Bad Grammar

I am old school, so grammar counts for me, but so does spelling.

In researching ways of selling my eBook on importing, I visited many internet marketing sites. On some I found people trying to sell information although they appeared only semi-literate. If I am looking for information I am unlikely to trust what is offered by someone who cannot properly express himself..

One internet marketing site contained grammatical errors that led to ambiguity, and even incomprehensibility. Spelling errors abounded on that site. The seller wanted people to believe that she or he could be relied upon for valuable information.

A common mistake made by writers is to rely on spell check programs without proof reading. The result can be quite funny when the spell checking program inserts correctly spelled words with the wrong meaning.

Yep. The twits haven't figured out yet their sigs don't show there.

The SEO section gets hit the hardest with these cretins. I'd feel bad for them, except that most of what we call "SEO" is just abuse of the system.


Paul

This is the fun about communication. Grammar and spelling are a part of the package, by no means the whole.

I am reading a lot in what you say based on the cards you play to reinforce your message. Why you bring up your background? To force compliance under the "authority"? Am I reading too much? Please tell me why then. Illustrate me.

We can get out of the dog fight and maybe move to something more interesting, if you are up to change the game.

There are many elements playing here. I see some, there are probably others.

The first one is what type of website people imagine when answering the question.

I am an information sponge, so I seek information websites. In this case, the deal breaker for me is regurgitated information and fluff, no matter how well written it is. When buying items, I prefer artists and artisans over mass production pieces.This is why I don´t use formal packaging as a parameter to stop me.

So what sites do you have in mind?

The second element is the target market.

The look and feel of a website will pre-select the customers. The wording, the art, the navigation, they all tie up to create an environment that will attract certain public and reject others. It does not leave money on the table, it is a natural and wanted pre-selection process designed by businesses to attract and retain the target market.

So lets suppose that someone who has a particular way of communicating hires a copywriter to do the sales copy. The buyers will make assumptions about the product based on the copy, the result is massive refunds when the expectations are not met. I am not talking by ear here, I lived it with a client. It was not the sales copy though, they were clouds to be given for free during the pre-launch.

Businesses have personalities too. And all means of communication need to be tied up with the values they want to express for the business. This is done purposely in big corp world, but I do think it is interesting for the small business as well. Lack of coherence in the communication as a big deal breaker. The guy who called my attention to this is Steve Mann. He is well known in the big corporations´ world as image and social media expert. He did the ground research in Twitter for enterprises to use the platform efficiently.

Then you have the assumption of the business model.

Those who test things will tell you that sometimes the uglier the better. In the old days of adsense, some purposely created ugly and un-readable sites so the visitor had only one thing to do: click on the ads.

Google cracked on these sites later and de-index them in mass. Meantime they received the checks via Fedex for long enough to get in the millionaire band.

In corporate websites, it is reasonable to expect them to be spotless. Because efficiency is part of their corporate message, the business personality. What lies behind, in my opinion, is coherence (yet again).

There are two more points I think worth addressing.

One is the message to those reading, those trying to learn business and good practices.

The big players don´t care about perfection before launching, actually to seek perfection is considered a self defeating behavior.

If someone is a small entrepreneur, by all means need to get the product out there fast, and work from there. Wait to get it perfect is to shoot your own foot.

Do they have to come back and fix typos, grammar, art? Absolutely.

Do they have to wait until perfect before launching? I do not recommend it. But to each its own.

The second is the laziness and stiffness of the reader.

As an entrepreneur, I don´t want to deal with customers who can´t figure out anything by themselves and get paralyzed by a typo. Chances are, they will get paralyzed by anything out of their comfort zone; those are usually challenged to learn anything new. They want to be spoon fed. Who want a client like that? I don´t.

Good luck with your upcoming WSO, you will see soon enough what I mean.

[QUOTE=Sushiman1111;7833260
So seeing errors on a website makes me think the whole thing (including the product) will be slipshod.[/QUOTE]

You can think that if you like, and you could be right, but I believe you are almost as likely to be wrong. Two of my favorite marketers (Jason Fladlien and Maria Gudelis) are very fond of the saying "money loves speed", largely, I believe, to encourage perfectionists to loosen up and focus on getting good, imperfect content done.

I have found grammar mistakes that I probably would have caught, if the material was mine, in the work of the great Jay Abraham. I would trade my perfectionism for his incredible ability to create fantastic content any day, regardless of it's imperfections. As far as I can tell, there are no "9 billion dollar" people (like Jay), in the grammar perfection niche.

Like you said, there is always a way to clean up the grammar in anything one writes. But perhaps going to the library to avoid offending any perfectionists' sensibilities is less of a priority for some folks than creating as much content that improves lives as they possibly can. If I had to choose between Jay putting out one more great book and going through all his past content with a red marker...I think you can guess the rest.

Just because you can be more perfect than you are at something as inconsequential as making sure you never said "your" when you meant "you're", doesn't mean such corrections would be the best use of your time, for yourself or your audience.

Grammar is there to clarify what has been said (or written). It tries to pigeon hole all the aspects of speech into a limited number of grammar conventions.

If you listen to someone with a Boston accent say something and a Texan say the same idea. The words selection would change slightly, and the phrasing (pauses) would change slightly.

If everybody speaking English used the same accent and rhythm then you could have concrete rules of grammar (at least until things started to change).

Until then grammar usage will vary from individual to individual to reflect the individual way that people speak.

Thanks for the clarification. I thought it might be the case, but I don´t know both authors enough to be sure there were not deeper implications.

I noticed something interesting related with grammar while taking the challenge of writing fiction in English (a crazy thing to do, I tell ya...).

In Spanish, semicolons are commonly used. In formal papers in English, it is very much alive too. The first articles I ever wrote in English were for scientific publications. To make a long story short: I write using semicolons.

Charles saw the book and told me to lose them for good, that in common English they are not used anymore.

Funny.

Sandra