Your Grammar & Spelling Is Going To Ruin Your Career

Author: Jim Kukral Category: Failure Tags: poor grammar, spelling

Thursday
Aug 7, 2008

Look at Shoemoney. It’s pretty horrendous how terrible he is with grammar and spelling in his posts. Ok, I get it. He doesn’t try to spellcheck by his own admission for whatever reason, but it looks really bad… the poor grammar too. Makes him look like a severe amateur.

This isn’t a pick on Shoe (although he’s a poster-child for this post and should be called out for it), but rather a video post about how you are going to ruin your future career by having poor grammar and spelling. Your blog is your resume. Your digital footprint (comments, threaded discussions, photos, etc…) is your legacy. Right now, today, every smart recruiter on the planet goes out and looks at everything you’ve done or said online.

You really think that a professional organization is going to hire you if you can’t spell? You really think that you’re ever going to be taken seriously if you write like YouTube commenter in d00d-speak? You really think you’ll ever get a consulting gig or be asked to speak anywhere by anyone over the age of 30?

You won’t. Clean it up. Wise up. Lecture over.

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Comments

smbizguru

August 7th, 2008 at 5:06 pm

Jim,

It must be a sign of the times (or the technology).

I had a client who spends thousands of dollars on promotional products tell me that when she receives a proposal that is written with poor grammer and misspelled words in the first paragraph she puts the proposal in the “circular file” without ever reading past the first paragraph.

Just today, I spoke w/ a recuiter from Full Sail University in Florida, who told me she turns down potential students every day because they can't complete a written sentence. She says it's like the new college students do everything in “text-ese”.

TrishaLyn

August 7th, 2008 at 5:08 pm

Ahem, brotha! I watched an episode of “Lewis Black's Root of All Evil” the other day where it was UFC vs. Bloggers… and Bloggers lost as the root of all evil. One of the points was that bloggers have turned the world into a 'first draft' culture and reduced language to a series of abbreviations like OMG, WTF, AFK, etc.

I hated that I couldn't necessarily refute any of those points. Let's turn it around!

smbizguru

August 7th, 2008 at 5:09 pm

I did that on pupose, okay! I misspelled “recruiter” just for effect. You believe me right?

Willy

August 7th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

I'm 23, and I'm spelling and grammar obsessed.

How would your grammar look if you were to transcribe your speech from this video? Does video blogging exclude you from having to have good grammar?

I'm not really picking on you, but I'm wondering if grammar in speech is anywhere near as important as grammar in writing. I would say that it is not; although, there is a point at which too many ummms and likes can reflect very poorly on a person.

I bet that I made a grammatical error somewhere in this comment, since that usually happens when one gets on his grammar high horse.

shoemoney

August 7th, 2008 at 7:25 pm

I am a sever amateur what can I say ;). I still dunno why people read.

Sam Harrelson

August 7th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

saw that too, trisha. loved how they brought up twitter as the epitome of evil (ftw) :)

Ajith Edassery

August 8th, 2008 at 5:22 am

According to me, blogging itself is an unorganized and unstructured medium of communication and hence typos and grammar issues can be excused. Moreover, many great bloggers are not necessarily from English speaking countries nor English is their first language.

But if your blog is dealing with 'writing good content', then probably you need to be good at that in the first place. Typical MMO and SEO blogs and the respective bloggers - shoe or chow - can be hence pardoned :D

Another thing, the latest trends like video blogging puts a lot of pressure on those bloggers who are naturally not very good at speaking. So let the bloggers decide their way of communication in their own style…

Please excuse any grammar issues. My first language is not English though we learned English as a second language :)

Cheers,
Ajith, Bangalore, India

Sex. Money. Blogging.

August 8th, 2008 at 6:42 am

I hate spelling nazis. The spelling nazi seems to honestly believe that despite having nothing really original or thought provoking to say themselves, they're footing it on an intellectual level with you when they're only contribution is . . .

Didn't you mean “their contribution?”

Mmm. Yeah. Uh huh, that's what I meant. Because obviously no one could possibly understand what I'm trying 2 komunikate wid out da spellings + words been da right 1z.

