How much do you care about how correctly you write?

[Richland123]

Proper writing has been a part of many of my jobs over the years and I make an effort to do it. Sometimes, I catch myself type something incorrectly and I will go back and edit it.

I was in the printing business as a typesetter and I would have to take raw copy and spell the words correctly as well as put in proper punctuation.

In another job, I wrote contracts and purchasing documents which needed to be concise and meticulous.

After that, I had a position where I was called the department wordsmith. My job was to write marketing and legal documents, letters, phone scripts, service level agreements, contracts, and advertisements. I also rewrote materials that other people would provide the draft copies to me for review, editing, and final publications.

I have also written and presented speeches, press releases, and other public relations work.

 

[Bob_Ross]

Do you care? Not at all? A little bit?

I care a lot. Arguably too much: It can be as much a curse as a blessing, but I rarely send an email or post on an internet forum without doing a cursory spell-check, grammar-check, and proof-read. Perhaps comes from growing up with a Mom who was an English teacher. And then at least in the case of forum posting, I almost always go back and edit it ~10 seconds after I first post it!


[Edit: Sure enough, I went back 10 seconds later to add that tidbit about my Mom.]

 

[dwm74]

I too care more than I want to at times. Sure, a quick post here or on other forums may not require the same consideration and careful wording as an official memo or report, but I still try to get the wording 'just right'. Do I succeed every time? Prolly not.

In the last two places where I worked, I've corrected enough emails and letters that I'm the one that is asked to proofread all interoffice notices and such. I take pride in that and am appreciative that others notice my efforts and ability enough to ask for my input.

 

[Nedmundo]

I've practiced law for six years, taught writing classes at two law schools and a community college, written lengthy materials for bar exam preparation, and worked with dozens of students on their college essays, so yes, I care a lot about writing properly. It's been central to every phase of my career.

But I try not to be uptight about it in daily life. That isn't terribly helpful to anyone. Somewhere, I heard that Oscar Wilde said he didn't trust anyone who cared more about proper grammar than having a good time, and I agree! (I couldn't find this quotation, but it seems like something he would have said.)

 

[Tom Bomb]

In a similar fashion, two so Wilde quotes,

On art:

Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror.​

And to Whistler's boy:

Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.​

 

[Ostie]

When I was still working I wrote a lot. Articles, reports, labels, etc. They were always subject to review and editing so I had to mind my grammar and punctuation. My biggest problem now is that I use an IPad instead of a standard keyboard and I get to typing too fast and use standard strokes that don’t exist on the IPad keyboard.

It’s very difficult and irksome when posters don’t use punctuation, paragraphs or proper spelling in their posts. Many times I just bail and move on to the next post. I don’t have time to try and figure out what the post is about.

I just had to go back and make about a half dozen corrections on the above paragraphs. Auto spell is both a blessing and a curse.

 

[Richland123]

 

[Mike N]

I try to write the same way that I talk.

If I did that, no one would understand me. In real life I stutter like Porky Pig and that's something I don't wish on anyone. Luckily my keyboard works better than mouth does.

What's kind of funny is I failed English in High School but somehow later in life I managed to become pretty good at reading and writing. I try to write or type things out correctly and if something doesn't look right, I'll go back and change words or my phrasing to make it look correct.

My neighbor, otoh, texts all shorthand. Instead of saying something like "Are you going to see...... " , she will text "R u gng 2 c......"

Ugh, that drives me nuts.

 

[fhm555]

In my time in manufacturing I produced several operation and maintenance manuals that were adopted by the machine makers. My brother once had a full time job translating the writings of rocket engine designers from engineer speak to ordinary human english.

 

[blastoff99]

View attachment 4179643

Yeah. I made an it's/its error on a paper my sophomore year of high school. the teacher handed it back with a big red F at the top and "no redo" written underneath. That was the only error noted. I asked her about it later, and she said "You know better, I know you know better, so this was a mistake of carelessness. I bet you won't do it again."

I think I haven't.

But I also know that it's probably not fair to hold other people to the standard to which I hold myself. I had a good public school education and no learning disability and was encouraged to do a lot of reading from a very early age. This gave me some big advantages. I'm not going to give anybody a hard time online because I don't know about their background or that English might be their fourth language or that they have learning disability or maybe it's just been a terrible day and honestly who cares about spelling right now. I don't want to ever make someone feel unwelcome or unworthy to inhabit the corner of the internet in which I find myself. If somebody asks how I'd word something, or how to punctuate it, I'm glad to help. But unsolicited advice just makes me look like a jerk.

 

[Jeff Scott]

If I did that, no one would understand me. In real life I stutter like Porky Pig and that's something I don't wish on anyone. Luckily my keyboard works better than mouth does.

A longtime friend of mine has an extreme stuttering problem, he was always like that. So, email, etc. has been a savior for him.

 

[equill]

My neighbor, otoh, texts all shorthand. Instead of saying something like "Are you going to see...... " , she will text "R u gng 2 c......"

