Let’s Clean Up the Web
March 3, 2008 by Kate Olson
Please read carefully - are there any spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors?
As I become more and more involved in blogging and online collaboration, I find that the issue of proofreading and editing online work needs to be looked at in greater detail by education professionals. More and more people are publishing work for the world to see, which is wonderful, but the downside of that is that more and more work is being published without proper review.
The issue is this: as most of the writing being posted to the web is rather informal in nature, it’s rather impractical to expect an outside reviewer (friend, colleague, etc) to proofread every single blog entry and wiki addition before an item is published. This would severely limit the work that would be released simply due to time constraints. I also think it would prevent many bloggers from writing at all and would limit the diversity of work. However, as we teach our students about blogging and digital citizenship, we need to model good writing practices in a world where a click of a button allows instant access to one’s work.
Here are 2 cases that inspired me to raise this issue:
1) A young student of mine created a blog on her own over the weekend, which I was really excited about. She emailed several teachers announcing that she had done so. My initial reaction was that it was wonderful that she was so excited about our classroom work and blogging, and I just overlooked the numerous spelling and grammar errors, figuring I’d work with the student to correct them. Her language arts teacher, however, was appalled that the student created the blog without proper use of the English language and wanted to talk to the parents about it at parent teacher conferences. Her view is that it is embarassing for the student and our school for work to be out on the web if it’s not written correctly. I understand her point, but am really concerned that we not come down too hard on the student because I don’t want to put a damper on her enthusiasm. I offered to work with the student before school to make necessary corrections and help her understand the importance of proper spelling, etc. Both the language arts teacher and I have taught lessons on proofreading and not publishing blog posts or comments with errors, but as all teachers know, teaching a lesson doesn’t always translate to students applying the information outside of school. Oh, how I wish it did, though! We both taught that the acronym COPS - Capitalization, Overall appearance, Punctuation, and Spelling - should be applied when reviewing a blog post or comment for publishing. The issue is how to get that to STICK!
2) I have come across several instances of teacher-published work lately (blog posts, wikis, forum posts) that contain numerous spelling and grammatical errors and I cringe at the thought of this being how the education profession is represented online. At the same time, teachers in many schools are not allowed to send letters home to parents without having the letter reviewed because so many letters were going out with horrible errors. I find this embarassing for our profession - we’re teachers, we’re supposed to model good practices! We teach our students to proofread and often have multiple review processes for student work - why don’t we take our own advice?
Now, I am NOT claiming to be an expert - just the opposite, actually! I do my best to proofread my work and on bigger projects will often ask for outside reviewers to go over things for me, but there are probably little errors that slip through that my readers have noticed here and on my other work. I hate to think this is happening, since this is my professional image and it’s embarrassing to think that I may have work out there for the world to see that contains errors. Not all teachers are grammar and writing specialists, but I like to think that most of us have the ability to read through our own work a few times before posting it to minimize the glaring mistakes. On the other hand, there are a lot of rules that a lot of us may not even KNOW about! We need the grammar and spelling junkies/police to help us out! This blog wouldn’t be written if I had to have each post reviewed before posting, I simply don’t have anyone that would do that for me - this is probably the case for most bloggers.
What’s the solution? I think it would be great if we were all accepting enough of our own writing weaknesses that we could accept proofreading and writing advice from our readers. So here it is, I’m opening myself up for the toughest review and scrutiny. Hit me with it. If you EVER find an error on my blog or any of my work, please notify me! I WANT to know - I really do. Submit a comment, email me, hit me up on twitter, whatever. So often when I come across errors I just so desperately want to let the writer know, but fear that I’ll come across as a pompous jerk. I promise that I’ll be gracious about your advice 
Let your readers know that you’re open to suggestions - isn’t learning a lifelong process?
If every blogger had a few readers that stepped up to help out every so often, it would help the entire writing community. So when I say let’s clean up the web, I mean it as an ongoing, group effort. It takes both sides - the writer needs to accept constructive criticism and the readers need to take the time to offer it. Are you up for the challenge? And how many errors did I make in this post? I’d like to think none, but I know many of my readers are GREAT writers and could help me out
Here are some proofreading resources for writers and student-writers:
Power Proofreading - Houghton Mifflin Interactive Student Activities - Great for student proofreading practice
Grammar Girl - Excellent, easy-to-understand podcasts about common grammar questions
Proofreading Your Writing - The Owl at Purdue
Proofreading - Wikipedia
How to Proofread - UW-Madison Writing Center
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Kate,
I read and re-read my blog numerous times before I do a posting, and I go back in and edit if I find an error later.
