Talk About Fallen Angels!

In the course of my research for an article, I examined a Web site for the company I was featuring. Imagine my surprise when I found grammar and punctuation errors on the site! This was a professional site for a major corporation, yet there was the glaring misuse of apostrophes, a sin intensified by erroneous agreement and even a typo!

How does such a discovery affect me as a consumer?

I guess there is a negative impact. Whether I am surfing for a summer camp for my kids or looking for someone to remodel my home, I would be less inclined to delve further or put money into a company that didn’t care enough to proofread its site content. It makes me somewhat sad to think that the desire for perfection in writing isn’t strong. While I always stressed to my students that “good enough isn’t,” too often--it is.

However, on the positive side (and I do tend to mine for silver), I felt somewhat elevated by this discovery. Hey, I could write for a major audience, and with greater accuracy! It sort of made me feel a little less lowly as a writer, knowing that others, higher up, make mistakes as well. It sort of leveled the playing field and renewed my desire to keep plugging away, not just to write, but to write well.