First of all, I’m not saying I’m perfect or that I’m some sort of grammatical perfectionist, but here’s the thing: If you want people to read your posts on social media, take a moment to make sure they are readable. It only takes a minute.
There’s nothing more annoying than having to re-read a comment word-by-word and trying to unravel what it really means. Even taking a second to speed-read your response before posting would pick up most errors.
You want people to actually read what you have to say, right?
I’m not picking on the semi-literate or those learning English – no, not at all. At least they’re making an effort. But something tells me that most people who post like this are capable of writing coherent sentences and paragraphs, but are just too lazy to care. Blast out a few sentences and move on. Who cares about punctuation or your paragraph even making the slightest bit of sense – no, just move on.
Again, I’m not perfect – far from it. But I do pay attention to my real-time spelling and grammar checker as I type. That should be a minimum for anyone in my opinion.
Of course, it can all be taken to the extreme where you are being criticized for breaking grammatical rules. No one is saying that at all, and I find it very annoying when someone takes it upon themselves to nitpick writing in that manner. Again, if you read my stuff on this blog, I have a free style and ignore a lot of strict grammatical rules.
But I’d like to think that you can at least make sense of what I’m saying.
Do you suffer from ICS (Incoherent Comment Syndrome)? My advice? I would say that punctuation is going to go a long way. Use paragraphs and then break up those paragraphs with periods, question marks, and commas, it doesn’t cost a thing! Second, make sure your auto-corrector isn’t ruining your writing by replacing words that make sense with those that do not.
I’ll get off my soapbox now.
