Why grammer and speling is impotent

I basically agree with the message above. Not exactly nuanced, profound, or detailed, but it summarizes sentiments I am sure many Americans share, regardless of political affiliation.

What jumped out at me, however, was how poorly proof-read the message was. There was a spelling, grammar, sentence structure, usage, or capitalization error in nearly every line. While you will find no shortage of typos and other goofs in my writing, I don't believe it reaches the level that errors distract from the primary message.

I taught secondary language arts for seven years to often rather reluctant would-be grammarians. (Long before the days of spell and grammar checker.) Even before Simon Simek admonished us to "start with why," I continually reminded my learners that good spelling and grammar would be important to them - even outside the classroom. Error-laded communications unintentionally convey two negative messages:

• The writer is careless.
• The writer is unintelligent or uneducated.

Rarely do poor writing mechanics make a piece actually confusing or difficult to read, but subliminally they can make a message difficult to believe. See photo below:

Comments

[Kenn Gorman]

Maybe another reason to teach programming in middle and upper school - most IDE's have spell check, but "grammar" errors don't compile!

[Doug Johnson]

Kenn,

I'll take your word for it. Last "programming" I did was in a LOGO class in the '80s getting a turtle to make a pattern.

Doug