I’m a professional writer, but I’m not a professional copy editor. Typos happen. Genuine errors happen. And I truly appreciate it when someone messages me and tells me about my errors so I can correct them.
But as a general rule, unless you are someone’s editor or English teacher, it’s time to let grammar errors go.
Why?
It’s not because kids these days don’t think they need grammar. They do. And I’m happy with English teachers that are strict about such things. But when people are posting on social media or sending an internal email, if you understand what they said, let the grammar error go.
I know it brings a sense of superiority to respond back “*your” when someone inadvertently types “you’re.” You understood what it meant, so let it go.
Why do I say this? Because our goal is to communicate and you understood perfectly well what the person meant. There is no need to correct someone when the communication is clear.
Sometimes in HR we can get caught up in constantly offering corrections and trying to improve things. That can make us feel like we need to correct everything that is wrong. But we don’t need to do so.
Sure, if you are looking at a draft of something, go ahead and correct it. But otherwise, let it go.
Of course, it can be embarrassing to make errors. You should try to minimize your own errors. (And I realize I’m probably making 300 errors in this post because I’m talking about grammar.) I use Grammarly, which catches some but not all errors. But it only works when I’m on my computer. It doesn’t correct my phone, which I use for most of my social media posts.
And speaking of phones, autocorrect is real. Sometimes no matter how hard I try, my phone picks “we’re” or “were” based on its mood, not on what is correct. And once I typed “ifeel” and instead of auto-correcting it to “I feel,” my phone chose “if eel.” That’s a much more humorous phrase, but not what I meant. But anyone who read my quick post would know precisely what I meant.
Yes, formal writing should be corrected, and as I said, I appreciate people who copy-edit my work for free. But please let social media, informal internal messages, and anything that has already been sent out go. You understand what the other person meant, so communication is complete. No need for corrections.
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