Spelling and grammar checking

Our marketing team uses Grammarly as a Google browser extension that performs spelling and grammar checks as you type. At a glance, Grammarly flags everything that is potentially misspelled or grammatically incorrect. If you’re editing pages, install this (for free) today.

Grammarly flags a considerable amount of spelling/grammar issues but it can’t catch everything, and like with any automated spelling/grammar checker, it has to be verified by human eyes for sense and relevancy. Grammarly also doesn’t automatically apply AP style rules. So be sure to reference the WSU Editorial Style Guide as well in your writing and editing.

None of us are perfect in spelling every word and placing every comma (and they’re easy to miss), but getting it right is so important as a reputable higher education institution.

A note about the editorial style guide

It’s important to familiarize yourself with the style of writing that our new sites use. While it’s not realistic that you would rush to memorize this, you can bookmark our WSU Editorial Guide to refer back to when editing and writing on the websites or in any WSU communications for that matter (documents, handbooks, etc.). Here are some of the common mistakes that you should keep an eye out for:

• Sentence casing page titles: e.g. This is a sentence case page title vs. This Is Not A Sentence Case Page Title
• Degrees should always be abbreviated: e.g. Ph.D. vs. PhD, M.A. vs. MA
• Semesters are not capitalized (unless beginning a sentence): e.g. fall 2020 vs. Fall 2020, spring/summer 2020 vs. Spring/Summer 2020
• Random capitalizations (especially department names): e.g. located in the history department vs. located in the History Department, students should take the following psychology courses vs. students should take the following History courses
  • Note: Department names are only capitalized when referring to the actual entity, i.e. the Department of Psychology.
• Official degrees are NOT capitalized: e.g. bachelor of science vs. Bachelor of Science

Why does this matter?

The same reason journals and papers have writing style guides – for consistency and formality. All of our new sites and pages have been completely converted into AP style. Introducing different styling by editors creates inconsistencies in our voice and tone, and harms our branding efforts.

Catching broken links

Although unavoidable to a degree, broken links look very bad and cause a lot of frustration and confusion for students, faculty/staff, and anyone viewing the site. While we’re implementing broader systemic solutions to address this, the Redirect Link Checker tool is another Google Chrome browser extension that allows you to scan the page(s) that you’re working on for any broken links – so that you can manually correct them as you go.

The tool will flag any broken links in red on the page that you scan. From there, you can correct or remove the link as necessary.

💡Tip: As you change/remove/update links, keep in mind anywhere else that those links might have been placed and be sure to update those as well. If you’re adding pages, pay close attention to the address structure, e.g. clas.wayne.edu/english/students. All of our new page addresses have been individually rewritten to ensure the best site performance and viewability in search (Google, etc.).

Thanks for reading along in our latest marketing tips blog! Have a question or need help with any of this? Let us know how at clas@wayne.edu.