Big Bloggers, Bad Grammar
Posted on January 20th, 2008 by IBabel under Blogging
It’s quite amazing how you would think that logically, one of the biggest factors to contribute to the success of a writer would be their grammar. Considering it’s what they’re doing as a living and putting out there on a limb.
Now, bloggers aren’t necessarily writers but still. They do write. I don’t mind bad grammar, I couldn’t care less but it’s quite annoying when you see small time bloggers get hassle about it from what little readers they have. Yet big bloggers like Shoemoney and John Chow have really bad grammar. Understandably John Chow’s first language isn’t English so that’s fair enough but Shoe seems to be openly sloppy. Like, childlike sloppy with his grammar.
My grammar is far from perfect but I at least spell basic words right! come on Shoe, how hard is it to use Spellcheck!
Problogger Darren Rowse also makes a lot of typos and grammar mistakes. Which is quite surprising considering he has nearly 40,000 readers and his blog is about perfecting pretty much every aspect of blogging. Including writing and content. You would think with all those readers he would triple check his posts. I know I would.
Wish I had all those readers!
Ironically the 3 bloggers I just mentioned for having or sometimes having bad grammar are probably my 3 favorite bloggers and some of the only blogs that I actually read on a regular basis. They all tell it like it is, all do what they preach and are all very successful.
Content is more important than the actual grammar of the content anyway.
Pretty pointless post and I’m not having a go at those bloggers. Just pointing out quite a surprising fact that I noticed and I’m sure they’re all aware of anyway. I know Shoemoney is and he doesn’t care. Who does care, why did I even write this!
(10 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)
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January 20th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Yea, I see Shoemoney talking about the fact that his grammar isn’t all that good. I am not sure that it matters because blogs like his are just there, people will read them no matter what language it’s in.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Yeh I acknowledge the fact grammar doesn’t seem to make much difference. It’s not that, that bothers me but it’s like he doesn’t make any effort with it. Like not even bothering to check spelling, quite annoying blog is so huge with that lack of effort. But I suppose he’s earnt that right with his other success.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Well for me it’s alright whether a blogger’s communication skills is good or just average. So long as you understand what’s he’s saying then that’s good enough for me
January 21st, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I think the key to success these days is to spaell and use improper graommer wherever possible.
Oops, I made some typos. It’s okay, I might get another 1000 RSS readers now! lol
January 21st, 2008 at 4:04 pm
That’s one thing that irritates me so much! I’m an avid reader, so bad grammar isn’t something I’m accustomed to, I look past it as all readers do, if they like the blog enough. But I’m with you!
January 21st, 2008 at 4:33 pm
It’s very irritating to read articles riddled with grammar mistakes. I sometimes make a few myself, but I’m a lone blogger, on a new blog. I imagine guys like Shoemoney and John Chow, let alone Darrin, could afford to hire someone to drag a spell checker behind their posts.
When I re-read my articles, I sometimes notice grammar mistakes, and I take a moment to fix them. There’s really no excuse, outside of laziness, for leaving them there.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Exactly!
January 21st, 2008 at 5:06 pm
It’s particulaly important when it comes to product descriptions ‘n’ all that if you’re retailing on the net. I’ve been put off many times by a complete lack of grammar in a product description, so I make sure I get things proof read for exactly that reason.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Yeh I agree. I can easily be putt off by unprofessional structure. If someone is selling an information product and the grammar on the product description is worse than mine. I probably won’t buy.
Which you could say is a bit silly as the product could still have great info, could just be bad grammar. Not as important as the info itself.
But still, I like professional output. Plus I don’t buy any info products anyway so what am I on about
only ebook I’ve ever bought for my own purpose is Aaron Wall’s SEO book which was good. Not worth $79 though.
People will tell you it is considering the price of SEO consulting. But to be honest, the vast majority of the info in that ebook is stuff most webmasters know already, it’s more an ebook for a complete novice. Then it’s worth $79.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:53 pm
I’m not sure how many spelling mistakes one could make these days, especially since most Bloggers use Firefox!? Firefox has a built in Spell Checker that Automatically gives you a warning, and with a right-click - it gives you suggestions. I use it all of the time, although I’m FAR from being perfect with grammar…
I believe that a little “bad grammar” is always good as it keeps your Blog/Website away from that corporate vibe, but at LEAST do some spell checking?!
Good Blog post Nick!
January 21st, 2008 at 6:53 pm
By the way — great Link Bait!
January 21st, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Thanks
thought it had a nice catchy title!
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
[...] Offer Darren Rowse free spelling lessons. [...]
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:30 am
Hm quite surprise…
Their primary language is English..
I hope I will learn and improve my language from you..
January 25th, 2008 at 5:08 am
[...] grammar = Big bucks?!? Nick seems to think that big name bloggers have bad english as part of their [...]
January 28th, 2008 at 2:16 am
[...] Nick Sullivan of internet babel wrote a intresting article titled “Big bloggers and bad grammer”. I think its a really intresting topec. Grammar has never been my thing and I have never kared to really learn it. [...]
