Reading Along, Does Your Blog Whiz past?

When Adam Davis of Buzz Feed teaches you grammar, he first shows you a video clip in which some well known TV or movie actor is doing it wrong.

• She may not have split ends, but when the movie star says “You need to really focus”, that’s an example of a split infinitive.  Sure, when creating a blog post, you do really need to focus on one concept. You also really need to keep the two parts of the infinitive (“to” and “focus”) together!
• No, Warner Brothers. That actress shouldn’t be saying “There’s towels in the closet.” There ARE towels in the closet.  “Towels” is a plural object, so “are” is the appropriate verb.
• And, Dev Patel, you’re a favorite of mine, but don’t be putting apostrophes where they don’t belong, as in “Put it in it’s place”. The apostrophe in “it’s” means “it is”, and I know that’s not what you meant.
• My favorite of the David film star quotes is this one: “Walking along, cars whizzed past”. The cars aren’t what’s walking, for heaven’s sake! The participle “walking along” is left dangling with nothing to attach itself to, Davis points out.

“I won’t hire people who use poor grammar,” says Kyle Wiens in the Harvard Business Review. Isn’t that a bit extreme? No, because Wiens has a “zero tolerance approach” to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid. Language is constantly changing, he admits, but that doesn’t make grammar unimportant.  “Good grammar is credibility, especially on the Internet.”

In today’s competitive business world (as any good freelance blog content writer needs to keep in mind), corporate blogging for business represents an ideal tool for “getting personal” and earning trust.? Business blog writing needs to be real.

Being real, though, doesn’t mean being sloppy, as I’m constantly reminding business owners and professional practitioners during corporate blogging training sessions.

Reading along, does your blog whiz past?