Who is giving your copy a careful look & critique?
There’s a big difference between a typo and plain old bad writing!
Most of us are willing to overlook a true typo. What’s a true typo? In its simplest form, a true typo means a fumbling of the fingers, a press of the wrong letter on the keyboard. There are some common typos:
We also realize that from time to time you might put the apostrophe in the wrong spot. When it comes to possessives, sometimes we just type the wrong one – even when we know better!
But, as I stated above, there’s a VERY big difference between the occasional typo and poor writing. Poor writing displays itself in a variety of ways:
When we see a blogger repeatedly making the same mistake, be it using your when you’re is actually correct, we wonder if they are practicing the “second set of eyes rule” with their publication.
The second set of eyes rule is simple. Nothing gets published until a second set of eyes looks over the content and deems it suitable and correct. Longer or more complicated documents often benefit from two, three and even four sets if eyes.
Even if you’re a very strong and well versed writer, a second set of eyes can be of huge benefit. Heavy writing schedules sometimes mean we work on written projects in fits and spurts, saving them in draft format after each session. When you work on a document or a post for a long time you begin to see what you “believe to be” there, rather than what is actually in front of you. How often do you see a sentence that appears to be half formed, followed by a complete sentence that states the same thing but in a slightly different way? We see it all the time. What does it mean? It means the author was working in draft format and chose to change sentence structure and word choice, BUT forgot to delete the partial sentence.
Even when you rely on a second set of eyes the occasional error will slip through. But, as we stated above, true typos are apparent. Good readers recognize good writers and will overlook what is truly a one time, simple mistake. But they won’t forgive, and certainly won’t share, a poorly written article or document.
We’ll continue with this topic in a second installment. Hope you’ll stay tuned!
I just read a newsletter yesterday from someone claiming to be an English major from a pretty well known Texas college. The sentence structure was poor. The grammar was horrid. There were several misspellings … peaked instead of piqued (as in “piqued my interest”) and bases instead of basis. Maybe it’s just me — and I KNOW I’m not perfect when it comes to spelling, grammar and punctuation — but I felt those were flagrant mistakes! It honestly makes the writer look like they didn’t graduate from any accredited college, much less 6th grade English class. I always try to get a 2nd set of eyeballs on my stuff for fear of looking dumb. Mistakes happen, but too many of them really can ruin your credibility.
You’re absolutely right, Brooke. Peaked vs. piqued? Wow! That’s a new one. One that regularly gets our hackles up is loose being used when, in fact, the author means lose.
OMG! YEEEEES. I see loose used as lose all the time! I once worked at a gym and the employee handbook had loose instead of lose throughout the entire thing. It was pretty hard to take seriously, to say the least.
This is so near and dear to my heart and to my business! Communication is a powerful thing. You have at your fingertips the power to create, compel, and connect your marketplace to your message. And you then throw that advantage away with poor skills? Polish them up or hand the task to someone who excels at it!
I won’t say that I am positive about my punctuation and I know I write like I speak, but I cannot stand it when people use the wrong words. I would bet each industry has a number of words that are constantly misused. I wish I had a second set of eyes to read my writing all the time. I at least try to have my own eyes read everything again after a stretch of time between when I wrote it and when I need to post it.
LOL That last sentence of my comment is an example of bad writing
You know my take on it: I am a ESL girl, yet cringe when I see there instead of their, or even they’re. Our kids get hammered at home for making mistakes, so they try very hard.
When I first started blogging, I had my husband’s eyeballs, but as I continued on, I got a bit (over?)confident. I’ve had a few very nice people private message me with mistakes they found on my blog and I was able to correct mistakes before they were spread far and wide all over the internet.
If you ever see any on More In Media, please holler!