January 28th, 2008 at 3:43 am
Content is far more important than good grammar. While we tend to use impeccable grammar on Big Oak’s blog, I doubt most readers in this industry really hold bad grammar against anyone.
January 28th, 2008 at 10:30 am
I would like to conclude that you don’t have to be good at grammar in order to be successful blogger. What matters the most is that you can give values to others. The reader doesn’t eat words and grammar; they eat benefit.
January 28th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Very interesting, and a very surprising result. I guess as long as one can understand the blog. It is OK.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
If you’re going to write a post about the bad grammar and spelling of others, you should check your own work first.
This could have been fantastic link bait had you not stumbled all over yourself.
January 28th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Sven, I do check my own
I don’t think you’ll find any spelling errors if you check this post through.
Maybe some contextual or other more advanced grammar issues, but I’m just referring to basic grammar. Spelling of basic words and correct use of basic grammar.
I’m no scholar at English either, far, far from it. Just a little debate post. Don’t take it so seriously
January 28th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
i corrected john chow’s mistakes in many posts few times by a short post of mistakes in comments - and he almost always corrected it and deleted that comment
i found it quite interesting, those really are people you would expect to have a proper grammar. i am not a native speaker as well but reading chow and shoemoney is often very painful for me.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Grammar! I hate it! That is why I created a image blog…pictures are worth a thousand words…right?
January 28th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Jeremy’s writing skills are really horrible, I guess he just doesn’t care.
January 28th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
I’m a terrible grammarian, but I do make an attempt. Each time someone drops me a line to let me know I made a mistake, I both thank them and encourage them to do it. I think good grammar is important because it shows that you respect your audience. Some of us simply aren’t good at it!
January 28th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Want to improve? “The Elements of Style” is the only book on the English language anyone really needs. Short and sweet. Painless.
I’ve always kept a copy near my desk, rereading it every year or so (it takes maybe an hour and a half). When my daughter first took to writing, I bought her a copy. As a journalism professor, I made the kids read it before I started cleaning up their spelling, grammar, usage.
I have never been bothered by Shoemoney’s writing, because I’m motivated to learn from him. If I wasn’t, the grammar would drive me away.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:11 am
I don’t think you’ll find any spelling errors if you check this post through.
Maybe some contextual or other more advanced grammar issues, but I’m just referring to basic grammar. Spelling of basic words and correct use of basic grammar.
I wouldn’t normally do this, but you issued the challenge:
There is nothing more basic than figuring out if a noun is singular or plural. In your very first sentence, you used the article “a” to introduce the word “writers’.” Of course, the apostrophe should come before the “s” because you are referring to a singular writer. Therefore, the sentence should read, “It’s quite amazing how you would think that logically, one of the biggest factors to a writer’s success would be their grammar.” It’s still an extraordinarily clumsy sentence, but that’s not the point.
The second sentence of that paragraph is not a sentence at all; it is a fragment. If you meant for it to be a continuation of the previous sentence, you should have placed a semicolon where the period is.
The second paragraph is so convoluted, I’d prefer not to waste my time de-constructing it.
In the second sentence of the third paragraph, you say, “come on Shoe, how hard isit to use spellcheck!” The word “come” should be capitalized and “isit” is two words: “is it.” It’s ironic that these two mistakes would be caught by a spell-checker.
I’ll stop there. You get the idea.
Don’t take it so seriously
I don’t; it’s a subject you brought up. And, for what it’s worth, the sentence, “Don’t take it so seriously” should have a period after it.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:14 am
[...] Babel has posted a little rant about the poor use of grammar among the big blogs. Nick let me off lightly by saying English is not my first language but [...]
January 29th, 2008 at 12:46 am
Sven, wow how sad!
I made this post to start a debate on grammar on big blogs. Not to declare myself a grammar master and say “look how perfect mine is” you obviously didn’t pick up on that.
Also, why not just say full stop? do you really have to use the word period to make it seem you’re smarter than you are by using an uncommon word in replacement of a more common one. How pretentious.
Anyway. You didn’t find any spelling mistakes
isit instead of is it… is not a misspelling, it’s simply bad grammar. I forgot to put a space in between is and it and as for the ‘writer’s’ issue in the first sentence. Another typo, apostrophe was meant to go before the ’s’ not after.
So you picked up on a few, well done
you want a medal? so I also have a lot of grammar mistakes, I’m aware of that. You’d be hard pushed to find many Online writers who don’t. I was just making a very basic rant post about extremely obvious bad grammar. Let it go Sven, let it go 
why are you so angry? did your mum not hug you enough as a kid?
January 29th, 2008 at 2:09 am
[...] internetbabel.com Sphere: Related Content No Comments, Comment or Ping [...]
January 29th, 2008 at 3:11 am
Shoemoney not be good at grammer? Me not noticed none. He got good thots, like, ynowwhutimsayin?
like i dig his blog mon. so glad so menny of us studyed english so we cud get de big jobz n make lotsa duh monies.