And appealing to children under 30 is a waste of time also. After all it's the mums and dads with the purchasing power isn't it? In fact I wouldn't consult or speak to for anyone under 70 as it could damage my credibility in the highly lucrative 80+ market.

Jim Kukral TheBizWebCoach

August 8th, 2008 at 9:48 am

Ok, well, then you keep not worrying about it and see where it gets you. The reality is that what I said is true, whether you like it or not.

Jim Kukral TheBizWebCoach

August 8th, 2008 at 9:51 am

I agree with you in a general sense. By no means am I perfect or do I wish to be. I use poor grammer and sentence structure on my blog on purpose sometimes because I like to write like I talk. The fact remains, however, that employers and recruiters and people who you may wish to work for in the future, do, and will take what they see from you into consideration when thinking about hiring you, whether you like it or not.

I think that you're being from India gives you an excuse to make errors. I certainly wouldn't hold it against you.

Jim Kukral TheBizWebCoach

August 8th, 2008 at 11:25 am

Yep, exactly.

John W. Furst

August 8th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

Hi Jim,

Just watched your Flip for the first time and liked it. Very good point that Shoe's readers might
need to be fit for a job and get the thing with the “l”, “e”, “t”, “t”, “e”, “r”, “s” right.

Yours
John

P.S.: I am not a native English speaker. The hardest part for me is, “comma or no comma”

Jonathan (Trust)

August 8th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

“You really think that a professional organization is going to hire you if you can’t spell? “

Your post is geared more towards those wanting to be hired or wanting to be somebody's employee. When I think most people read blogs like yours and others so they can be the boss. I could misspell words galore in this post and it's going to have zero affect on my business. You misspelled grammar in one of your replies but it's the internet (blog, forum etc) so not a big deal. But I do think that kind of thing is important for something like your site. I've seen some merchant sites with misspellings and it's not a good look.

Miltski

August 9th, 2008 at 5:43 am

Grammar is one thing, but spelling mistakes these days are almost inexcusable. They are underlined as you type. (from word processors to blog writing, even leaving a comment) Right click and you have the suggested spellings. Maybe some people out there actually wonder what all those red lines under your words actually mean. Then there's some people who don't care and just hit that publish button.
My dilemma always comes when it comes to American dictionary spelling. (I'm British) Color or colour, memorize or memorise, judgment or judgement etc.
Can get confusing.
I'm sure I read some where that there's differences between American and Canadian spelling also ?

Rob

August 9th, 2008 at 9:11 am

not taking time to spell check and correct grammar, to me is a slight to your reader. it says, i don't care if you can't figure out what i'm trying to say - you're on your own.
it's a dis-service to yourself and your audience

Money While You Sleep

August 10th, 2008 at 10:33 pm

Shoemoney's making huge amounts of money. Bad spelling doesn't seem to be ruining his career if you ask me.

Guy Rosen

August 11th, 2008 at 2:46 pm

Right on Jim… some of the other commenters may call me petty, but I have always been one who believes the devil is in the details. At one of my old jobs people used to joke that my first remark on any document was to change the font. (For the record, Microsoft Word's default font for Hebrew documents until 2002 was horrific. Seriously!)
It won't necessarily ruin your career people, but before circulating anything outside your inner circle you have got to have it looking professional.

Now let me just re-read this comment five times to make sure I didn't make any mistakes, THAT would be embarrassing…! :-)

Paula

August 12th, 2008 at 8:00 am

I'm in two minds about good grammar and spelling. I think it does impact on the quality of a person's blog and I do my best in this regard on my blog. On the other hand, I think that the whole point of communicating something to someone is just to get the message across. So as long as you can be understood to a certain degree and you are providing good quality information then a few spelling errors here and there shouldn't make too much difference.

Key Reviews

August 18th, 2008 at 2:50 am

You are right. Bloggers should be responsible enough to check their posts before publishing it. Being new in the blogging arena, I am still learning the ups and downs of things. I hope my Posts are not going to annoy some people.