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There can't be many people who haven't by now seen the 'damming' spelling mistake on Wednesday's BBC Ten O'Clock News.

If you haven't, here it is.

Does it matter? Well, yes. As the former BBC newsroom editor John Allen points out in his Good Writing Guide:

"Silly mistakes ... because of inattention or ignorance of small details detract from your authority on the big things.

If you can't get a title right, how can the audience trust you to get the more subtle stuff right?"

It's always mattered ... but there's another way in which small but glaring mistakes can affect the BBC's reputation.

CoJo's Tom Fredericks, who's currently working on learning materials about social networking, took a look at how people on Twitter were talking about the mistake.

He writes that it "illustrates how Twitter can shred reputations in an instant". 

"No-one on the team spotted that on the main opening screen graphic the word 'damning' had been misspelt 'damming'.

Within seconds, there were dozens of tweets claiming the demise of high journalistic standards at the BBC.

After 15 minutes, there were hundreds of similar comments - followers and followees all alerted to an apparently small - but very big - mistake."

You can find some of the comments here. Every one is a reminder of how much audiences care about accuracy in spelling and language - and how easy it is now for them to shout very, very loud when they spot errors. 

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