January 29th, 2008 at 3:41 am
Sven ain’t putting out his blog so others can comment on his grammar. What does HE have to hide.
A blog is very personal and a way to connect with users is to use a style that combines aspects of both good writing and good conversation. Yes, you sometimes get fragmented sentences, but it is still very readable.
For me, the grammar issue I pay attention to the most is the problem of agreement. Article/verb/noun agreement is pretty basic.
Spelling is another issue altogether, but some bloggers aren’t that concerned with spelling. Commonly misspelled words in blog posts are also commonly misspelled words in Google searches.
January 29th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
i would appriciate this post even more if it has some example to show up…yes i know shoemoney is bad at grammer.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:10 am
[...] still curious about bad grammar, can success, internetbabel.com has been wrote an article titled “Big Blogger, Bad Grammar”. Big blogger like shoemoney, John chow and even Darren Rowse doesn’t care about their grammar [...]
January 30th, 2008 at 9:49 am
[...] - a post about grammar by someone who was more willing than I was to name names. Nick Sullivan at Internet Babel posted, and Shoemoney responded bit. Now, I don’t think it matters for big names like Shoemoney, [...]
January 30th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Love your response to Sven! I started to the bottom of the comments section with another comment in mind, but forgot it on the way down. Oh, bad grammar in a blog is like bad service in a restaurant, the food is great, but to get to the food you have to endure horrible wait staff! But, if the food is good enough, staff don’t matter.
Great post!
January 31st, 2008 at 12:53 am
Thanks Sabrina, I loved my response too
Great analogy about the restaurant as well, I’m going to start using more analogies in posts. Nice poetic ways to get complex points across at times.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:55 am
[...] a good thing. A great example is SEONoobs post about title tags and Internet Babel’s post on big bloggers with bad grammar - both of them got mentioned on Shoemoney (the latter on John Chow as well I think) driving a tonne [...]
January 31st, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I came in US 9 years ago when I was 18… even college did not fixed my grammar. I run my small SEO company and write blog on a daily basis. I don’t feel that grammar is my weak point for blogging, I have a lot of readers who understand that English is my second language. Somethimes I feel bad when some rude person comment “F..k you, learn english!”… but when I check blogs of this people I just feel that it is just a people who doesn’t have high-school degree.
February 1st, 2008 at 4:56 am
You’re right…Wrong grammar is sometimes annoying. There are several words processor which I know can correct any misstyped…But, I’ve never known software which can check and correct bad grammar. If this software is available, I think this can minimize bad grammar for writters…
February 19th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
[...] “Can you suck at grammar and have a successful blog” which linked to a post from Nick Sullivan’s blog pretty much stating the same thing. I guess more than just me are bugged by these famous [...]
February 26th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Grammar is also my problem. But I know that others don’t mind it. Grammar is nothing for a blogger as long as you can write what you wanna write.
Typos aren’t ok. Grammar is understandable but typos isn’t. Why need to be wrong is it so hard to look in the dictionary if you are not sure of the spelling? Hope I’m getting clear.
February 26th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
[...] All you do is insult big profile bloggers to try provoke them! Which is ok if done creatively… but not when it’s just constantly droning on about how Shoemoney is fake or how John [...]
March 10th, 2008 at 1:03 am
[...] When I first started this blog, I wrote a few posts that hit a nerve but my best effort to date is Big Bloggers, Bad Grammar. I just knew when I was writing that post that it would attract attention, the title just sounded good and the topic seemed a valid debate point. The post got mentioned on 2 out of 3 of the big bloggers that I mentioned; Shoemoney and John Chow. [...]
March 23rd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I don’t think that grammar matters for those kinds of blogs. I mean, lets face it, people will stop visiting it because he spelled something wrong. Common now. Plus, after all nobody is perfect.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
[...] several posts on how being a blogger does not excuse anyone from using decent grammar when writing. Nick Sullivan over at Internet Babel and I share the same point of view and he even took it one step further – he singled out some of [...]
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:32 am
You are right, English is my second language and yet I make sure my grammar is near perfect. I got a History degree in college so grammar is a big thing for me when writing.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Thank You, Nick.
This article is such an inspiration, especially for those blogers who’s first language is not English.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Honestly, the world is so full of well written nothings. Just like people who know how to speak well at conventions and you get not a thing out of it. I have been critisized for my grammer quite a bit, and I have critisized DaveN for who I believe to be the absolute worst speller on earth, but when it comes down to it, what matters is content.
Mike Dammann
http://www.searchfeature.com
May 26th, 2008 at 11:58 am
[...] Grammar Some people might say that proper grammar isn’t necessary and I’ll agree with them. Although, sometimes it is the best way to get people to take you [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 3:08 am
yeah you are totally right i thought that my grammar errors were the reasons i had less traffic to my blog but now i realized that its not
June 25th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Sven, you missed one buddy. I think, “Including writing and content.” qualifies as a fragment as well. Sorry guys, I couldn’t resist. I don’t want a metal….medal…my grammar sucks as bad as anyone’s.