AN INBOX FULL OF CRITICISM

Okay, so I have three Rhode Scholar friends and two editors who frequent my blog. They have all been ribbing me about my spelling. Seriously, I arrive back from St. Bernard's to find notes from each of them in my in-mail box that basically say the same thing: Love your blog, some interesting posts but you need an editor!

I know this site is filled with a variety of errors due mostly to my lack of typing skills. I’ve corrected many, but know many more errors still abound. When Edand Mark point this out to me I get annoyed. Now I am just paranoid! The truth of the matter is that I am a three finger typists, I rarely look at the screen, hardly ever review before pressing send and hope the spell checker in Firefox is working! Obviously my rush, poor typing skills and over all laziness has caught up with me.


Anyone who exchanges messages with me frequently on MSN realizes jsut what a messy typist I am. My J school typing instructor (yes it was far enough back that we studied typing (not keyboarding) and shorthand) Ricky Collins would be aghast!

All of this leads to an important question: How important is proper grammar, spelling and word usage in blog communication? Seriously, William Shakespeare invented 1700 words that appear in his writings. If he could misues grammar and create new words, why can't I? Yes I realize I am not William.

I agree that it’s important to communicate effectively in all writing, but how distracting are things like typos and how important is it to always follow the proper rules of grammar? Clarity is important but it’s not necessary to adhere to the rules to be clear?

If your site is a commercial one I think proper grammar, correct spelling, and using words correctly is essential. Not doing so would cause your business to be seen as less than professional. The occasional typo is probably fine, but an over abundance of mistakes conveys a very amateur impression.

I ’m much less concerned with them on my personal blog. Blogs are generally written much more informally and as a result I think grammatical mistakes are much more likely to be forgiven and even enjoyed as they can often provide a glimpse into into the personality behind the blog.

One of the common rules taught to me in school that I have always broken is ending sentences and phrases with a preposition. I’m aware of it almost always when I do it, but it sounds more natural to me and it makes its way often into my writing.

Perhaps It’s something that I should work to correct as long as it does not impact clarity of purpose.