I'm not talking to you, my perceptive and articulate reader. I'm talking about the rest of the world wherein poor spelling, abysmal grammar, and general sloppiness that appears to be the rule in today's discourse. There really is no excuse for misspellings in e-mail, blogs and web postings of any kind.
WORD has a built-in spell checker, as do many e-mail clients, and even blogging software. Use these tools, OK? You might also want to consider, looking up words in a dictionary, or, I don't know, PROOFREADING?
Every day I get e-mails from educated people who either can't or won't take the time to get it right. (And don't even get me started on folks who blithely say things like "mute point" and "overreaching objectives.")
Sloppy writing betrays contempt for both the reader and the writer.
And are minimum standards of grammar and punctuation too much to ask?
It's about clarity, proper speech, and good manners. Don't tell me these things are obsolete, because even if they are, I don't want to know.
I feel so much better now that I've got that off my chest.
2 comments:
My inner proofreader soars with delight whenever I see a typo in a well-known magazine or paper. I take the day off when I see one in The Economist. Yet to find one in the New Yorker, but I'd take the week off if I found one there.
At the other end of the spectrum, my blog is shot through with typos and I often re-read my emails and see stupid mistakes.
I guess my point is that even the best of us have an off day sometimes.
More importantly, there's a value calculation involved in checking for mistakes - you weigh the cost of making a mistake vs. the cost of taking the time to fix it.
For informal stuff like the blog or a friendly email - who cares.
As a professional proofreader, delivering paid work to clients, I have to be much more careful. However, it is very difficult to read your own work. A spell checker is a no brainer but I send most of my work to a proofreader before it goes to clients.
Even so, as with The Economist sometimes, mistakes get through.
I completely and utterly agree with your sentiment though. I look forward to the day when the perfect spell checker spots all my mistakes as I make them.
And I'll leave you with a tip: by default Word doesn't check most grammar points but a bit of tinkering with the spelling and grammar check options dialog will make it a much more powerful and useful tool.
Matthew:
Points taken. I am not demanding perfection because it is a ridiculous objective. However, I believe one should try to meet at least a minimal standard.
What really irritates me is the general sloppiness that is too often tolerated. I see egregious mistakes in what should be "formal" business discourse almost every day.
In the case of my self-published book, I proofed it, had it copy edited, proofed, and proofed again before uploading the "final" version. A sample copy revealed a few mistakes, which I corrected, as I did as well with two more sample copy cycles.
I'm sure there are still mistakes in it, however.
I'll correct them in future editions.
Bruce
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