Feeling You're Nuts

How Important Is Grammar?

This is a question that vexes me.

Because to me personally, it's very important. To the extent that I'm far less likely to buy a product if the copy contains grammatical errors and far less likely to be swayed by a written argument that contains grammatical or spelling errors.

They can totally change the intended meaning.

The heading of this post could have had an entirely different meaning if I didn't clearly understand the difference between "your" and "you're", for example.

But then I see that the average person reads at the level of a 7th grader and feel that I may be in an ever shrinking minority.

How Do You Comfort a Grammar Nazi?

You pat them on the shoulder and say "there, their, they're".

Does It Matter?

Well, that's the 64 dollar question.

If the people who are reading your reviews and promotions and considering buying your products know they need an apostrophe but just don't know where they're going to put it, will it make one iota of difference if you're the same?

Here's a horrible thought: maybe they'll actually relate better to you if you are like them.

Maybe people just don't care.

I see so many miss-spelled words everywhere and yet there are hardly any platforms these days that don't include a spell checker. I often wonder if the writer just doesn't see the red underline, doesn't know what it means or simply doesn't care.

Many years ago, I had a company that sold a computer system running software that I'd written. This was pre-internet. All advertsing was offline. Our main competitor had taken out an expensive, full-page color magazine advertisement in which I discovered two spelling errors. I made several sales of our system by showing their ad to a prospect and basically saying "Software is much more complex than text. How can you trust their software if they can't write text without mistakes?"

What Do You Do?

If you don't understand the nuances of grammar, it's probably not your fault.

When I was at school and when my now grown-up children were at school, grammar was taught as part of the English curriculum and was the subject of tests and exams. This may not have been the case for you.

So use a tool like Grammarly, but when it shows you a correction, learn from it, understand it and memorize it. Honestly, the difference between "its" and "it's" isn't rocket science and you can learn it easily. And it's the same for most grammar rules.

Unless of course it just doesn't matter.

What do you think?

I'm really interested in hearing your (not you're) opinion.