A better use of time.better posts!
We website authors go to humongous lengths to create sites that are attractive, instructive, entertaining, educational and above all helpfull, and worthy of the reader's time. Our objective is twofold; to capture and to hold our readers' attention long enough for the help we offer to be accepted and used. You all know that.
Kyle has told us (I hope you are reading this, Kyle) that we do not have to be (skilled) writers, in order to write posts that can and will result in success. What he should have added...in CAPITALS, bold and underlined ...and even repeated Twice Twice is...you MUST proofread your writings. (Maybe even thrice, if you know what that means).
As a result, Wealthy Affiliates' website (right here) is peppered with grammatical errors, bad syntax, lousy spelling and typing mistakes. I am not referring to chat, nor to anything typed by those for whom English is their second language. They are trying their best. And when it comes to messages, these are no better than one would expect, nowadays. But the errors and mistakes in posts are abominable.
Now I hear the better educated among you say "A language is a living thing. It grows. It changes with the times. And in these modern times it is less important to be "correct" than it is to be understood". I only agree with the first part of that. But young people have been born into the era of language carelessness, to put it kindly. We are all too familiar with the horrific abbreviations used by the young on their hand-fused devices. But if our website markets were limited to these, there would be no business worth the effort.
Faced with an ageing population (more disposable income. More time to read our posts) it surely behooves us to write the way they would like to read us. Faced with the quality of writing coming out of WA, our readers would be forgiven for thinking of us as a pretty sloppy bunch. All because we are too lazy to proofread our work.
"Proofreading? I don't have time for that" I hear you say. Well, in the WA spirit of sharing and helping I will suggest a way of finding some time, based upon my own experience. Each morning I receive about 30 WA emails, plus about 15 more during the day, plus at least 50 by late night just before I (finally) shut down my laptop! Total 95...DAILY.
Some of these too-many emails are very interesting, like questions seeking help, answers to questions and announcements of important training events. No time to be saved with those. BUT, gimmeabreak!! the emails telling me about Janet and Harry etc.following me, as well as hundreds of messages just saying "thank you for following me. I'm following you too" are just a terrible waste of time...better spent proofreading what you write.
In a sort of dying gasp I hear you saying "well..everyone writing website posts and articles is only doing what we are doing !" ....to which I reply...
Every day I read messages that say what a wonderful and extraordinary place is Wealthy Affiliates, and I wholeheartedly agree. So should it not follow as the night the day, that we must then do better than anyone else ?
This post has been proofread.
JeanLouis87
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31
I agree with you, JeanLouis. Having been a proofreader for Ken Blanchard for a year, I just automatically proofread my writing as I type it. And I give it another once over before I publish it. I have always felt that speeling (intentional) and grammatical errors reflect on me, and am careful to avoid them as much as possible. That being said, we all do make misteaks (also intentional!) from time to time, and I occasionally miss something that I have to go back and correct later. I'm still fairly new, but it seems to me that I saw something about an automatic spelling/grammar check on one of the videos. Do you know how to access that? I don't entirely trust them because I might be writing something "tongue in cheek", and the computerized proofreader might change my meaning because it failed to understand the intent. But, especially for people who don't have basic writing skills, it seems to me that it would be very valuable and add a bit of class to their posts if they took a couple minutes to use that tool.
You are right on. I also would tend to mistrust an automatic spell checker. I have only done 4 website content posts so far and the ABC auto grammar etc checker has been totally wrong several times. Thanks for the reply
I've noticed "you" where "your" or "you're" should have been and wondered if the spell/grammar checker changed it. But for the kids who text and use abbreviations all the time ("kid" being a relative term here!) and really don't know how to spell, I think using it is a good habit for them to get into in order to make their posts/pages more readable.
You never know...i am having such a problem having my questions answered I may change my career path to wring another book and doing proofreading on the side.Meanwhile keep a note of my WA name and if you become serious about it, contact me please Carol
David, I'd be happy to help with your proofreading once I am confident with what I'm doing on WA, have completed my certification course, and have at least my first website up, fleshed out, and getting traffic. Need to keep my focus on getting started at the present time. Since you're in my network, we'll be in touch with each other, and I'll let you know when I'm available to work on it for you. Carol
Hi, JeanLouis. If you do decide to change your path to writing another book and proofreading on the side, let me know. I can give you the second read on your manuscript after you've proofread it. But have to keep my focus on getting my website up and making $ first. Since you're in my network, we'll be keeping in touch. Carol
Hello JeanLouis, interesting blog. I think the longer you live the more the English language changes including acronyms. We just have to adapt as much as we can, but maintain the main structure of the language.
Phew Jean Louis, you've just spanked us all. Must look around and find the spell check when I blog.
I agree, that's a lot of emails. I check them all out as sometimes I find a gem of knowledge that I can use.
Now back to lessons.
Cheers, Jae
your proofreader missed "helpfull" ;-)
besides that I totally agree with what you wrote, even as a non native English speaker.
That being said, I notice that since joining WA, I'm writing lots and lots more text than I used to write before. That's posts, answers, blogs, and articles.
Proofreading my own stuff, I notice that sometimes my language is unintelligible (thank my browser for spelling check there).
Most of the time I rewrite things that I find hard to read, but sometimes by rewriting, my whole story gets mixed up.
And sometimes I just press send to get it all over with.
I guess similar stuff happens to fellow writers.
This is not an excuse however! It's what I think might be a cause for bad spelling and grammar.
In the end I agree with you that proofreading is a good thing and well worth the time spent.
Maybe we can call it a sanity check, if proofreading sounds too tedious??
Great article Jean Louis.
Lots of food for thought.
I can agree with most of what you have said.
I agree that we should proof-read and be more careful with proper language and literary devices etc. However, the "thank yous" and "replies" are just common good manners. They are just a means to engage the community at WA.
This also uses an algorithm that determines and tracks WA in-house member ranking as well. That is important to some:)
We live in a different generation. One that is extremely social and engaging. As I always say "eat the meat and spit out the bones."
In other words, we don't all agree with everything...so extract the good and forget the "bad." The "bad" is working for others.
David
I still persist. .Following is as silly as when Facebook started up, and even otherwise intelligent adults were boasting that they had eg. 367 friends. Well, I am following just over 300 people and I now get almost 100 emails PER DAY. Takes me 1 1/2 hours each day, then I am so fed up I don't get to the content writing I should be doing.
I understand that you don't want those emails.
I believe you can unsubscribe from them or just scan the subject and delete without even reading them.
Cheers
David
I do, to all the "thanks for following"
Some of our WA people are following thousands of people.
They must get hundreds of emails each day ???
Yes! I am sure:). One has to be careful with monitoring so many emails, as that can be very time-consuming. I try to set certain times to do that. However, I am guilty sometimes of having too many gadgets around me. The emails come on the phone or another PC.
Because I am surrounded by screens and devices, it is easy to respond quickly and still do my work.
David
Because if you did thank Jay for the article about proofreading....
WRONG author. I wrote it.
Thank you. I only added that about thrice because Americans
always seem to say "two times" and "three times". A tad childish !
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I agree. It seems a waste of time to try to figure out sentences with no apparent structure, just ... between the manic thoughts. I can't follow a post like that. That is one I had to unfollow.