Bad spelling, poor grammar will ruin the greatest of content

The idea behind two recent blog posts has been rambling around in my head for a couple of days. The question comes down to this:

Can bloggers with good content get by with lousy spelling and grammar?

The prevailing thought from Penelope Trunk, whose post started the recent debate, is that they can. She doesn’t understand why people don’t just shut up about spelling and grammar mistakes, citing several reasons. Among those reasons, spell check isn’t perfect.

Everyone knows that Spellchecker misses some words. And everyone knows that sometimes we think we are making a stylistic choice when we have actually made a grammar error.

And anyway, it’s nearly impossible for us to catch the errors that Spellchecker misses. If it were tenable to proofread one’s own stuff, then there would never have been a copy editor to begin with. And there is research to show that if the first and last letter of a word are correct then our brain adjusts for all the letters in between. (My personal favorite of all Spellchecker problems: form and from. Try it—there are so many cases when both words will get past Spellchecker.)

So don’t bitch to me that I should use Spellchecker.

Over at BlogHerald, Andrew G.R. is less forgiving of top blogs who allow habitual mistakes of this nature.

It is my belief that the majority of bloggers would rather spend their time coming up with something interesting to write about rather than looking up the difference between a colon and a semi. Plus, since many bloggers have adopted English as a second language, you can’t expect things to be perfect. However, I do admit that I take notice of typos on several top blogs and scratch my head over their level of caution. While it doesn’t make me doubt the validity of what they are talking about, it does raise a red flag.

In her post, Penelope goes on to make four other points about why bloggers such as herself often have simple mistakes in their work:

1. Spelling has nothing to do with intelligence.
2. You don’t have unlimited time, so spend it on ideas, not hyphens.
3. Perfectionism is a disease
4. Use the comments section for what matters: intelligent discourse.

Granted, I wholeheartedly agree with her spelling not equaling intelligence point, or at least I hope it does not for my sake. I’m a horrible speller. That said, the rest of Penelope’s article seemed a little resentful to me.

Undoubtedly she’s been hammered a few times in her comments section about poor spelling or odd grammar choices. And, she is correct, that comments sections should be more about discussing the content of a post or article than correcting honest mistakes.

That said, if habitual spelling and grammar problems are indicative of a site, then you can bet that readers will soon leave.

The very idea that someone has good ideas so they should be excused from proper spelling or grammar is, to an extent, offensive and a tad bit insulting. It almost says that we can allow ourselves to be lazy because we had a good idea. It’s that kind of thinking that leads to the dumbing-down of a society.

I certainly can understand Penelope’s frustration with the continual public pointing out of her mistakes. That said, taking the extra time to proof spelling and grammar will save a writer the time spent venting about people pointing out mistakes and the resources exhausted on a blog post about it.