Creating a good impression
- Is your writing like the swan or more of an ugly duckling?
At school, I got in trouble for being a pedant.
Friends would enthusiastically push their essays under my nose and say “what do you think of that?” When they realised I thought it was good, except for “the missing full stop here, the spelling errors here and the poor syntax almost everywhere” they didn’t seem so happy. Even if I could tell what they were trying to say and thought the ideas were really great, the observation of spelling and grammatical errors always dampened the mood.
I was a geek, a boffin. I was the party-pooper highlighting errors and inaccuracies while everyone else just wanted to get on with stuff. It didn’t make me popular and it didn’t make a great impression on fellow students. Outside of school, I find there are still a large number of people who don’t consider good spelling and grammar a top priority. I’m fine with this, so long as these people aren’t relying on their writing skills as part of their job.
If you work in customer service and need to write letters, every spelling error, typo, or grammatical clanger will be posted out as a representation of your entire company. If you paint signs on the road, any misspelling will reflect badly on your employer. If you work in marketing, PR or copywriting, it can be the kiss of death to your career! I have seen or heard about all of these things happening to all kinds of people.
Whilst it’s true that writing ‘their’ when you meant to write ‘there’ won’t bring about the apocalypse, it will create a bad impression of you and your company for the people reading it. Every blog post I publish puts my reputation on the line just as much as every piece of work I submit to clients. It’s the same for all forms of written communication that people use in the course of their everyday business. Not everyone will notice the occasional small error but they can change the meaning of an entire article or distract us from what the writer is trying to say.
Conversely, we’ve all come across pieces of writing that are just perfect. Writing that is easy to read and understand, engaging, with a nice flow or rhythm. This is good writing – using grammar carefully and breaking the rules only to create special effects.
If you’re worried about your use of grammar and spelling it might be worth investing in a proofreader. They can highlight any inaccuracies and assess your writing in a way that automatic spell checkers can’t.
Alternatively, you could go back to school, read some books or maybe go on a writing course?
If you’d like to ask questions about grammar or share your own ‘favourite’ grammatical bugbears please use the comments section at the bottom of this post. If you’d like to hire me for a proofreading or copywriting job then get in touch!
