Dave, You are awesome! This is one of my pet peeves. When hiring, I require a writing sample done at the time of the interview and testing. I'm not an English major, but poor grammar and spelling always catches my eye. One thing people should remember is that a spell checker will NOT catch the wrong word spelled correctly. My hubby asks me regularly to review his work memos for grammar and spelling. He does a lot of customer and employee documentation that gets read by other professional co-workers. My youngest daughter used to get so mad at me when she was in elementary school. I would make her look up all misspelled words and then write them correctly. She'd say that her teacher didn't care if she had misspelled words as long as the context was correct. It didn't matter to me what the teacher thought about this, and I told my daughter that one day very soon spelling would matter, so she better get into the habit of making sure the spelling is correct. Thanks for another great article! :)

Hi, Thanks for the invite Dave .. I agree with your post to poor spelling and grammar being unprofessional. I use ieSpell Check all the time and it works great !!! I struggle a little more with grammar but I manage! ieSpell Check is a FREE Internet Explorer browser extension. The program installs as a new button in the IE toolbar. After filling in a form, just hit the ieSpell button and it pops up a dialog. Handy for users who do a lot of web-based text entry (e.g. web mails, forums, blogs, diaries). If You need it click on that link and download this great program, it's easy! You need to remind yourself at first but after a bit it's automatic !!! Have a great weekend Warm Regards

Dave, You hit my pet peeve button, too. One of the best resources available is your local Toastmasters club. Though it's meant for public speaking, the principles work for public writing as well. Probably my worst offence in this area is run-on sentences. I've become much more aware of them since joining Toastmasters. It's a supportive environment where you can be guided in a friendly way to avoid the lazy colloquial speech that abounds here in the US--and apparently abroad. Another pet peeve of mine is improper use of the possesive apostrophe when forming a plural. I used to pass a sign on my way to work that said Elegant Lamp's. It caused me to grit my teeth and be in a bad mood for half an hour. Eventually I actually changed routes to avoid seeing it. One more, and then I'm done. Would everyone please look at the bottom of the forum editor and notice the Preview button? Using that will help you avoid words that run together, lines that end prematurely, and all sorts of other gaffes that make posts difficult to read. Only takes a second. Thanks, Dave...you've raised the bar. Cheri P.S. I knew what snarky meant, too, but I didn't know why until I read Kate's post. She provides that kind of detail in her Word of the Day forum, too. I highly recommend it for vocabulary building.

Hi Dave, It has been amazing to see the amount of people who have spent money to have a website to promote affiliate sites and autosurf sites and such, but can't spell half of the words right. For some reason, though, you kind of suspect they are doing alright with their promotions. Maybe their is something to it. By the way, I am loving Tower Hits. It is one of the smoothest running Autosurfs on the net. Best Wishes, Ezra

Ah Cheri... You are so funny. ================= "Another pet peeve of mine is improper use of the possesive apostrophe when forming a plural. I used to pass a sign on my way to work that said Elegant Lamp's. It caused me to grit my teeth and be in a bad mood for half an hour." ================= If it bothered you THAT much why didn't you take a blob of the correct coloured background paint and get rid of that pesky apostrophe? Then again, maybe Lamp was a surname and Elegant was one of those unusual first names and the place belonged to Elegant Lamp. Then it would be Elegant Lamp's place. Groooaaaan. Gary Simpson