This post is by Nick Cernis.
There’s a famous adage: “With great power comes a high electricity bill.”
Writers enjoy a multitude of tools to exert power over their readers. If you’re a purist, you’ll despise the very thought of the weapon I’m about to offer:
Sometimes typose suck you in.
It’s time for the ubiquitous “best of 2007″ lists, so why not one for Copyblogger? I’ll go ahead and do a round-up of the year’s best-received posts, with a bit of commentary on what was notable from each month.
So, if you missed anything from 2007, here’s a second shot at it. While you do that, I’ll have time to figure out what to write for next year (don’t worry, I’ve already got a pretty good idea).
Proofreading your text for misspelled words and grammatical mistakes is essential. What about the punctuation, though?
Despite being more subtle, these errors can equally hurt your credibility. I’m going to point out six common punctuation errors that you shouldn’t be making, and give you examples so you’re sure about the right way to handle these situations.
It’s time once again to review those nasty errors that damage our credibility when we write. Not normally a fun task, but absolutely necessary. I promise to keep you amused to diminish the pain (or at least I’ll give it a shot).
As with the last time we explored grammatical errors, I feel compelled to mention that copywriting and blogging should be conversational and engaging, and breaking formal grammatical and spelling conventions can often be a good thing. Every time I see a comment complaining about something like, oh, I don’t know… the improper use of an ellipsis or one-sentence paragraphs, I shake my head with sadness.
They just don’t get it.
One thing that blogging and good copywriting share is a conversational style, and that means it’s fine to fracture the occasional rule of proper grammar in order to communicate effectively. Both bloggers and copywriters routinely end sentences with prepositions, dangle a modifier in a purely technical sense, or make liberal use of the ellipsis when an EM dash is the correct choice—all in order to write in the way people actually speak.
But there are other mistakes that can detract from your credibility. While we all hope that what we have to say is more important than some silly grammatical error, the truth is that some people will not subscribe or link to your blog if you make dumb mistakes when you write, and buying from you will be out of the question.
