If you have not heard by now, President Barack Obama recently made a controversial statement on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.  He mentioned that he has been practicing bowling but said that he is not very good yet.  He compared his bowling to “Like the Special Olympics.” If you watched it you could almost hear millions of Americans groan in unison.

While most agree that it was an unfortunate choice of words that were not meant the way they sounded, it has created a backlash effect.  The White House has issued an official statement apologizing for the statement and stating that it was not intended to offend anyone. Of course the whole country seems to be talking about it. It remains to be seen if the Special Olympics or any other groups will pursue the issue further.

People are misinterpreted all the time and as a website owner how do you keep it from happening to you?  After all, misinterpreted content on your site can have negative effects as well. You could loose customers, those customers could tell others, etc. Before you know it you could have a mess on your hands.

Here are a few things to keep in mind to avoid misinterpretations.

• Check yourself. After you write any content for your site look it over for yourself to see if it makes sense and is clear.
• Do not over analyze. Do not go over your content to the point where you drive yourself crazy. If looking it over a few times does not produce anything that stands out chances are there is nothing to worry about.  Besides if you are a business owner you probably have more things to do than you have time for and should not neglect other duties.
• Get other people to check your content. Just like you looked over you content a few times have some other people look it over and see if it makes sense to them.  You do not have to get hundreds of people to look it over, three or so people should be more than enough.  If they give the thumbs up then you are good to go.

The President was on live television but fortunately you have the chance to review your site content before it goes live. Take the opportunity to avoid any embarrassing mistakes.