Bad Writing

Edrof

Edrof

Edrof

Soldato
Joined
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Location
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I see a lot of poor writing out there in the wild—especially from small businesses. I see billboards, product information and expensive websites that haven’t even been proofread, never mind professionally written. For example, I’ve just been perusing a national company’s site—probably the largest in its field—and the writing is shocking (this company is in the education sector, ironically). This frustrates me because most writers are actually cheap and good copy always looks far more professional than DIY copy. Not only that, but often the writing can be re-used over and over again.

CVs are a problem, too. The ones I see through a friend in recruitment are almost always, not just poor, but exceptionally poor. New jobs can be life-changing and bring a substantial raise yet most people don’t even consider a writer.

So can anyone enlighten me why this is? Do those that do it themselves imagine writers to be too expensive? Or is it a case of incompetence not recognising itself? Lastly, has anyone NOT used a company because their standard of writing is low?
 
I imagine if someone writes poorly they wouldn't recognise it either so they'd never think to get it fixed.

I must admit to avoiding a company in the past when the emails before a sale had even been agreed required a masters in cryptography to understand :D.

I'm not perfect by any means but quality of writing is certainly important.
 
I'd say it's often a case of incompetence.

And yeah, I've not used companies in the past due to it. If they aren't going to take care and put effort in to language, what else will they scrimp on?
 
Edrof said:
New jobs can be life-changing and bring a substantial raise yet most people don’t even consider a writer.
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I think that's a good thing. Using a writer is basically cheating. People should write things themselves so their illiteracy can be gauged accurately. I'd be pretty annoyed if someone showcased impeccable language in their CV and letters, only to find out they're borderline illiterate.
 
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Text is one of the most basic foundations of any business. One of the most primitive building blocks, it forms one of the cornerstones of your company because it's what every single one of your customers see. Whether it be a flyer, a website, a billboard, an ad in the corner of a random website, it's the very first impression that people will have of your company, before even picking up a phone or sending an email. I really struggle to get my head around how companies can be so sloppy and still think they're going to get away with their rubbish forms of writing. Any half educated person will take one look at all the typos, poor sentences and incorrectly used words and run a mile, myself included.

If you, as a business, can't even get the most basic, fundamental core of your business right, why the hell would anyone think that you're even remotely competent in the business you're trying to grow?
 
Author and writer calls for businesses to hire more writers

A published author today called for businesses to take professional advice on delivering coherent prose.

The author, a jobbing writer, eloquently broadcast his displeasure with incompetent marketing materials before being heard to mutter "It proper gets on my ****, I'm only ****ing £20 an hour but they still give it to bloody Ashley the temp to write about how prize winning their gate posts are. Muppets".

Malvern Gateposts owner, when approached for comment, responded "Dunno what his problem is. Our gateposts are guaranteed for 25 years - what have you got to loose?"
 
My English has always been poor having left school at 15 with no qualifications and it has always annoyed me that my English, particularly grammar is so bad. But I have taught myself to be a little better as I have aged but the standard I see of today's youngsters is generally appalling and make my efforts look great. But English, like any language, does and is evolving so I try not to get too sniffy about it.
 
Lack of knowledge, lack of proof reading and lack of time. A spell checker will only get you so far.

Everyone makes mistakes and it is so easy when checking your own writing to read what you intended to write - and not what you actually wrote. I've come back to emails, posts etc much later on and only then seen a stupid mistake like a word missed out.

For something public facing such as a website, it should be multiple pairs of eyes checking the content.
 
