Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Should We Care About Spelling and Grammar Mistakes in the Blogosphere?
Just wondering what others think. I usually try to be careful and proofread before I post, but I wrote the third post yesterday hastily, just as I was about to leave work. I just wanted to skedaddle and go home, but the mistakes I discovered when reading over it today (now corrected) grated on my brain like nails on a chalkboard. Does anyone else notice and/or care about such things? Do you go back and correct mistakes in your posts? Should blogs be held to a different standard than other kinds of writing?
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Part of the reasons why I write is to get more fluid with my English. At the same time, I know I will make mistakes and, as you, sometimes I have very little time to blog so I do it as fast as I can. As a consequence, mistakes are made. I care about grammar and spelling as a courtesy to my readers, but I don't beat myself up over mistakes.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who pays too much attention to the occasional typo or spelling error in a blog or other informal writing context has too much time on their (see what I just did!) hands, and should help out by mowing my lawn. I also have weeding that needs done.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. My back porch needs sweeping and my kitchen floor a good scrubbing -- both worthier activities than correcting blog typos. I guess my OCD comes partly from the context. Even though I mock them ruthlessly sometimes, people here in think tank land do read the blog (why, I'm not sure), and I feel as though I can't very well call someone out for being an idiot, like I do here and here, and come across looking like an idiot myself.
ReplyDeleteOh, well. My yard needs weeding, too, and I guess it's a pretty good thing that, if I can't work in academe, I can work in a place where people laugh when I satirize them, typos and all.
If fixing homonyms and misspellings on blog comments is wrong, then I don't want to be right.
ReplyDeleteBlog posts and comments are naturally different. I can much more easily tolerate mistakes in comments, since members of the general public are generally not good writers even though they might be smart and/or funny and/or have useful info.
ReplyDeleteBlog *posts* themselves... Unless the person admits they're a bad writer, how hard is it to get it proofread? And how hard is it to monitor comments for a little while so if someone else points out a mistake you can fix it post-haste? One of my favorite blogs has a writer that makes mistakes all the time and never corrects them. He is stupid and I want him to stop writing for the blog.
recent Ph.D. is doing an excellent job in this regard. But little stuff will always slip through. Blame Bill Gates, I always do.
Oh, dude, you crack me up. WTF "But little stuff will always slip through." In that case, I'm with nicoleandmaggie. You should be able to play with language on a blog, which is why I like CPP -- but, yeah, to quote and paraphrase, "Jeezus Motherfucken Fucke Bill Gates."
ReplyDelete(and it's entirely your fault that I am now also compulsively embedding links in my comments.)
Playing with language is one thing, obvious grammatical and spelling mistakes are another.
ReplyDeleteI would not sweat minor errors on a blog post. If you notice them in a couple of days by all means go back and correct them. But, I do not think anybody expects blog posts to be polished writing. For me they are usually the first drafts in half baked random thoughts.
ReplyDelete