Ashley Campbell's Writer's Log
Grammar saves lives
(or lessons from Twitter)
Last weekend an event akin to a barbarian invasion of the cyber citadel occurred: the grammar Nazis overran Twitter.
For 9½ hours, from all over the world, thousands of them ranted, in 140 characters or fewer, about sloppy English, making G-r-a-m-m-a-r a “trending topic” on the world’s hottest social networking site.
One exclaimed: “This is no doubt one of the signs of the apocalypse:
G-r-a-m-m-a-r is a trending topic!”
It is also a sign that more people judge you and your business on the quality of your writing than you may want to believe.
In what started as a rant about poor spelling but morphed to include all sorts of language crimes, some comments were short and direct: “If you put ‘hear’ in place of ‘here’ or vice versa, I automatically think you're slow”; “Yes, there is a difference between they're/their/there, and yes, people DO judge you by how you type”; “Challenging task to get it right all the while, but it does show style and finesse!”
Others got a lot of humour into their brief comments: “Many people think bad G-r-a-m-m-a-r is a fashion-statement; it is like saying stinking dirty clothes are hygienic and attractive”; “G-r-a-m-m-a-r is living proof of how you spent your school/college days. If you skipped class/goofed off — it shows”; and my favourite, “G-r-a-m-m-a-r: The difference between intelligence and grunting.”
Thousands of people spent their Saturday or Sunday nights (depending on where they were) telling the world how they automatically discount the intelligence of people responsible for misspelled words and confusing sentences.
Businesses should take note: If you want your brand to be one of quality, attention to detail and finesse, you should be very concerned about missed commas, rogue apostrophes and creative spelling.
Even if superior quality isn't your selling point, bear in mind those comments about intelligence, attractiveness and grunting.
“Ah,” I hear you say, “my salespeople aren’t grammatically correct when they’re with clients, and they get results. So what does it matter?”
It matters a lot when your salespeople, with all their persuasive charm, aren’t in the room. In face-to-face meetings prospective clients can see your salespeople smile, they can hear their pauses, they can tell from the way something is said when it is a joke, they can sense from the light touches on their elbows that your salespeople really connect.
On your website, in your brochures, newsletters and emails, prospective clients don't have those clues. And if there is one rule about how written language is perceived, it is this: If something can be misunderstood, it will be.
Good spelling and grammar don't involve adherence to pointless rules for the sake of it (not these days, anyway, or I’d never get away with starting sentences with conjunctions). But they do decrease confusion, so that what your clients read is what you are saying.
As one tweeter wrote last Sunday, grammar saves lives: “Let’s eat grandpa! / Let’s eat, grandpa!”
If your clients stand in for grandpa, they want that comma there.
© Ashley Campbell, 2009 |
