So. That awkward moment when you read an inspiring article about all teh injuyrstic in the wurld and all you see is spelling and grammar mistakes. You want to be inspired. You really do. This is close to your heart. But why are we talking about what someone was “whering”? And why doesn’t it break my heart quite as much as it should to hear about “injustis”?
And after that first awkward moment there’s that other one, where you wonder whether it’s really alright to post a comment to highlight some, err, creativities.
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Comments on this article
1 – “OMG you are soooo RIGHT what BASTARDS!”
2 – “this is so sad but so proud you are standing up and saying what we’re all thinking!!!!!!”
3 – “There’s an extra comma in line four. And ‘injustice’ is misspelled* in line ten.”
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I don’t think proper use of the English language should be a prerequisite for being passionate about righting All The Wrongs (That’s on good days only, on bad days I think it should be the prerequisite for existing. Moving on…), but it irks me when whole groups publish their manifestos and campaigns littered with errors that even a brief sojourn with a common or garden spellchecker would fix. Or, y’know, getting someone to beta read? Someone else, driven by a similar passion but a little more vulnerable to the physical agony caused by– err. Yes.
I get laughed at enough whenever I bring up what I’d like to file under “professionalism”, or anything that means you give some thought to how you present yourself when you’re either in a professional environment or would like to be Taken Seriously. Oddly, it’s generally people who I interact with informally who laugh at me. Others are too professional.
Yes, there is a trigger to this (several, actually) and yes, I shall take the plunge and announce at some convenient time that I propose a general guideline (rules are normally rejected by the base-democracy lot) for anyone who’d like to post in our official publication. I might also suggest a minimum word count. And Other Things.
This will not end well.
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* I cannot put into words how much it irritates me that it’s alright to spell ‘spelled’ like that.
