One could say I am a "stickler" concerning some things in my classes. One example: I expect students to use proper grammar and spelling. They are graded on their use of there, their and they're - to, too and two - your and you're - and other improper spelling and grammar mistakes. An example of my pet peeve: "i went to the store and i bought some food." Using lowercase "i' drives me crazy!
Why am I so adamant about this? I am not an English teacher, but I believe my role is to prepare the students for "life". I believe one should use good grammar in life. "Me and my boyfriend..." is not acceptable. Please use, "My boyfriend and I..." I have always said that poor grammar and spelling reflect on who you are. And here is someone who agrees with me.
Kyle Wiens is CEO of iFixit, the largest online repair community, as well as founder of Dozuki, a software company dedicated to helping manufacturers publish amazing documentation. He is also a "stickler". He has written an article titled: I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why. Here's what he says, in part:
If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.
...grammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn’t make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can’t tell the difference between their, there, and they’re.
Good grammar makes good business sense — and not just when it comes to hiring writers. Writing isn’t in the official job description of most people in our office. Still, we give our grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff, and our programmers.
If you share these sentiments, you have either read, or should read, Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. It's the ultimate authority on punctuation!
Just a little something to ponder.
Replace the blanks with the proper word choices from:
you're, your;
to, too;
there, their, they're
Dick and Jane are tired and and headed for home from the store.
Dick says, "I can see that ____ bags are heavy and ____ tired."
Jane says, " I think I am ____ tired ____ go on."
- National Storytelling Network? You should be.
Valley storyteller, coach, author and story-preneur Sean Buvala has hit the REBOOT button for Storyteller.net, the ORIGINAL Storyteller resource website. They were on the web long before Google! He has redesigned the website and is in the long process of moving all the information and features over to the new site.
Friday - March 23rd - 7:00 pm
Storyfind is a free monthly storytelling workshop series presented by the faculty of the SMCC Storytelling Institute. The workshops are on Saturday afternoons from 1:00 – 3:00 in PAC-739 at South Mountain Community College. 
