Typos: Acceptable or unacceptable behavior?

Yesterday I sent an email to a business contact in which I made a simple typo: I used the singular of region when I meant to write regions. A small and understandable mistake, but I felt the need to send a second email calling attention to my error as if to make sure she knew I was not an idiot; I just neglected the poor "S" key. She responded kindly and all was well.

A few weeks ago I was on Twitter and made yet another typo. It was something simple like forgetting an "e" at the end of the word. I put up another tweet that corrected my mistake. One of my Twitter pals responded to me and said, "You don't need to correct yourself on Twitter; we all make mistakes."

Sure, we're only human. And as I said to the friend I emailed yesterday I think that in some way typos are more common because of the varied types of communications methods and the ferocity at which we communicate. Common, sure. But to the Twitter respondent's comment, acceptable? I'm not so sure.

Even when I tweet about silly things or hockey or my cat (ok, that's rare, but still...) I am a representation of my brand and my company and even ZDNet. One of the many reasons I try not to swear online (not that I would ever, ever swear anyway). Plus I do notice when other people use unprofessional speak or have a lot of typos. And it does, whether it should or not, influence my professional opinion of them.

What's never acceptable? Speaking like this: "how'r u 2day?" That will get you ostracized from my online life faster than a hockey puck flies off of Joe Thornton's stick.

What do you think?

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