The Grief of Spelling & Grammar

"You don’t go to a bakery and tell the baker please make sure you have an oven to bake the bread or take your kids to school and ask the principal to please make sure there will be a teacher to present your kids with lessons! It is like sending a soldier to war and remind him to take his ammunition! Why on earth would you want to tell a writer then to take up his spelling and grammar tools to do his work?"

Amongst the most common mistakes writers make, you will mostly find that spelling and grammar are one of the first mentioned errors we are warned against and it happens that it is also one of the first prerequisites clients mention for their work. This is wrong. As a writer, spelling and grammar are your tools you use to do your work.

You don’t go to a bakery and tell the baker please make sure you have an oven to bake the bread or take your kids to school and ask the principal to please make sure there will be a teacher to present your kids with lessons! It is like sending a soldier to war and remind him to take his ammunition! Why on earth would you want to tell a writer then to take up his spelling and grammar tools to do his work?

The bottom line is, even if you are a second language writer, your spelling, grammar and sentence construction abilities, is not negotiable. If you do not possess those skills, you are not equipped to be a writer.

Language is the medium you use to “paint the picture” to your reader and therefore it needs to be perfect. Therefore, it is wrong to regard spelling and grammar as a writing mistake. Spelling and grammar “mistakes” in writing are like cheating on your spouse in your marriage or relationship. It is just not suppose to happen!

As mentioned before, when you present a piece of your writing work, it is important to remember that what you place in front of your reader is a representation of yourself. When a client hires you to write an article it is so easy to forget that your client actually hires you to represent his website with your article.

If you are not able to adhere to the ultimate fundamentals of writing – spelling and grammar – it is unlikely that you will be able to make the mark with the rest of your article.