Beleive it or knot the weigh you right tells your customers alot about the weigh you do business. Believe it or not, the way you write tells your customers a lot about the way you do business. A poorly written sentence with misspelled words and bad grammar tells your customers that you don’t pay attention to detail. If you are a home inspector or appraiser, a careless attitude is never the professional image you want to portray. Give your website and other business documents a more professional feel with the following ten writing tips for home inspectors and appraisers:

1. Check your spelling. If you can’t run a document through the spell check program on your computer, ask a coworker or friend to read through your writing and check for errors.

2. Be clear. Read your writing out loud. If it is confusing to you, or if it sounds choppy when you read it, your writing will be confusing and choppy to your customers.

3. Be brief. Less is always more especially when you are writing content for your website. Get to the point quickly and eliminate fluff.

4. Don’t capitalize random words. You only need to capitalize words that begin a sentence, proper nouns, and acronyms.

5. Write out acronyms. Write out the words and put the capitalized acronym in parenthesis the first time you use an acronym. Spelling out the acronym, even if you think everyone already knows what it stands for, is a professional courtesy. 

6. Keep it clean. You do not need to use the underline, italicize, and bold features or the exclamation point for emphasis. Good writing gets the point across without dirtying up the page with unnecessary marks.

7. Keep it clean, again. Although you may intend to be funny, bad language printed on a page or published on a website looks juvenile and unprofessional.

8. Use commas. Commas let your writing breathe. Use them to break up lists of words or to connect two sentences joined by “and” or “but.” Reading out loud will often help you determine whether a comma needs to be added in or taken out.

9. Have a personality. Professional doesn’t have to be stuffy. Writing that portrays your sense of humor or passion for your work will make an impression on customers looking for someone they can relate to and trust.

10. Forget the phobia. It doesn’t matter if you did poorly in high school English. People enjoy reading writing that is frank, honest, and simple. It doesn’t have to be flowery or perfect.