Grammar Matters, Even Online
Is it just me or does it seem like people have completely forgotten how to write properly? In today’s world of Instant Messages, text messages, and Twitter, shorter and faster communication seems to have become the norm, even when it comes to business communication.
For some reason Internet slang never really became part of my vernacular (it’s kind of like Spanish in that I can understand it, sometimes speak it, but rarely write it) and I guess I should consider myself lucky. For whatever reason it seems like I am receiving more and more letters and emails with blatant grammatical errors. I’m not just referring to simple mistakes like misusing their, there, and they’re or not using commas correctly. I’m talking about huge and obvious mistakes like Inappropriate Capitalization, misspelled words, and lack of appropriate structure. This has even been the case with some blogs and other online resources I have been reading lately. There is a very popular blog whose administrator writes effectively, but has a regular contributor that writes articles that are completely messed up from start to finish (by the way, if the contributor can’t write well, shouldn’t that administrator be acting as an editor?). It’s a shame because the ideas expressed on this blog are generally good and progressive enough to create a conversation about them.
When you don’t take the time to proof your work people don’t take you seriously. It seems like you don’t have enough pride in your own work to ensure that you’ve written it properly and I have trouble accepting that.
This is probably strange, especially considering my age and the fact that none of my peers care, but I always make sure that every text message I send is properly written, including capitalization and punctuation. Even though no one else takes the time, I want to make sure that I do so I don’t get in the habit of writing poorly.
We all work really hard trying to express ourselves and this is something basic that everyone already expects you to do. Please take a few extra minutes to click the “Spell Check” button before submitting something. If not for you, then do it for me. Even though it’s only a blog, or a Tweet, or an email, it all becomes a document and that document is black and white. There is no going back and now tangible proof exists that you don’t know what you’re doing (and that’s a shame because you’re probably very intelligent, but your shortcuts don’t back up that assertion).
I’m sorry to be preaching, but this is a very important topic that I think everyone can benefit from reading. I appreciate you and thank you for your time.
Grammar Matters, Even Online by David Kotowski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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July 18th, 2008 at 8:08 am
David,
Thank you for this stark reminder of the importance of grammar. I know I have made more than my fair share of errors along the way. I can not count the times I have hung my head in shame as I read previous post on my very own blog.
Thank you again for taking the time to write this. It was well worth every second.
M