Reading the comments here is making me scared to write and publish another blog post! I know I don’t have the best grammar skills in the world, and I rarely notice other people’s bad writing skills (I notice content over grammar unless its really bad) so I had no idea that its such a hot topic in the world of blogging.

That’s a little exaggerated, but mostly I find people ignore verbs agreeing with the subject. I don’t understand why verbs and subjects can’t get along!

Darren I think you can be excused from the odd spelling mistake – I don’t think i’ve ever seen a blogger produce so much interesting content on a daily basis – a few mistakes are bound to get through ;)

I manage an information and Web design team at a university. We build multiple reviews into the process, both Web and print. Accuracy is mission critical.

When I blog, I write in a more informal voice, and get loose with the structure, but never the grammar, unless it’s a deliberate colloquialism.

Dynamite resources, Darren, I would add the Microsoft Web Writing Style Guide for those who lean more toward technical writing. Chicago Manual of Style is my overall favorite, now that the latest edition include electronic media citations.

I think that is a great idea. Like another blogger wrote above, sometimes you are just too tired to notice *everything* even after going over it several times. It would also be good to come back to it later (hours, or a day) and reread it before publishing it. Sometimes I post late at night only to come back the next day and see something I didnt notice before because I was worn out.

None of us can ever be perfect, yet we should never stop striving.

I frequently revisit old articles I have written, and have never once came away satisfied that it is the best I could have done. I always find butchered grammar to repair or an ambiguous sentence or phrase to remold. It’s frustrating, humbling, and educational too!

Thanks,

JQK

Sadly, I think that the people who care about punctuation aren’t the ones that need help.

But I do try. What I do find annoying though is people who leave comments that do not take the time to use any grammatical niceties at all. What is really strange is that upon visiting their blogs I find that their posts are done in exactly the same fashion, and then they wonder why they do not have any readers.

I try to be super-careful with my own blog’s grammar, but it could always use extra attention.

I think it’s important to point out that you don’t have to be rigid with your LANGUAGE to have good grammar. Know your readership – use LOL or WTF or whatever if that’s their language (even if it’s not in the dictionary), talking the talk of a culture or readership is extremely important to connect genuinely. But make sure your GRAMMAR is top-notch, or it will be so distracting that your message may be lost.

Spell checkers are useful at an initial layer of proofreading. After that grammar, style, sentence structure, strong vocabulary and so much more come into play.