Please Stop Before You Publish
Grammar Matters — No Matter What You Write
Of course we believe that grammar is important; we’re writers, after all. But what if we loosened our standards:
Its time to talk to you about a day-to-day and week-to-week issues. And im not about to talk about the talk every one know does no good. Let me explains that now.
We could go overboard, too, thinking that everyone has a 16-year education:
Inferring the textual concept of proper grammar and punctuation, noun and verb agreement, correct spelling, and all the other tenets of the English language that make it a difficult, yet succinct form of communication among those who have a clear and concise message to deliver and require a medium that appropriately tackles the task at hand, you would think it would be performed accordingly.
Yikes. Please stop us.
The Problem Is Rampant
Since we’re writers, we read a lot. In our research, we have to peruse 100 or more websites a day, so we see it all the time. This kind of writing is rampant. You know it too if you’ve tried to find a quick recipe or picked up a newspaper lately. Sometimes, it’s impossible to get “just the facts.”
Given this dilemma, we’d like to share a bit of good news. There’s a movement afoot called “plain language” that aims to make government documents and legal papers easy to read and understand. But even they get bogged down in trying to look smart by using big words and long, drawn-out sentences. We know — we’ve edited some of their work.
Everyone Loses
One problem may arise from alluringly inexpensive writing services that contract “English language writers” overseas. But we fear most of the errors are due to being either lazy or cheap. Perhaps publishers don’t take the time to read their own copy before going live with it, or maybe they are too tight to pay someone to proofread for them.
As a result, everyone loses. The reader quickly moves on to another webpage or forces herself to read the copy over and over until she understands its meaning. It’s tedious work, and in most cases, unnecessary.
Don’t do that to your customers and your readers. Please stop.
Get Professional Help
Before you publish that article, that press release, or that webpage… contact Ray Access. We’re professionals. We not only do this for a living; it’s our passion as well, so you know we want to do it right the first time.
If you don’t think you can afford us, call for a free estimate. If you want to keep all your work in-house, at least read your copy out loud before you publish it. If you’re not sure, get a second opinion. Give it to a fourth grader to see if she gets it. Sleep on it and then see if it still makes sense in the morning.
Whatever you do, make sure your prose is clear and to the point before you publish it. If it’s wrong or long or poorly edited, it can damage your reputation once it’s published. It may cause your customers, clients or readers to go elsewhere, which is likely the exact opposite reason you wrote it.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
In addition, the project is more likely to be successful because you’ve hired an expert to do it. We were so pleased this year to find a local accounting firm where we could just deliver our pile of receipts and return a few weeks later to sign the tax returns. We’ve all done taxes ourselves in the past, and while we did a good enough job, we learned that the time involved wasn’t worth it. In the hours it took to figure out all the codes on the various self-employment forms, we could earned twice as much money as it cost to hire the accountant.