Academic & Business Writing Journal Optional Assignment 2

In your journal, write about this question: How can you balance the desire to write interesting, meaningful ideas with the need to be grammatically correct? How important should grammar be?

As someone who's grammar is absolute shit who is eternally grateful for auto spell checker, grammar check and most importantly, my editor. I can tell you that it is incredibly difficult and yet oh so important to have proper grammar.

First off, to find a balance you need to accept yourself for who you are. IF you the type of person who's grammar is utterly terrible accept it. If your grammar is spot on - well first off I hate you - then secondly, embrace it. It is pointless to fight yourself in this aspect, you will only hinder your creative mind. So, write what you need to write. Choose whether or not you correct as you go (I do when the red squiggles show up) or to do later. Regardless of which you choose, once you've done writing go back and review it. Re-arrange as needed, start new paragraphs, change the words, pull out a thesaurus and get rid of repetition, fix spelling errors.

I find that the first step is writing. The second step is fixing the writing. I will often write an email when angry, send it to myself and then a few hours later (or the next day), review it and rewrite it in more professional tone. But I do find it impossible to achieve your task if you don't let the writing come first.

Grammar is insanely important. Listen to how the younger generation speaks. In particular, listen to those whom when they speak it irritates you. Then ponder why. I find more often than not, its not the content of what they are stating that bothers me, but how they are expressing their thoughts. The slang, poor use of terminology and poor grammar. How often do you listen to someone and think to yourself that they aren't well educated? Its often due to the poor vocabulary mixed with their poor grammar skills. The same applies to reading. The best example I could give is on Facebook I get ads for this dream something author page. It includes an example of the novel. Within the first few sentences you go from hating the dry dribble of cheesy romance its inflicting upon you to being enraged at how this unedited, run on sentence, how many times can they use the word ugly in one paragraph nonsense. And why? Because the grammar is terrible and its natural to be bothered by it. Even I, who probably is one of the most guilty parties out there for having terrible grammar when writing, am naturally appalled whenever I read something with spelling errors, improper punctuation and bad grammar.

And yes, before publishing this I went thru and fixed it up. A lot.