Guest post from: Lynne J. DeVenny
Imagine this scenario. You have written the best blog post of your life. You are “all that AND a bag of chips.” You’ve hooked your reader, who is not only ready to subscribe to your blog, re-tweet your post to his 3,657 followers and possibly even propose to you – when he hits the brakes on what could have been a beautiful long-term relationship because you wrote, “Its simply a matter of sharing my expertise with the world.”
Uh-oh.
I know. You’re thinking that whole “it’s vs. its” hoopla is for nerds that seriously need to get a life, but now your reader not only thinks your I.Q. dropped by at least ten points and that you either flunked high school English or are too lazy to use a grammar/spellcheck program, but he’s lost all interest in your brilliant content. Not only is he not going to subscribe to your blog, re-tweet your post or propose, but now he’s turned into a punctuation Nazi waiting to annihilate your next big grammar blooper.
I’m participating in Grant’s “31 Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt” and therefore know that nobody wants to read a tedious discourse on punctuation (or diagram a sentence), but I’m going to share a few simple ways to avoid those costly grammar bloopers that take your readers’ focus off your content and turn them into grammar snipers, instead of a loyal fan base.
Quick Ways to Avoid Grammar Bloopers
Draft your post in a word-processing program that has a grammar/spellcheck feature. While a software grammar checker isn’t always 100% correct, it will often catch the most embarrassing mistakes.
Grant’s comment here: You need to be careful with formatting issues when pasting a post from a word processor into your blogging platform.
Let your post “sit for a spell” before publishing it. Give it a few hours at least and then go back and carefully proofread it. You might be surprised by what you missed while you were initially congratulating yourself on your brilliance and wit.
Read your post out loud to yourself, including stating any contractions in full. Then you can privately blush when you see “you’re best work simply is not good enough” is actually “you are best work simply is not good enough.”
Have someone else proofread your post before publishing it. For example, I know a lot of great writers who can’t spell. Part of their greatness comes from having others that can spell proofread their work.
Use Google to answer grammar questions. You can Google terms like “grammar it’s its” and any number of reputable grammar websites will set you straight in a few seconds or less, without any public embarrassment or passive-aggressive comments about your intelligence level.
Be extra vigilant about the spelling of proper names. Again, Google is a savior in this department. You look a bit dim when you write a feature post about someone you think your readers should get to know better, but misspell your subject’s name all the way through it.
Finally, use your blog platform’s viewer to look at your post one final time before hitting “publish.” And then read your own post the next day. It’s never too late to correct a grammatical error you missed.
Your content establishes your expertise and engages your reader. Don’t let obvious grammatical errors undermine your readers’ confidence in your abilities or distract them from the otherwise excellent message you are delivering.
I’ll leave you with a couple of pithy grammar quotes from Eats, Shites & Leaves, Crap English and How to Use It by A. Parody (Metro Books, 2006), a hilarious but educational little gem of a book about the misuse of the English language:
“Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.”
“If you reread and reread your work and reread it again you will weed out the weeds of repetition.”
“Do not use, unnecessary, commas.”
“Employ the vernacular.”
Lynne J. DeVenny a/k/a @ExpertParalegal on Twitter is a N.C. State Bar Certified Paralegal employed by Elliot Pishko Morgan P.A. in Winston-Salem, NC. She blogs at Practical Paralegalism and co-hosts Legal Talk Network’s monthly podcast, The Paralegal Voice, with Vicki Voisin. She had her co-worker and fellow punctuation Nazi proofread this post.
