Grammar never stopped being important

By: Scott Stein, VP of Client Services

Scanning through the latest tweets the other day, one of them jumped out at me. It was from CareerBuilder and retweeted by someone I follow. It said simply…“Grammar NEVER stopped being important.” My thoughts immediately jumped to a sign we have posted in the office…

The CareerBuilder tweet was linked to a web story…“Grammar lessons all job seekers should know.” As I read through the piece, I couldn’t help but think that proper grammar and punctuation are important for everyone as they try to communicate using the written word, whether it’s in print, email or a social media platform.   

I do a lot of proofreading in my job and have become pretty good at it. That carries over to my everyday life as I quickly notice the typos and grammar miscues in newspapers and on TV. Of course, those mistakes are few compared to what I see in social media.    

So the CareerBuilder article jumped out at me with its four basic rules:

• Know your homophones (your/you’re, there/their/they’re, to/too/two)
• Use apostrophes properly (an apostrophe is used to indicate the possessive, not to indicate the plural form of a singular noun)
• Keep tenses consistent
• Proofread and then proofread again

On that fourth bullet point, I’d actually say proofread, then have someone else proofread your copy.  

In today’s world of instant communication, here’s a vote to slow down a bit and be sure you’re using the proper grammar and punctuation to send your message. 

What do you think? Do you scream when people use there when it should have been their?