Friday, September 05, 2008

Check Your Work, People

I'm no grammar genius. I never went to college and I've never taken any writing classes beyond what I was taught in high school. This blog is for my entertainment and hopefully some other people enjoy reading it as well, but I don't consider myself a serious writer by any means. I don't even proof read anything before I post (I just cringe later when I get bored, read through my archives, and see any number of mistakes). That's cool though, because no one's making or losing money here. It's just a blog. For the same reason, I don't get upset when I see writing errors on other people's blogs. I read them for the stories, not for the punctuation.

However, in big print media? In advertising? I think that what's forgivable on a blog can be quite shameful elsewhere. Take the back page of this week's Scene for example:

Loosing? Loosing your home? The folks behind that little ad couldn't be bothered to check their work before sending it out to be seen by all eyes that take a glance at that back page of a free and widely circulated weekly?

Or maybe stuff like that gets a free pass these days. Maybe I'm being a bit of an English snob. (Mr. Stackhouse taught me well. English, not snobbery.) Does the general public overlook errors like this and take it as the ad intended? Or worse, possibly most don't even notice an error.

Whatever. Seeing it gave me something to blog about. That's something.

(I wonder how many errors I made writing this. I don't care. I'm going to bed.)

8 comments:

monstermash said...

i actually deleted a comment a week or two ago becauce i goofed and didn't catch it..."type triple A" a friend once called me. it's a good thing, too, or this blog would have come sooner ;)

Unknown said...

Sadly, there are a lot of people who have been left behind by a subpar educational system. I have taught entire classes of college sophomores who wouldn't have noticed because that's the way they spell "lose" too.

Anonymous said...

you know I admit that when I blog I make errors- I try to fix it when I see it- but I am not getting PAID to spell everything right! suckage

Kate said...

Typos are understandable. But how many people did that ad run past. I'm sure it's carelessness as much as it is poor spelling.

Leesa said...

I'm definitely no expert, but I always seem to catch others mistakes.

I see the word "losing" misspelled so often it surprises me. I didn't go to college and I did awful in a writing class. I'm probably making mistakes right now :)

Melissa said...

Thank god for Mr.Stackhouse, for the both of us.

holly wynne said...

A-freaking-men.

Anonymous said...

I agree with you. There are also grammar issues in publications such as the Tennessean, which I have a hard time overlooking after all my journalism classes. Blogs, understandable. Twitter, understandable. Newspapers, magazines & public ads--not so much.