On the other hand, I’ve had to grit my teeth and bear it when I make a mistake in a reply to someone else - it bothers me, but I know I have to move on (though I do occasionally delete a Tweet with errors).
If someone asks me to proofread for them, I do it gladly - have done so for a number of our staff members. I don’t think I’d criticize a blog posting without being invited, unless I knew the author fairly well and could make suggestions in private.
I realize that thoughts sometimes race ahead of fingers, and no one is perfect. I enjoy reading your blog and can’t recall any huge mistakes, but if I spot anything, I’ll let you know. By DM, of course.
diane
Diane -
Thanks much for the input. I agree about not criticizing without being able to offer input in private and have good relationship, but sometimes I cringe at the thought that someone could be reading something of mine and thinking it could be improved but not saying anthing. I guess it’s the same as any other kind of advice - parenting included
Have to weigh risks of NOT saying anything with risk of hurting feelings, etc. For example, if you know the work is being viewed by an administrator, or someone who is influential in a teacher’s career, and the error is HUGE, I think sometimes it’s worth emailing the author? Obviously I’m still conflicted on this 
DOWN with prescriptivist grammarians! Down down down. I did find one TINY TINY error, but I’m not going to say because I still say DOWN with the teacher who would discourage a student from writing her IDEAS because of GRAMMAR!!!!
Hasn’t that ~ah-hem~ English teacher read Vonnegut, or Faulkner, or King, or Shakespeare ~can you say d.o.u.b.l.e. n.e.g.a.t.i.v.e~
I write fragments ALL THE TIME ON PURPOSE.
I’m not saying anything goes…. just almost anything.
Ok, not almost anything because you have to know the rules to break them effectively. But I still think the teacher that would be *appalled* rather than ABSOLUTELY THRILLED that a student is writing regularly has a serious issue. Bigger than spelling and grammar mistakes.
Taylor, you’re hilarious
Ok, maybe not prescriptivist grammarians, but how about horrendous spelling? Or complete and utter incorrect word use? As you’ve seen in my writing I’m no grammar queen, but shouldn’t we at least try to make our writing legible? If an English teacher is blogging, shouldn’t she demonstrate SOME concern for spelling? I guess that’s more my focus - spelling……..
Well, on spelling I totally agree there’s little excuse for that since there is spell check AND myriad (is that how you spell that? jj) online dictionaries.
I STILL would NEVER EVER EVER EVER discourage writing from a student. Just maybe guide & help with the spell checker.
And listen. I’m an ENGLISH teacher — I notice E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G — also used to work at the college paper as both Associate Managing Editor and Copy Editor. I KNOW the rules, but I have found that EXCESSIVE concern for them SQUELCHES good ideas, which are ~sometimes to my chagrin, but I hate that pedantic part of myself, hence the lack of caps on my blog, but only within the tilde!~ infinitely more important.
Never, never, never stop someone from writing because of mechanics. Period.
You know, since I’m being honest.
Taylor -
As you can see in my post, I agree with you
Honestly, I’d rather have a student blogger with horrible mechanics and spelling than have the student NOT blog. It’s kind of like saying students shouldn’t read unless they’re really good at it, right? Thanks for making me think………….
I have sent out letters and written posts which I have proofread but later still find errors. I later go back to correct them. If I notice a lot of errors, I may suggest that corrections are made for easier reading and clearer communication but I would want to be careful that I didn’t stifly creativity. I feel that as teachers, if we make mistakes, we are modeling that we are human and humans make mistakes. We are also modeling that it is okay to do things even if we make a mistake because “doing” is a good thing. Errors should not be terrors. We should be encouraging creativity and enthusiasm when people share their ideas. If the objective is to exchange ideas and not pass a grammar/spelling test then the person has achieved their goal and I would be happy with that.
Great post Kate. Back when I first got started in online content (2000), we had a very strict “second set of eyes” rule. Nothing hit the web without someone else seeing it. That slowly dissolved away and now it’s pretty unlikely anyone reads content before it hits the web. What I find interesting is that blogs are supposed to be authentic and conversational and the last time I checked, I often mis-speak and use “um” and “ah” when talking. My thoughts aren’t always completely cogent either…
I like to think of blogging as a new language people need to learn. At the outset we need to support good first steps and that’s it. Later we can expect more, but don’t lose the intent of the medium. I have a six year old daughter who’s learning to read and write and she often makes mistakes. But she’s learning the language and making mistakes is part of the process. What would happen if I constantly corrected her spelling this early on?
I applaud your student and her initiative in starting to blog. It may take time for her to “learn” this new language, but at least she’s giving it a try!
Jim (@jstorerj)
ps… I just re-read this comment, checking for obvious errors.