Does Spelling and Grammar Matter?

I need to preface this post by stating that I’m not the grammar police and my spelling and grammar can be shocking at the best of times!

Today I was reading a blog of a Twitter friend and noticed a few typos.  Being a busy mum I was sure it was done in haste.  As I felt I knew her well enough, I thought I should quietly mention it to her and did via Twitter.  After doing so, I regretted it immediately.  However, in the end she was fine with it, explaining that Blogger no longer has a spell check feature.  To be honest, I will probably never do it again.

As usual, I threw the question out to Twitter and received a range of responses:

This has made me wonder if it really does matter.  On Twitter, it definitely doesn’t as the character limit makes grammatical errors and txt spk inevitable.  However, does it matter on a blog?  Some people don’t think so, but I think if you are trying to promote your blog beyond personal use then it should.  I fully appreciate that many of us just want to get our thoughts out ‘there’ as quickly as possible.

I find it difficult to read blogs that are full of errors.  This is due to years of touch typing classes that my mother forced me to take, which I’m now grateful for.  To calculate your speed you had to circle the errors and subtract from total words typed in a minute.  I now can’t read newspapers, books, etc without the errors leaping off the page at me.

It also reminded me of my career prep classes in High School, when they were teaching us about CV’s.  They said that employers sorted through large stacks of CV’s by throwing out the ones with spelling mistakes without even reading the credentials or experience.

I’m sure my posts are full of errors but I will try to be more diligent.

So who’s going to point out the first error in this post?

Author: mediocremum

A slightly older mum of one, who drinks far too much red wine and has an unhealthy obsession with her slow cooker. During the day she's an ICT Trainer, Social Media/Online Marketing consultant and does a bit of public speaking. Full Profile on Google+

13 thoughts on “Does Spelling and Grammar Matter?”

  1. Hmmm, I personally do my best to correct typos and to check spellings.I recently moved back to Blogger from Word Press where I rechecked every post and found a few mistakes.So corrected them because for me I think it’s important because it shows I have actually thought about what I’m writing, I found it embarrassing that I never realised in the first place.I do read blogs that that don’t seem to but I never know whether to comment or not.But it’s only a niggle and it’s the over all content that I’m interested in the end.

    1. Thanks for taking the time to comment. I do agree that the content is more important. Someone was saying that blogger doesn’t have spell check. Do you prefer it to Word Press?

  2. oh, ‘txt spk’ was the only mistake I noticed but then I was paying more attention to what you wrote and not on mistakes.

  3. Hmmm, I personally do my best to correct typos and to check spellings.I recently moved back to Blogger from Word Press where I rechecked every post and found a few mistakes.So corrected them because for me I think it's important because it shows I have actually thought about what I'm writing, I found it embarrassing that I never realised in the first place.I do read blogs that that don't seem to but I never know whether to comment or not.But it's only a niggle and it's the over all content that I'm interested in the end.

    1. Thanks for taking the time to comment. I do agree that the content is more important. Someone was saying that blogger doesn't have spell check. Do you prefer it to Word Press?

  4. oh, 'txt spk' was the only mistake I noticed but then I was paying more attention to what you wrote and not on mistakes.

  5. If you are ever reading my blog, please, please, please feel free to point out errors. I'm always trying to imporve myself and my writing. When I proof read my own work, I miss a lot.

    To me, 'voice' is the most important thing. I want to hear what I'm reading. However, if words don't flow, the voice of the writer is somewhat stifled.

    Does it matter? To me. in my own work? Yes.

    1. I agree…as long as I can understand the writers point I don't mind but sometimes it is distracting!

  6. If you are ever reading my blog, please, please, please feel free to point out errors. I’m always trying to imporve myself and my writing. When I proof read my own work, I miss a lot.

    To me, ‘voice’ is the most important thing. I want to hear what I’m reading. However, if words don’t flow, the voice of the writer is somewhat stifled.

    Does it matter? To me. in my own work? Yes.

    1. I agree…as long as I can understand the writers point I don’t mind but sometimes it is distracting!

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