Searchmetrics “Changes cannot be saved” error message

You know the drill. You encounter a problem with a popular app, and a quick search reveals someone else has had the same issue. That solves it. So when I was working on a document in Searchmetrics, a massive SEO tool, and this kept popping up …

Searchmetrics error message

… I was surprised to see not a single mention of the issue anywhere. Very strange.

The issue is in Searchmetrics Content Manager, within Content Experience. It allows you to write SEO-friendly copy by cross-referencing yours with existing content covering the same subject. The full text is:

Changes cannot be saved to an outdated version of the content. Please refresh the page to view the latest version first.

Error message, Chrome browser, Searchmetrics, Windows 10

Well, I finally got to the bottom of it, and it turned out to be down to an annoying habit of mine that I can’t shake off.

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My top twelve English corrections

English is always changing, so today’s common corrections can easily become tomorrow’s accepted forms. It’s precisely how we’ve arrived at where we are now. But there’s a core to the purpose of any language, and that is that we all understand it so we can communicate. We accept variations from the mean, but stray too far and meaning can change. Some people say we don’t need apostrophes as the meaning is always obvious from the context. I’d say that’s true 99% of the time, but there are always borderline cases where it can cause confusion, so it’s better to have a rule and accept that it might sometimes be disobeyed (wilfully or erroneously) than to simply abandon the rule altogether.

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