March 9th, 2010 
jared 
I don’t know what it is, but spelling is important to me, especially when you are publicly posting your writings and actively hoping that others will read it. I make typos, I understand this error. What I do not understand is just not caring enough to go fix it. I read a lot of blogs of all different kinds, most do not have this problem but some I read are continual offenders.
I really believe spelling and grammar lends credibility to what you write and when I put my words out there, I want people to see what I’m writing as something to think about. It makes me question when there are repeated errors that are easily fixed. Read and re-read. Have someone else read. I mean for goodness sakes that’s what the spell check and those little underlines are for…heed them.
So, here are a few I’ve found recently:
Crone’s ( an old woman) disease vs. Crohn’s.
“Were” should be “where”
“later” for “Latter”
“carousal” (Boisterous drunken merrymaking) for “carousel” (merry go round)
“collage” (an art project) “college” institution for higher learning
“coarse” (rough) “course” path or used as in “of course”
While I realize the English language is tricky, lots of weird spelling’s and usages, it makes you seem like you know what you are talking about when you make an effort to spell it right. I think people are more likely to believe your information is valid if it isn’t riddled with spelling and grammar errors.
What do you think? Important or not?
Posted in 
I absolutely agree, of course.
This one is especially funny, since it’s trying to make a strong statement that’s actually related to language. So, in addition to making them look bigoted and probably racist, it also just makes them look stupid. I guess it’s fitting in this case.
I think it’s more important to formulate a clear message in order to persuade/capture the reader; it’s not the writer’s fault if the reader want’s to dilute the message with some type of judgement, no-one is perfect.
JB- isn’t that sad?
Dan – How can the message be clear with unclear speech? And noticing misspelling is not judgment, unless you take it personally.
I agree that a clear message is important. Therefore it’s important to recognize that spelling and grammar errors do make clear communication more difficult. At best they distract from the message, making it less clear, even when what the author meant is still obvious (this sign is an example).
If an author is trying to present a clear message, he should be aware of the reality that errors will dilute that clarity and/or the reader’s perception of either his intelligence or his care for what he’s trying to say. Whether that’s judgmental on the part of the reader or not doesn’t really matter, because the result is the same from the standpoint of delivering a clear message; it has a negative effect.
I’ve been told “no one is perfect” twice in the last two days. I had no intention of giving the impression that people are perfect. Obviously, I realize that they/we are not. What I DO think is that we should be trying harder.
Obviously, (extreme) grammatical errors can muddy a message; I’m referring to how the reader can disregard the opinion/point/story of a clear message because of minor grammatical errors, essentially judging the person more than the message. Jared already explained “errors will dilute that clarity and/or the reader’s perception of either his intelligence or his care for what he’s trying to say”.
To me, since I agree writers are fallible I can’t assume some need to “try harder”, they contradict.
As a reader, I don’t know the circumstances of the writer, s/he could have spent all day on the article/post or s/he could have been typing quickly on their phone and didn’t have time to proof-read or s/he may have a learning disability or s/he made a decision to publish as is instead of not post at all. That’s why I think the message is more important because grammer and sentence structure is hard work, which I can sympathize with.
I’m glad we agree that the message is the most important thing, because that is the fundamental reason behind my argument. Like I mentioned above, even subtle errors are distracting from the message.
People who want to deliver a clear message effectively must acknowledge their imperfections and “try harder” in their communication efforts; this includes educating themselves and then being disciplined about reviewing and error-checking what they write before it is published.
As a reader, it doesn’t really matter to me *why* the writer included errors, because the end result is the same: the *message* suffers.
That doesn’t mean that I’m “judging” the person who wrote it; as you point out, there could be any number of explanations for the mistakes. Nevertheless, the message itself is judged because of the errors; whether that reflects on the author or not in the mind of the reader doesn’t really matter.
Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s true that the message is ultimately the most important thing. However, the underlying truth remains that if those mistakes are published, that means that the writer either did not care enough about his/her message to take the time to carefully check it (and/or learn correct spelling and grammar) and communicate it effectively.
Learning disabilities are obviously a special situation, but in many of the cases I see I don’t think that’s the cause of the errors.
PS – There’s some good stuff about the importance of writing well in that 37signals book I lent you last night that might explain this point more clearly.