Tech Review

I never feel as much shame as when I re-read one of my posts and come across a spelling error (rare now with Firefox' built-in spell checker), grammar mistake, or, most often, style blunder (I won't give examples of other shameful things I've done so you'll just have to take my word for it when I say that it's a very high standard.). It's probably worse for me because I'm an English teacher; it's like Richard Simmons being caught with a box of Crispy Creams.

Follow up:

Yet, it's happened often. A popular post reviewing the Dennis Miller show caused me hours of grief today because of its overall clumsiness. That episode helped me realize, however, the reason for my grammatical sloppiness: An aversion to my own writing. I re-read parts of my posts- individual sentences or maybe a group of sentences, but I rarely read the whole post after I'm done with it. This leads to gross mistakes in form such as repeated words, mismatched sentences, and bloated paragraphs.

If readers are like some teachers I know, they won't tolerate errors (I've known teachers who only read up to the first mistake). Many people consider bad grammar distracting at best while others think it downright rude. Anyways, I'll try to read the whole post before I press "publish" starting with this one right here.

Another observation: Writing is hard! I sometimes wonder what percentage of the population can write well. It can't be too high- maybe 20%.

Lastly, I noticed a defect in my education. Grammar isn't taught in college, of course, but, even in high school, only a couple of my teachers bothered with it. It just so happens that Mr. Kaine's comma usage acronym: SCAN DISC is one of the only lessons I remember from high school. In my teaching, I sometimes sneak in an explicit grammar lesson, but it's not part of the official high school curriculum.