A Word Please

June Casagrande Three out of four executives surveyed said that just one or two typos in a resume is all it takes to put an otherwise qualified job applicant in the "fat chance" file, according to the Aug. 2 Los Angeles Times. And 40% of the 1,000 executives who participated in the recent Accountemps telephone survey said that even a single typo took a candidate out of the running.

A lot of people might think that pristine resumes and cover letters are hopelessly out of reach. After all, there's so much to know -- everything from whether commas go inside quotation marks to how to choose between "I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me" and "I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me."

But the truth is that most employers don't know any more than you do about such things. If you think that you need a bachelor's in linguistics to get it all right, think again. The only thing standing between you and a manager-approved resume is a little extra effort and one keeneyed friend.

For about 12 years off and on, I've worked as a professional copy editor and proofreader. In recent years, I've gotten really good -- good at catching other people's errors, that is. But my own work is a different matter. I make lots of typos, and I find it much harder to catch them.

We look at our own writing with a different eye. We're more focused on the big picture of what we're trying to say than the minutiae of whether every single litt le letter is just right. That's why a friend can often catch things you can't.

But anyone can overlook errors. That's why, even before you send it to a friend, you should do everything in your power to assure your resume is 100% error free.

Start by running spell-check. Your computer can catch some things the human eye can easily overlook, like repeated instances of "the" and "to," as well as easily misspelled words like "achieve." But spell-check won't necessarily catch "lead" in place of "led," "principle" in place of "principle," "lightening" in place of "lightning" and countless other little typos that plague people's writing.

That's 20why I believe that the most important thing you can do to assure a pristine resume is read it aloud. No, the aloud part isn't optional. By engaging your mouth, you force your eye to take in each word individually -- something we normally do not do when we read our own writing.

The most troublesome typos all involve apostrophes. The king of them all is "it's" versus "its." Remember that, contrary to how we usually form possessives, the "it's" with an apostrophe is not possessive. It's a contraction of "it is" or "it has" -- always. The possessive form used in a sentence like "The department met its goals" never takes an apostrophe.

"Who's" versus "whose" and "they're" versus "their" and "there" follow the same principle: If it contains an apostrophe, it can be expressed as two words. "Let's" versus "lets" is trickier because "let's" is a contraction of two words we don't use together much anymore, "let" and "us." The version without the apostrophe is a conjugated form of the verb "to let." So you'd say "Let's talk Tuesday" but "My experience lets me tackle problems effectively."

With just a few extra steps, you can avoid sending your resume straight to an executive's wastebasket.

And in case you're wondering, experts disagree on whether "I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me" is okay. But all agree that the version with "your" in place of "you" is a solid choice. And yes, in American English, commas always go inside quotation marks. Happy hunting.

June Casagrande is author of "Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs -- Even If You're Right." She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.