By Nici Bruckner

Jewelry is one of the most misspelled words in the English language…. so how DO you spell it and how SHOULD you spell it if you are selling jewelry online? The source of the confusion, is like a diamond, multi faceted.

Firstly, we have the confusion caused by the MAKER of Jewelry…. the Jeweler. Note the “e” after the l…. so it makes sense that what a jeweler makes is JEWELERY right? Common mistake. A jeweler in fact, makes jewelry “The jeweler loses ‘e loses the e” when making jewelry.

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Secondly, we get Jewlry – people have imprinted on their brain that something has to go from Jeweler to make jewelry so they not only take out the 2nd “e”, they remove the first one. Thirdly, we have the confusion that is British, or international English vs American English. I’ve never understood why British English is referred to as international English. Internationally, more people speak American English than British English.

A lot of the software I use does come with an international English spell check option… The International Spelling of jewelry, is jewellery. As in many cases with International English, they go and add an extra “l”. So whilst jewellery is not a misspelling everywhere else, it is in the US. Always a misspelling, is Jewelery, but it’s so common as to be allowed by many spell checkers – as a I type this article my own American English spell checker is passing it.

Then we have the plethora of Minglish (mangled English) versions that whilst phonetically pretty good, are pretty ordinary spellings, such as jewree, dueree, djioulery, jooleree. So if you have a website selling jewelry, how should you spell it?

First, consider your target market, and how do they spell it? If you are US based, use Jewelry. If you are outside the US…. I’d still use Jewelry instead of Jewellery, unless you are in The UK, Australia or New Zealand because more of your clientele are going to use US spellings, rather than international spelling. If you are trying to ensure that no matter where your website clientele are they see their own spelling of jewelry, you could try something like what this site is doing  – wholesale Jewelry. They use site programming to detect what country the user is in, then show the end user the spelling correct for that area.

Now if only Google had regional search engine robots, as well as regional search engines, then this creativity would be rewarded with higher rankings on relevant terms in those countries, rewarded for using the most popular spelling for that country.

Of course, regional search engines such as Badu will see the different spelling and reward it, as would search engines like web wombat… But Google runs all its search bots from the one IP, in the USA, so its only ever going to see the US spelling. Some sites, just spatter all possible spellings everywhere on their site – which though it makes the site owner appear dyslexic, is not such a bad idea as it give your site a chance of ranking for all the different spellings. So, its up to you, choose the course that best suits your business model.

Just don’t use Minglish… as I write this I’ve just receive an email offering me a great deal on some bootiful jewry, and there is a good chance I’m going to pass on that offer.

Nici is a former silversmith and jeweler (In fact a former Jeweller as at that time she was based in Australia!) now operating her own website promoting the jewelery industry in the US.

Article Source: here

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