How important is grammar... REALLY?

This is poor grammar. LOL

Good point, one thing that stood out to me is when you said. "Poor grammar I can tolerate, since it sometimes makes the writer seem more of a real person." I think so also, it shows personality. I have closed websites completely because of bad spelling though

Ditto this, however I'm prone to the odd typo (or spelling mistakes) myself. So hands up.

I think grammar is very important in blogs

I'm 57 and I won't know the difference until I'm sixty.

A slight aside. Google looks at poor spelling and poor grammar as a sign of spinning content, and penalizes you for it. I tend to type as fast as I can read. Sometimes I don't look before I post.

I didnt know about it untill now and I am 28 lol

Grammer I can tolerate but spelling mistakes annoy the hell out of me.

If someone is looking at your sales page and is focusing on your grammer instead of your message, then you have already lost the sale, and you are definately doing something wrong.

And if your ad copy is good, and you are getting people excited, and eliciting emotions in them, getting them to want to buy, then they won't be paying any attention to your grammer.

For me personally, I make a lot of grammer mistakes, and I probably already have, or will in this post, but it is because I write to people the way I speak, and partly because I didn't really pay attention like I should have in English class, lol.

I was worried about it at first, and I hired someone to go over my grammer, but after split testing my sales copy and their sales copy the difference in conversion was so small that it didn't warrent paying someone a monthly fee for something that didn't make much difference overall.

But this is my experiene in my niche, with my customers. Yours or someone else's might be different, so I would suggest to split test your results.

The only other thing that I want to add, is that there is a difference between the way we were taught to write in English class, following those rules, and writing for persuasion and sales.

It's just like when you are speaking. There is a difference in how you are supposed to speak and how you speak when you are trying to persuade or sell to someone

This happens a lot with IM and with Web sites in general. we always need to step back and take stock of how our material, Web site, etc. appears to others. Often we think it sounds alright, or looks good, etc. but it really pays to get someone else to assess your work.

When I learned about copywriting (I may not be all that good at it, but I did work in advertising with some of the best for 25 years) I was told that one of the secrets of successful copywriters is to avoid creating inadvertent 'attention diverters'.

The purpose of good sales copy - and I believe the same can be said for a good article or blog post - is to craft it in such a way that the reader slides through without having their focus shifted.

Attention diverters are those accidental words, phrases or grammatical mistakes that make the readers' mind wander off the subject. When you are trying to sell something, whether that something is a product from a sales page, a concept in an article or an idea in a blog post your biggest enemy is that the reader starts to think about something else. Boredom is the biggest culprit but glaring spelling mistakes and uncomfortable grammar are both capable of making the reader think about something you hadn't intended.

A spelling mistake or a split infinitive might not be the end of the world, but it can be the end of your direct link to the readers' mind. In other words, the difference between getting the response you desire and hearing the door slam shut.

That's not to say that your grammar has to conform to some highfalutin 'Queen's English' standard. Far from it as consistently writing like an Oxford Don can jar with regular people just as quickly as writing sloppily can. Conversational English is generally good enough. If you can read it out loud and not sound like either a plum-mouthed professor or a street urchin you are usually good to go! Consistency is the key - pick a style that will sound natural to the majority of your audience and stick to it.

If you have the choice and the ability, eliminating as many attention diverters from whatever you write will have a marked effect on how many people read to the end and act in the way you hope.

Another grammatical error, "I haven't did that on purpose" should be "I haven't DONE that on purpose".

Free lesson from an immigrant.

There's a difference between "perfect grammar" and "colloquial grammar".

Mistakes cost reader attention, and ultimately sales.

There's a little bit of subjectivity involved, though, in defining what's a "mistake".

I sometimes start sentences in my articles and on my websites with the word "and", or "but", neither of which I normally allowed when editing for traditional print-media publishers. And you can debate as much as you like whether or not that's a "mistake". Meanwhile, I'll continue to do it.

But not knowing the difference between "their", "they're" and "there" is a clearcut mistake, and inexcusable. Avoiding obvious grammatical mistakes has certainly never cost anyone any sales. Some marketers like to imagine that just because they don't care about this, their customers don't either. But they're just trying to fool themselves.

Dear fellow warrior, i'm not saying that it's wrong to correct someone...Everyone should be corrected at times BUT...

There is a proper way to do it which is the polite way and then there's the unnecessary, rude call out.

I am also under the opinion that grammar is important. Small mistakes can be overlooked though because, unless you take the time to proof read, there will likely be some kind of mistake.

Grammar is even more important when selling a product. Sloppy writing and grammar does make the product look like cheap and rushed.

That's my opinion.

English was one of my worse subjects at school. Year later I started a work's newsletter, and although popular it was a massive eye opener as to just how little I knew about grammar, spelling and the construction of a well written sentence.

Some years after that, I started to write some kids stories. Again another massive lesson in punctuation and grammatical tense.

I'm 46 now and still make many, many silly mistakes. Thank god for spell checkers and those who are willing to help with proof reading.

Of course, there will always be those with the ability to better understand and practice the proper use of grammar and punctuation than others which is a good thing especially if they are helpful souls.

My pet hate is text speech in forums. If someone was to make a spelling mistake, I would probably not notice anyway as long as I got the gist of the word.

Is it important? I would say the more well written the better the read.

Bill

I don`t think that grammar has to be perfect but a little attention is nice.
When I get an email written like a text message,you know, when someone writes like a crackhead talks,I usually just delete and move on.

I am going to use that. It is the same as the line: "Why spend all this money on defence when we could be spending it on hospitals?"

I would say that in written language, it is vitally important. It helps with portraying a professional image of yourself or your organisation. Reading a poorly written CV or website is annoying. In speaking, I would suggest that it is not so important because the focus should be more on fluency. It is better to have rhythm in your language than lots of pauses all the time.