How important is good English?

I'm not perfect. I'm sure someone could pick apart my writing and find grammar mistakes especially. I do check over what I write. I eyeball it as a I type. I run a spellcheck on my web browser. I read it over after I publish to my blog too. Pretty much the same when I write an email.

I think it's important. For one, language needs to be maintained. It's something always evolving, slowly. So we need to care about it and make sure it evolves in a good direction.

Secondly, it is all about communication. If sloppy grammar or lack of punctuation causes you to be misunderstood, that is your own fault. The reader is never at fault, only the original communicator. Make sure you are getting the message across as you meant it.

Also, as you wrote, sloppy language just looks sloppy, careless. I would add ignorant. I tried online dating. Men usually send the sloppiest, most drooling idiot emails. Trust me, that does not impress women. We don't want to meet some drooling moron for coffee. We would rather spend time getting to know a guy who can carry on a conversation. Not so different when choosing a blog to read.

I am one of those who openly admit that my English is not perfect, and I make a lot more mistakes than I am comfortable with. Often I catch them in time, sometimes I don't. But I work on it, and when I find a mistake in a post that I made somewhere I correct it - no matter how old that post may be.
I specifically asked some friends to let me know if they spot a consistent mistake in my writing. It's something I can really recommend, because other always see what's written whereas many writers (like myself) have a tendency to read what they think they wrote.


Laura gave a good example how bad spelling and grammar might backfire I have another one:

I did and sometimes still do spend a lot of time in help forums, helping out where I can. Often enough there's a post names 'need help fast'. Inside is a heap of words rapidly typed, with three sentences more or less mixed together without a clear structure. All in a way that it takes me some ten minutes to figure out what the persona is saying, left alone try to solve their problem.
Quite soon I started to ignore these posts. If that person doesn't care enough to write a decent question, I don't see why I should volunteer my free time to help them. There's others that seem appreciate my efforts much more.
Like the inflection of the voice communicates much more than the words when you talk I think spelling and grammar communicates something about you when you write.

Ben, I see a lot of posts from other countries and really have a hard time reading what they wrote. Part of me understands that they may not have the grasp of English. Another part of me wonders why they do not use a dictionary. You can find them for free all over the Internet and can pick them up quite cheap from a bookstore. Imagine my surprise to think I am reading a blog from another country only to find out they are native to the United States.

Ben, Thanks for the link to this post. We are certainly of the same mindset on this issue. I'm always amazed to see what passes as acceptable writing to some folks.

Oddly enough, poor grammar seems to HELP in some instances, particularly the "Make Money Online" niche, where it lends to an "everyman" feeling to certain blogs or sites. The reader is lulled into thinking, "Man, if someone who writes like this can make X dollars, surely I can succeed too."

I personally love to read well-written text. I find poor grammar and spelling to be incredibly distracting - to the point that it almost completely invalidates the authority of the individual writing it.

Thanks again for the good post.

I really cannot stand reading anything that is poorly spelt, with little or no effort put into grammar. As everyone else has said, none of us are perfect, but if you are going to write something for publication, then you should to do your best to ensure it is correct. Otherwise, you appear as if you don't care (so why should anyone else?), that you are sloppy, or just uneducated.
I particularly cannot abide SMS speak, even in SMS's ! Yes, I am so anal I spell out every word in my text messages, and use grammar.

I must be very old methinks...

Laura - the idea of language maintenance as opposed to evolving and letting mistakes build up is a good analogy. Look at software: if we only ever had new things added, bugs would start to get out of control. You have to fix things from time to time. Maintenance isn't a bad thing.

Andranneth - I think this is the first time you've commented on my blog. Thanks for adding your thoughts. I know what you mean about reading what we think we wrote. Again, I can relate it to software: a coder is far less likely to find bugs in their own code than in someone else's code. This is why I invite feedback both on my blog and on my technical work - feedback from others can help us to improve.

ettarose - is there anything that you find particularly difficult to understand in those posts? One of the reasons I started writing this blog is because I've read articles where the writer tries to explain something, but they don't really pull it off - the explanation doesn't really make sense. If understanding that particular word or phrase is integral to interpreting the meaning of the whole article, getting the definition wrong can completely invalidate the whole article.

Eppie - welcome, and thanks for stopping by. I see your point, it's really quite worrying to hear that bad grammar is seen by some as a good idea! A better route for the "everyman" feeling would be if people tried to write in plain English, using clear and simple language. It doesn't need to be dumbed down, just straightforward enough to be accessible to pretty much anyone. It does depend on your target audience though.

Suze - I very rarely use a mobile phone, but when I used to use them more, I also wrote out every word in full. It's possible to write very short messages without resorting to abbreviations. I used to get some messages with loads of abbreviations, and while they had to stay within a certain number of characters, the ones with abbreviations felt longer. It was like trying to read a poem that had been squashed onto one line. With a bit of effort, you can understand the meaning, but it's not the best way to present it.

Thanks for all the comments so far. :)

I've read about the casual tone for the metablogging and make money online blogs. In addition to the point made by Eppie, there's also the point of humanising the post. A spelling mistake here and there subtly hints at a real fallible human behind the posts.

In general, if you're writing posts that serve as a reference, be they tutorial articles or scientific journals, then spelling and grammar should be important. You never know who's going to reference your article.

That said, I agree about the humanising part. Most blogs fall somewhere between referential and personal. It's up to the individual to decide what's the best mix to convey their message.

Break spelling and grammatical rules when you understand them, and that you know why you're breaking them.

Still, if you can only write with bad English, you can always simplify so the meaning is conveyed with correct spelling and grammar.

I've come across some sites with really atrocious English. I'm a Chinese, and I'm shocked to find native English speakers with such obvious written mistakes. How can someone speaking English as a second language learn the correct form, if even natives are poor at it?

Thanks for commenting, Vincent. I think it's better to have a friendly tone than to make mistakes, but that's just me. I totally agree with you about people who are learning the language, the natives should set a good example!