Spelling is interesting.  Misspellings bother some people more than others.
I can read a mispelled word without skipping a beat, but get stopped short
on a "wrong word choice" (there/their/they're being the most common I see in
email and network newsgroups.)  Others are different.


    That said, I stand by my original statment: In the
    absence of other information, the written communication
    you provide is the *only* way a person can judge you
    or your skills. If presented with only limited
    information, and forced to make a choice, I'll select
    the person who seems most polished, professional and
    capable for the job. Part of that impression is the
    way they spell, punctuate and construct sentences.

Um, in the absense of other information, I won't be hiring anyone, thank you
very much.  It generally takes two rounds of interviews to get hired here,
and that's AFTER your resume gets screened and probably a short phone
interview. The on-site interviews usually involve half-a-dozen interviewers
whose style will vary from "an interview should be worse than a thesis
defense" to "we want this person to work here, and should convince him how
much fun it is."  Of course "technical communication" can be different than
"mailing list multlog", and there are plenty of people who can explain a
technical issue but not write a coherent "essay", and WAY too many people
who can spell fine but can't implement or explain technical issues.

THAT said, there are certain documents that you should NOT contain
significant spelling or grammer errors, regardless of your nationality,
native language, or how many times it takes you to get it right.  One of
those documents is your resume.  I wouldn't necessarilly diss a resume that
had the right skills on it but had gratuituous spelling errors, but the
people who feel that way are NOT the people who do the initial screening of
resumes in any company of reasonable size.

BillW