Blogs serve a number of purposes in the online world today. Your blog is an extension of yourself and your thoughts on the subject you are blogging about. With that in mind, it goes without saying that the content you turn out and the thoughts that it provokes reflect directly on both the quality of your blog and to a certain extent you yourself. It doesn’t matter if your chosen subject matter is new automobiles, travel news, collectible bottles, or even professional football, the thoughts you put into writing are the reason people come to your blog. How that content is written determines greatly on how the visitors to your blog think about you.
The best way to get people to turn away from your blog and never come back is to fill your blog posts and articles with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. These two mistakes are relatively easy to avoid, yet many bloggers choose not to. There are two main reasons that these types of errors turn traffic away from blogs.
Perceived Intelligence
The simple truth is that it doesn’t matter if it is a high school book report, a sales brochure for a retail company, or an entry in someone’s blog, when it is filled with spelling errors and grammatical mistakes it makes many readers assume that the author is uneducated. Most authors are people with an affinity towards writing. Writing is a craft and to do it well an author needs to be familiar with correctly spelled words as well as basic grammar. When someone comes to your blog, if they feel you are not the most credible source for information, they will not have a reason to stay and read more, nor will they have a reason to come back. When you have trouble spelling words correctly, it makes people think that they cannot rely on you for correct information in general.
Too Many Distractions
Another problem that these types of writing errors cause is that they distract from the content of your writing. A reader may be able to get past one spelling error and still stay focused on your writing, but with multiple errors it all of a sudden becomes awkward to read your writing, and sometimes hard to understand your intended message. Eventually, the reader is thinking just as much or more about your mistakes as they are about your content. This makes them have a hard time engaging with your message and doesn’t leave them feeling comfortable and satisfied enough to come back and visit your blog the next time.
It shouldn’t be hard work for a reader to read and comprehend your blog posts and articles, but spelling errors and grammatical mistakes can make it seem like it is. Though most writing software comes with a spellchecker, they aren’t 100% safe because there are many times that a word can be spelled wrong, but still be spelled as if it was another word that is spelled correctly. The best way to make sure that your writing is of the highest quality is to proofread it. It is even better if you can have someone other than you proofread it, because they won’t be as familiar with the content and will be reading it in the same way that visitors to your blog will be. Proofreading is such an important step in the writing process that once you are done doing it, you should do it again. Often many mistakes are found on the second read through of a selection of written material. Any blogger hoping for even a moderate level of success should definitely include proofreading as part of their writing process.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Yes, when I managed an early social site, we all agreed that poor grammar and spelling reflected badly on the poster — until we found out someone had English as a second language. That person was given leeway.
We’re talking all things romance at the Dr. Romance blog.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
That’s so right. I feel I can’t trust the content if the spelling and grammar errors jump out at me.
December 17th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Bad grammar and spelling bothers me in general. I know not to trust the computer’s spell check system. There’s a spell check poem that I like to share:
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
—————-
For my own part, I have an ergonomic keyboard, and the curvature of the keyboard causes me to strike the wrong keys. It drives me nuts. I really need a new keyboard.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Oh Skylarking now that is a funny way to make a great point!
December 18th, 2008 at 7:13 am
I’m as guilty as the next person for not proof-reading correctly, so these are great tips.
Blogging itself also requires another style of writing, different to that of articles or books.
For instance, web readers tend to scan and browse so it’s essential to use short paragraphs, lots of bold and sub-headings, and even a smattering of pictures (but only where they help).
Wordpress, which I use, has built in spell checking, but of course that does not help with grammar.
Keep up the good work
December 21st, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Agree with all of the above. It is hard to proofread one’s own writing, though. I’d suggest that bloggers wait 24 hours before posting an article. After 24 hours (the longer the better, actually) a pair of fresh eyes will see problems that even 2 or 3 re-reads won’t spot if undertaken right after writing.