Saturday, June 1, 2013

Flying Off the Flippin' Handle



There’re few things that make me feel like flying off the flippin’ handle. Still, even for the best of us, there’s always at least one…

You’re reading a perfectly good article when either in the article or in the comments somebody, whether it be the writer or the reader makes some comment about a wrongly used word (“their” vs. “there”, for example). Then, instead of it being a simple, “Oops, used a wrong word, happens to all of us − we’re human, ya know!” response, people start saying “even a Grade Nine knows how to use that word. What sort of writer are you?”

I mean, give me a break. It only gets worse when you read something like this from a blogger who YOU KNOW has made their own mistakes in the past.

There’s more to a writer than getting the words right. Yes, ironic as it sounds. Writer’s need to understand form, they need to have a “voice” to give their writing personality, they need opinions on things relevant in their topic area, they need to know how to answer questions effectively. As a side, they should also have good people and networking skills to maximize their success.

Getting one word wrong once in a while won’t kill a career or make a bad writer for that matter. All it does say is that writer made a mistake, overlooked an error, and maybe should spend more time looking over their work before submitting it.

Nothing more.

It’s easy to say someone isn’t cut up for their work because they made this error or that mistake. B.S.! None of us are perfect and we’re all learning, however long we’ve been at something. Being critical of someone else, especially when it’s not constructive, will not only hurt the other person − it’ll create you an enemy.

And make you a hypocrite.

And aren’t you better than that anyways?!

We’re all trying to express ourselves, through writing or otherwise. The least we can do is give the other guy some basic respect.

We’d expect no less from them.

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