A lot of people make use of a shorthand of sorts on the Internet. This has derived from communicating via the keyboard and not being able to type as fast as we talk. This is great for text messaging and using your favorite Instant Messaging client to chat with friends. Yet it doesn’t seem to look that great in your online dating profile, when used exclusively. Remember not everybody is going to understand it and won’t take the time to figure it out.

Take some time with your profile. Make it readable. Try to tell a compelling story. Let your prospects know what you are like. Give them a reason to want to get to know you further.

You can be cutesy if you want. Like typing in all lowercase or even messing with your punctuation. You are entitled to have fun. Show some personality in your online dating profile. But, please spell-check your profile entries or have someone do it for you. You are after all trying to make a good impression.

Poor spelling just makes things hard to read. At least for myself, when I see someone’s write-up with glaring spelling errors. It screams I don’t care and neither should you. It probably shouldn’t but it does. Most of the time you just need to quickly reread what you just typed. Many of these typos will jump right out at you.

Three ideas for online daters with poor spelling while typing skills are:

1. Type your answers into your favorite word processor and use the spell checker. Then cut and paste it into the online dating sites web form.
2. Get yourself the Google Toolbar. It has a spell checker for web forms.
3. For Internet Explorer users get IESpell. It installs a button into your IE browser that lets you spell check your form entries.

For longer online dating profile entries of a paragraph or more, I tend to use #1. For shorter text box form entries I tend to use #2 or #3.

Oh, one other thing. If you find a spelling error in the above post, kindly keep it to yourself.