How do you spell your country's name?

Recently, I received an official invitation to the Prime Minister's Conference, an annual business event hosted by the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute. The IEICI folks are usually very careful about the wording of their invitations and often consult with us about the protocol of addressing foreign ministers and heads of government. But there in the email subject line was:

Invitation to the Isreali Prime Minister Business Conference

One subject line. Two errors.

Aside from the missing possessive, the error that was really upsetting was that the host country's name was spelled incorrectly.

Many people go to a great deal of effort in preparing material for print, but skimp when preparing things for email. Perhaps it has to do with the hard cash that one hands the printer as opposed to the sense one has that email is free -- even though it isn't.

So let me caution you. Email is not an excuse for sloppy proofreading. If you value the content of your email and if you value your reader, don't press Send until you proofread the whole item:

• subject line
• names of sender and all recipients
• the body of the message
• your own signature
• the names of any file attachments
  

Unfortunately, most spell and grammar checkers review only one of the 5 items in the list. That leaves a lot of room for error -- aside from the inaccuracy of automated spell and grammar checkers.

And I'm sure you've seen your own shocking examples.

So proofread before you publish, whether in hard copy or in electronic form.