Grammar.

What's grammar got to do with it? Design, that is. Put simply: improper grammar makes you look (and sound) stupid. Maybe I'm a stickler for grammar because I came to it late.

As an art major, I had little to do with writing, and thus, grammar. We didn't have to write much at all after surviving freshman comp classes. And, as a graphic design major, all of our headlines were given to us, and copy was just "greeked" in. The only real writing we had to do, as I recall, was on art history essay tests and in art history senior seminar, which required a term paper on some significant piece of art. As it turned out, I chose Rodin's "Gates of Hell" as my piece (why I did that is another story for another day), and because it was his life's work, I ended up having to write much more than just about anyone else in the class. But, if I remember correctly, these weren't graded on grammar, spelling and mechanics, so much as on content.

When I went into graduate school in Journalism and Mass Communication, for the first time in my college career, I had to write a lot, and it had to be grammatically correct. Because I had been writing mostly radio copy before that, I used punctuation "artistically." I used elipses (…) for long pauses, periods for pauses a bit longer, and commas for short pauses. And, I subscribed to Andrew Jackson's philosophy that "it was a poor man who couldn't think of but one way to spell a word." In other words, I did things like put an "e" on the end of the word "develop," couldn't remember whether it was "i before e" or "e before i" and so on. Nouns and verbs were generally in agreement, but not always.

After I turned in my first academic paper in History of Journalism, I was called into the professor's office who told me that I wasn't going to get a degree from that program unless I cleaned up my grammar and spelling. So, I bought Hodge's Harbrace College Handbook, and kept it at my elbow while writing. I still have it on my desk, but mostly out of a sense of nostalgia, as I hardly ever open it. Long story short: I ended up with an "A" in the course, and ultimately, obtained their degree.

Why am I telling all this in an ostensibly design blog? Because as I cruised the web this morning looking for design inspiration or how-to to share, I found on noupe.com (way-cool design blog), a link to a collection of sites that can save you from errors in grammar and do so in a lighthearted way. The sugar with the medicine, as it is.

Let me tell you straight: I'm not the grammar police, but it will be part of what I'm evaluating in your work. Likewise, spelling. When I was working for a small ad agency, I once had to pay, out of my own pocket, to have a political campaign candidate's brochure reprinted because I "corrected" his spelling by adding "e" to the end of "develop" wherever it appeared in the copy. And, it appeared a lot because this guy evidently developed and was planning to develop a lot. Needless to say, the client wasn't pleased with the delay in getting the brochures out because of my inept spelling.

So, to bring this longer-than-I-anticipated essay to a dramatic close: bad grammar and spelling can make you look stupid, and employers don't hire stupid people.