Navigation

Professional Responsibility

I'm sure it's pretty clear from my blog subtitle that I am an English teacher. Save the jokes and the spars because I've heard them all. I don't correct other people's grammar or writing outside the confines of my classroom, but I am always on the outlook for examples of why proof-reading is important. These grammatical errors in books, magazines, newspapers, and other media pop up on shows such as "Late Night with David Letterman" or "The Tonight Show" because of their humor, but a discussion today made me ponder the professional responsibility of proof-reading and proper grammatical structure and usage.

One of my colleagues told me about a picture she found of the US Olympic team's jackets. The picture shows a replica of the track and field team's jackets, only the word "field" is misspelled as "feild." We both sincerely hoped that this glaring mistake wasn't stitched on the actual jackets. If they were, someone made an unfortunate mistake.

While mistakes like this are humorous to an extent, it's an excellent example of someone not taking time to double-check before clicking on the "submit" button. I'd like to think this sort of "excuse" applies to the mistakes I often see in communique from my fellow colleagues.

Lest you think I'm being overly picky, let me say these mistakes are on relegated to just mistyping words or transposing letters. I'm thinking about common, and pointless errors such as using the preposition "to" in place of the adverb "too." If we all think back to 3rd and 4th grade grammar, I am sure we all know that only verbals can function as another part of speech, yet I see professionals misuse these words frequently.

Just as obnoxious as that mistake is the misuse of the words "our," "are" and "hour." Obviously, a pronoun is not a verb and it most certainly is not a noun. Another common one? How about "they're," "there" and "their."
It's pretty cut and dried: "They're" is the contraction of "they are," "there" is either a noun, pronoun, adjective or adverb, and "their" is a 3rd person possessive personal pronoun. You cannot say "They're house is nice," nor can you say "There dog is friendly." I'm not really sure what the problem is with differentiating among the different parts of speech, words which can function as multiple parts, and words which can only function as one part of speech.

Nothing looks more unprofessional than someone, teacher or not, who does not take time to check his or her work before clicking the print button or the send button. I think it's time that we all start double-checking or utilizing various grammatical editors or grammar checkers (be aware, though: Not all of these programs are as intelligent as us!). It certainly will make us look more professional. It's not just an English classroom problem anymore.

The Purple Marking Pen

Recent Posts

Popular Topics

Navigation

Sponsored Links

Tags

Archives

Professional Responsibility

Comments