On top of the above, go and check any major broadsheet or news outlet. Then, cry in a corner. There are several reasons for this:

  • Most digital content is throwaway -- written to be consumed once per customer, or never to be read fully if at all
  • Rapid editing, particularly in online journalism
  • Human languages have built-in redundancy measures, and people auto-correct to a great extent
  • Writing optimally for machine consumption is preferred
  • Less formal domains, like emails, blogging and online publishing, infect formal domains: Collin in Accounting will pick a style he likes and stick to it, say, even if it's inappropriate
  • Style guide, what style guide?
  • Neither grammar, syntax, vocabulary nor style are fixed entities
  • Tight deadlines
  • Time is money; proofreading is time
  • Templates, machine copy and Google Translate do the job free of charge
  • Hubris
  • Lack of basic IT skills
  • Specialised education
  • Little reading or writing for pleasure
  • SEO: ranking badly for a keyword? There's always a creative misspelling!
  • Ad campaigns are effectively auctions
  • Copy is irrelevant to the sale (say, a market-leading biotech company offering data, kit and analytics; the bigger their hold on their market niche, the less people care too)
  • Spoken word and visual aids compensate for bad copy
  • Specialised copy is written and proofread by experts in that domain; it's assumed to be correct

So, become like water my friend!
 
Some fascinating replies, thank you chaps!

Evole said:
** Removed ** .
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Please hook me up with some of that sweet, sweet cardboard action, Evole.

asim18 said:
I think that's a good thing. Using a writer is basically cheating. People should write things themselves so their illiteracy can be gauged accurately. I'd be pretty annoyed if someone showcased impeccable language in their CV and letters, only to find out they're borderline illiterate.
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Very interesting, Asim. Obviously I'm biased, but I think it actually shows initiative, drive and delegation skills instead. Plus, if my CV was terribly written I'd take the chance of getting someone else to run through it as a poor document will likely be binned in the first place.

Diddums said:
Text is one of the most basic foundations of any business. One of the most primitive building blocks, it forms one of the cornerstones of your company because it's what every single one of your customers see. Whether it be a flyer, a website, a billboard, an ad in the corner of a random website, it's the very first impression that people will have of your company, before even picking up a phone or sending an email. I really struggle to get my head around how companies can be so sloppy and still think they're going to get away with their rubbish forms of writing. Any half educated person will take one look at all the typos, poor sentences and incorrectly used words and run a mile, myself included.

If you, as a business, can't even get the most basic, fundamental core of your business right, why the hell would anyone think that you're even remotely competent in the business you're trying to grow?
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This is exactly my thinking, too.
 
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There's no irony here, it's hypocrisy.

I also think the reason is because people don't know any better, and a lot of people react very badly to being corrected.

Seemingly they'd rather look like an imbecile than feel "shame" from someone trying to help them better their communication skills.

I've said this countless time to people, I've learnt from mistakes that I've made when someone has pointed it out and I really don't see why people get all butthurt about it.

It's chronic stupidity. A lot of people want to communicate like knuckle dragging oafs and not even attempt to better their communication skills because it doesn't matter to them.

To be blunt, I think if someone won't put the effort in to the words they write then they shouldn't expect people to bother putting the effort in to read their words.
 
Edrof said:
Lastly, has anyone NOT used a company because their standard of writing is low?
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Me always however I do let Asian (Hong Kong) companies off if I'm buying from abroad.

I'm looking for an electric staple gun and if I went on eg Machine Mart and it said 'Stapel Gun' I would not buy it even if it was a massive bargain.

If it said ect instead of etc I would DDOS the site (if I knew how to do it).
 
I have bought some ebooks from Amazon recently for my Kindle Paperwhite and the spelling/punctuation mistakes in some of them have been just shocking. Do some of these so called writers not proof read their work?

If it was a retailer and the spelling/wording was bad then I wouldn't use them even if they where the cheapest. If they can't be bothered to spell things correctly on their website it makes me think of what may happen if I needed to use their customer service. Some listings on ebay just make me cringe.
 
If you're sending a PDF proposal to a client then it should be well written and well presented. I will avoid a company that doesn't feel that they should put the effort into these sorts of things at the sales stage.
 
Nobody is perfect, but businesses should realistically put effort in. But there's always someone who wants to gain brownie points from the boss because they're "good" at creating marketing materials in-house and save money.

I do like some replies though. How can some of you reject products due to bad writing from companies, when you yourselves display poor punctuation and/or grammar?!

Is it because you are not a shop? :D
 
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