I’ve been blogging for approximately five years now. As everyone else, I was terrified during my first few months. First, because English is not my native language and second, because I had no previous experience in writing publicly. I feel this is a great responsibility.
Even though I have been studying English for more than fifty years, I still consider it a challenge to communicate in English. There are so many different ways to express an idea; and it gets even more complex if you plunge into local expressions known as idiomatic phrases or idioms. Each English-speaking country has its own particular idioms, which mean absolutely nothing to others who don’t live in that country or particular geographical areas within that same country.
Spelling errors, typos, incorrect sentence structure, bad grammar, sloppy writing styles, and poor content will all add up to losing credibility. If you’re not careful in ensuring that your writing follows the rules of the language, you’ll end up with only one reader—yourself.
I commit myself to proofread very carefully what I write in Lingua Franca, but now and then, some typos seem to leak between the cracks. Considering this fact, I read my posts several days later to see if I discover some unwanted pesky typos. I usually do, and immediately correct them. If I don’t, please let me know.
I was surprised of the many English mistakes that are included in mainstream Web sites, newspapers and/or magazines. I recently stumbled upon a Web site dubbed, “Terribly Write” which dedicates valuable time to detect these English errors. The name of the author of this site is Laura, and she follows failed English like a hound dog.
This is what she wrote on her site about this issue:
“With the billions and billions of pages floating out there in the Web galaxy—and the billions and billions of words they contain—it’s no surprise that you’ll notice an occasional typo or grammatical slip. But, every typo, misspelling, wrong word, and punctuation misstep erodes the credibility of a website.”
I believe Laura hit the nail right on the head. Constant errors in your posts will kill your blog, not matter how hard you try to keep it afloat. By clicking this link, you will find some of the many English mistakes detected by Laura during her linguistic explorations. Yahoo seems to be one of her favorite targets, as you will soon find out.
Another one of my New Year’s Resolutions, is to keep Lingua Franca as clean as possible from sloppy use of the English language. I know, it’s a steep hill that requires a lot of work and dedication. But you the readers, deserve that and a whole lot more. Good Day.
Source: Terribly Write – Laura
