Binary by Accident

Monday, February 25, 2002

"People expect email to be prompt, funny and not spellchecked. They expect the same from your weblog." (Courtesy: Dane Carlson)

I'm not so sure. If an email has a typo, fine - that happens. But, when something is being posted for all to see, I want it to be "right". When sharing your thoughts, ideas, and opinions, your spelling and grammar are the only things that can be "right". The rest is subjective.

Personally, I don't want people to see my careless mistakes. Every day at work, I see professionals with good educations misusing here, hear, their, they're, too, to, and two. Subject-verb agreement is often optional (We was...). To me, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard.

I don't actually use a spellchecker on these posts. I often regret it. I make frequent revisions of posts just to fix spelling errors. It's important to me. Many of you reading this will never have other contact with me other than through writing. The impression you get of me (and, honestly, my impression of you) will be formed by my ability to communicate through this medium - spelling and grammar are a large part of that. If we interacted in other settings, your impression of me would be influenced by many other factors. But we don't and likely won't.

You can be darn sure I ran this particular post through a checker. The spelling is "right" - your mileage may vary on the opinion.

I'm agreeing with you. When the medium of communication is words, your words are all people have to judge. It never ceases to amaze me to see this argument replayed, ad infinitum (and ad nauseum).

And I have always come down on the side of the spelling COUNTS! people.

I are a English major.

:-)
Meryl Yourish

Bill,

I don't mean to imply that you should leave spelling, grammar and style out of your posts; just that your readers, on a whole, will not object to finding a occasional misspelled word.

Online, you are what you write. If I want to make a quick post, I'm not going to drop it into Word for a spell and grammar check, I'm going to post (and fix it later, if necessary.)

That's just me.

Dane.
Dane Carlson

Dane - your original post was just the catalyst for putting pen to paper, er...fingers to keyboard. It provided the opportunity to rant. Seeing too many misspellings of lose/loose in one day will do that to a guy. I wasn't implying that your posts are sloppy - quite the contrary. Too many people, again IMO, though, are happy with typing something up quickly, hitting post (or whatever mechanism they use to publish) and moving on. If somebody wants me to care about what they write, it helps if they show they care. And a big part of showing that care is proper spelling and grammar. That being said, I thought I was careful in writing my post - unfortunately, even after 2 fixes, I see things I would like to change. I probably won't because it's moved into style preference instead of correctness. Sometimes, it is too easy to post! Maybe your original post was right on and I'm the exception that proves the rule! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Bill
Bill Simoni

I have never hidden the fact that both my grammar and spelling at my weblog can be "creative". This is usually the result of writing from passion and interest and sometimes not being that concerned about the mechanics.

Perhaps we should all focus on the thought rather than the medium.
Burningbird

I'm pitching my tent in Bill's camp on this one.

I'm definitely anal when it comes to spelling and grammar - especially spelling. With grammar, I often get creative - a writer's prerogative - but I know the rules, I just break them on purpose. <g>

I do see a difference though. If I'm dashing off a brief e-mail to a friend, I won't spell check it, but I do try to be careful. I find myself being much more careful about spelling and grammar when I'm writing something serious. (or when I'm writing about spelling and grammar - this has been spell checked <g>) If I want those reading what I write to take me seriously, I must take the writing seriously as well.

So many misunderstandings come about because the writer did not take the time to chose the right words, and then put them in the right order. But then, I'm one of those people who is fascinated by the nuances of difference between words. I keep my Webster's, Roget's and my Super Thesaurus close at hand always. I keep this quote - "Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade in public. Never clothe them in vulgar and shoddy attire." (Dr. George W. Crane) - handy as well

When I cringe over an error or critique someone's writing, I do make allowances for the age, and primary language of the writer. That's only fair.
Kath

11:20:56 PM

So much for validating...while at work today, I tried validating this page, just to check on it. Unfortunately, one of my concerns was realized. In order to get it to validate, I had to make a change in radio.root - it was overwritten at some point after I made my changes. So, as a stopgap measure I've changed it again. I've also sent an email explaining the problem. I'm not smart enough to know all the issues - but I think it's an easy and innocuous change/fix.

Bill, try again. I just clicked on your validation link and it worked. UserLand may have overwritten your patches, but I think they fixed the problem.
Jeff Cheney

This is weird. I checked my page and found that it wasn't validating so I did some digging and found that UserLand has not patched radio.html.commentLink to escape the ampersand in the comments url. So why is it working on your site? Did you patch it again?
Jeff Cheney

I did go in and re-do the ampersands. It's a quick fix and I'll just have to do it each time the particular built-in macro changes or it gets "fixed".
Bill Simoni

4:33:05 PM

Thomas Jefferson. "Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances." (Courtesy: Motivational Quotes of the Day) 6:18:09 AM