I’ve been writing seriously since I was a teenager, and I have always had a passion for it. I take writing to heart, and one of the reasons why I can now provide quality content is because I have taken what natural talent I’ve been endowed with and cultivated it through respectfully endeavoring to learn my craft.
The best way to continually improve as a writer is to pay attention when you are reading. I am utterly amazed by the grammar and spelling errors that professional people make on a routine basis when I am going about my day-to-day correspondence. It’s not that I have zero tolerance for someone making an honest mistake…it’s the fact that I know for sure that they have seen these misspelled words in print thousands of times throughout their lives. I simply cannot understand how someone can spell the word “prefer” “prafer,” or the word “trust” “thrust,” and do so repeatedly so you know that the errors are not typos.
I’m not going to stand on a soapbox decrying our culture of texting and spellcheckers diluting respect for the written word in some broad context. What I’m laying out here is a suggestion for those who endeavor to compose content for websites, blogs, and articles: if you aren’t certain about something, look it up. Do so all the time, 100% of the time. It’s never okay to guess or assume something must be right. For instance, when I used a colon earlier in this paragraph, I started the phrase that followed it with a small letter. I didn’t know if this was correct or not at one time…but I looked it up. Many people capitalize after a colon, but that is simply incorrect in most cases.
For the layman to make an error like that one is probably understandable and no big deal, but if you are a content provider, you need to set a standard for yourself and never compromise it. If you make the commitment to ongoing self education and welcome opportunities to look into things that you are unsure of, you will continually grow as a professional. But you will also evolve as a writer and as a person of integrity for integrity’s sake, and that is a something that is truly priceless.
