Design & Photography: December 2006 Archives

Last week was my final week of advertising design class, and we each presented our package design and related ad campaign. (I'll post mine later.) There was a lot of good work, with one problem -- SPELLING AND GRAMMAR.

I was going to write a long rant about the subject, but finally decided to spare all of you from reading while I go on and on about how people just don't proofread their stuff anymore. Then today I saw this, and my internal rant started all over again.

It's common knowledge that I'm a stickler for spelling and grammar. I'm pretty sure this comes from my mom, who always offered to proofread my papers when I was in high school. I doubt that I ever turned in a paper that she hadn't redlined for me, pointing out where I'd spelled things wrong or sentences that sounded awkward. (Thanks Mom! I think...) Now, this doesn't mean that I always get everything correct, and if you read through a number of past blog posts I'm sure you'll find a spelling error or two, and certainly some bad grammar. But hey -- this is a blog. It's informal.

But if you were turning in an assignment for a design class, wouldn't you proofread it first? And last? And a dozen times in between? If English is not your first language, wouldn't you have someone else double-check it for you?

To me, poor spelling and grammar on a finished product -- an assignment, a newspaper article, an advertisement -- is like waving a huge red flag in the air and saying "I DON'T CARE." You're saying that you don't care enough to check your work. You're saying that I, the viewer, am not worthy of you taking the time to get the details right. The moment that I see a badly spelled word, or a badly worded line, I dismiss your assignment, your article, your ad.

In class last week, the first three people that presented each had glaring spelling and grammatical errors. I couldn't help it -- I commented. (The whole class critiques each assignment anyway.) I got teased for being so picky, and my pet peeve about spelling and grammar became a joke for the rest of class.

The best part? One guy got up to present his ad campaign, and he looked at me as he joked "you'll be happy to know that I used spell checker." With that, I began to read the ~150 words of copy that he'd written for his ad. Within three sentences I found an error -- "there" instead of "their." ARGH! Spell checker only catches bad spelling -- it doesn't captures homophones! (That would be words that sound alike but are spelled differently.)

I didn't even bother to point out his error; by that time I was resigned to everyone's bad spelling.

Being a naturally good or bad speller is one thing. But most people who can't spell know they can't spell, and so I return to my original opinion: there's no excuse for not proofreading your work, or having someone else do it for you.

Sigh.