1 = Not at all; 7 = Extremely)."
The four words included the following:
The four words included the following:
- Smart
- Nice
- Likable
- Trustworthy
Results
Our findings revealed that typos do matter. In fact, they have a measurable impact on how recipients perceive the email sender. Making four typos in an email, even if you're the boss, resulted in a 21.5% reduction in perceived intelligence (-1.18 points on a 1-7 scale; p < 0.001), a 5.7% decrease in perceived niceness (-0.32 points; p = 0.009), a 9.0% decline in perceived likability (-0.49 points; p < 0.001), and an 11.2% decrease in perceived trustworthiness (-0.62 points; p < 0.001).
The effect on perceived intelligence appeared to be the most significant. Making four minor typos was sufficient to substantially decrease how smart our email sender seemed. Interestingly, all of these effects were consistent across participants of different ages, genders, and education levels.
It's possible that making just one or two typos could produce smaller (or even no) effects. However, other studies we've conducted, such as mixing up there, their, and they're, show similar results.
Conclusion
While the occasional typo may not have a dramatic impact on your image, our study demonstrates that it's prudent to be mindful of errors, especially when striving to appear intelligent and professional. So, before hitting that send button, take a moment to double-check your emails to ensure that your message is clear and error-free.
Methods Note
Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses were used to test for significant differences in perceived intelligence, niceness, likability, and trustworthiness between the typo and no-typos conditions. For significant differences, the difference between the two groups' averages would be large, and the corresponding “p-value” would be small. We consider a p-value of less than 0.05 to be representative of a statistically significant difference. This means that if we were to repeat the study with the same population, we would likely observe a similar effect. We also conducted OLS regression analyses with interaction terms to assess whether differences between specific groups (e.g., men vs. women) were statistically significant.
Additional details are available on our methodology page. Data and survey materials are available upon request.