What? Did you read that correctly? Am I telling you to deliberately spell things wrong on Facebook? Yes! Ditto for MySpace and Twitter. Tweet away without any worries about verb conjugation, word usage, run-on sentences and whatnot -- if you're using it for social purposes.
If you are promoting your business on any social networking site, obviously this recommendation doesn't apply. But if you're just chatting back and forth with your friends and acquaintances, then you may be sorting five to 50 messages a day. And that's not including your real-world e-mail box and work-related correspondence.
When we're working, we all want to write as well as possible. This includes websites and blogs that are designed to be read by strangers and to attract a high volume of traffic, but excludes personal blogs that serve as diaries or journals.
The Internet has blurred the line between work and play. Suddenly, we're all supposed to be available 24/7 and our brains don't work that way. Most of us are on paper overload, so I say draw a line between your professional life and your fun time.
Writing a comment to your old high school friends on Facebook and wondering if you should use the word lay or lie? Confused about affect versus effect? Who cares? Use pig Latin. Your friends will figure it out.
In fact, if you're carefully proofreading every comment that you make on FB, MySpace and the Twitter updates that you send from your smart phone, you're ignoring your job! You're not spending enough time on things that are really important like paid work, family and friends, and recreation (yes, believe it or not, there is a whole separate world away from your computer. Discover it!).
Words of wisdom from Sigrid Mac (or is that Cigrid, Zigrid, or Siegrid?... hmmm.)
Friday, December 11, 2009
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