Last week I led my first live online class, Email Intelligence. A participant asked what to do to make people spell her name correctly in email. As someone whose first and last names are often misspelled, I empathized. But I didn’t have a good suggestion for getting other people to change their behavior.
Then yesterday someone I have known rather well for a couple of years spelled my name Lynne rather than Lynn in an email to me. Because it had happened before, I decided to take a small step. When I responded, I signed my name like this, with the parentheses included:
Lynn (without an e)
So if your name is misspelled, you might sign yourself:
Cyndy (with two ys)
Nathen (with an e)
Cathie (with a C and an ie)
Tony (with a y)
Marcia (with a cia)
Syd (with a y)
Kathryn (with an ryn)
I will pay attention to whether my friend spells my name correctly the next time she writes to me, and I will post a comment here.
Do you have ideas for getting people to spell your name correctly? How do you feel about my suggestion? Is it better to provide a correction or ignore the misspelling? What’s your view?
Lynn (without an e) Gaertner-Johnston (with a t)
Syntax Training