Another colleague sent me a few emails in SMS-speak. After the third or fourth, I replied in an over-compressed version that made her emails look positively loquacious.
After that, every email she sent me was in perfect English (yes, I already knew it was her native language).

 

[equill]

But I also know that it's probably not fair to hold other people to the standard to which I hold myself. I had a good public school education and no learning disability and was encouraged to do a lot of reading from a very early age. This gave me some big advantages. I'm not going to give anybody a hard time online because I don't know about their background or that English might be their fourth language or that they have learning disability or maybe it's just been a terrible day and honestly who cares about spelling right now. I don't want to ever make someone feel unwelcome or unworthy to inhabit the corner of the internet in which I find myself. If somebody asks how I'd word something, or how to punctuate it, I'm glad to help. But unsolicited advice just makes me look like a jerk.

Agreed.

If I know that somebody had a similar background to mine and they just can't be bothered, then I'll absolutely judge them for it.

If it's somebody's second (or subsequent) language, I often find a kind of charm in the way their background shapes the way they express things in English. Sometimes there's a kind of accidental poetry to it.
Besides, given that I'm at survival level in maybe two languages other than English, and I can embarrass myself in a few more, I can forgive an awful lot from people who speak my language better than I speak theirs.

After the topic came up internally a few times at my last company (we expanded into a few countries over the years) my stance on correcting non-native speakers is that I'll do it if they tell me they want it, and try to stop short of being an obsessive jerk. Otherwise, I'll only set them straight (discreetly and diplomatically) if they've made a significant gaffe or miscommunication.

Come to think of it, I ran into another consequence of sloppy use of the language: non-native speakers learn from native speakers, and many of my colleagues were learning incredibly bad English as a consequence.

 

[Jeff Scott]

I am going to start writing like this from now on>

 

[equill]

I am going to start writing like this from now on>

View attachment 4180400

Never did get into Pitmans, but Teeline has been a huge help for me over the years.
Of course, the trick is to transcribe it as soon afterwards as you can, so the context is still fresh.

 

[Polfuste]

As a non-native, I have to thank you all for the quality of expression on TB; that has helped me a lot to improve my english level; only by reading you all. As i use english everyday in my work with some other countries from which people are non-native (and mainly technical english), our goal is to understand ourselves the better we can. So few years ago it was sometimes a stange mix.
Then little by little, by reading TB, I've understood better and better. So I try too be the most precise and exact in my post. I still have a weak point with tense, but i'll try to improve

 

[marchone]

I found that the amount of precise detail I included in each email was unimportant. These were all highly educated people, but they never read anything other than the first few sentences. Auxiliary detail and second paragraphs simply did not exist for them. Everything was skimmed quickly, and important details went unseen and were the subject of many follow-up questions, even though the information had been provided.

Bingo. This was almost exactly the same conversation I had with my attorney sister a couple of days ago. Your solution is very similar to my own learning curve when email was new to now.

Whether in an email or a newspaper, very few people read past the headline and lede. Many editors count on that fact to mislead the reader. (NYT: Oh, we reported the new details in para 14. Meeting the letter of the law but not its spirit.)

 

[charlie monroe]

In my limited experience wandering this blue marble I have decided that ESL people welcome correction and are often grateful.

I have received scant thanks for correcting a native English speaker and have often been met with hostility when trying to "up their game".

 

[rtslinger]

Unfortunately, it really depends upon my current location. If I am at the office and just drop in to post a quick response and bounce out, I do what I can. That seem to be most of the time.

 

[blastoff99]

As a non-native, I have to thank you all for the quality of expression on TB; that has helped me a lot to improve my english level; only by reading you all. As i use english everyday in my work with some other countries from which people are non-native (and mainly technical english), our goal is to understand ourselves the better we can. So few years ago it was sometimes a stange mix.
Then little by little, by reading TB, I've understood better and better. So I try too be the most precise and exact in my post. I still have a weak point with tense, but i'll try to improve

And this is why I get really cranky when content providers who should know better get it wrong. Not only is it a poor reflection on them (do they not know? do they not care?) and creates a trust issue with me, it perpetuates errors that help none of us.

Today I read an article by a national media outlet about an NFL player who suffered a terrible injury. The article described the injury as 'grizzly.' I could bear-ly keep myself from screaming; what kind of a clawd wrote that??? (Translation: the injury was grisly. I barely kept myself from screaming at the clod who wrote it.) This particular news source is hardly alone - errors like this abound, and since 'grizzly' is a valid word, spell-check isn't going to catch it.

But somebody should have. If your skills with language aren't good enough to keep you from that error, you should get an editor to save you. If your editor doesn't have the skills to save you, you both need new jobs - perhaps jobs that allow you enough time to read broadly, deeply, and often.

grizzly/grisly error from someone for whom English isn't a first language? Eh, I might correct in person if we have that kind of relationship. Online, no. Online from a native speaker? I'll make a pun and follow with a smile. Published by a big-time content outlet? Inexcusable.