Hello again;
You know how I’m always saying that its the small steps that lead to the big leaps. Well, Its also the small trips or stumbles that can lead to big falls.
Social Media Sloppiness
Recently, my friend and editor Lorraine Reguly noticed that I wasn’t putting the proper effort or attention into my social media posts.
She noticed I wasn’t capitalizing proper names or the first letters of new sentences.
She told me that I wasn’t using proper punctuation that created long run-on sentences.
And she pointed out that I wasn’t entering a line brake when changing topics.
Now, I will admit that social media had corrupted my usual attention to detail. I had fallen into the belief that with Face Book, Linked in, Twitter, etc that I wasn’t required or expected to follow the usual rules of grammar and punctuation.
My Writing Reflects My Ability
However, Lorraine reminded me that as an author everything I write reflects upon me. She asked me if I would want to buy a book written by someone who wrote so poorly online. She also asked if I thought people would hire her to edit or write their posts if she was equally careless in her online postings.
I had to admit that she was right. As a professional author I have a obligation to do my best work every time I turn on my laptop and press publish, post, or send.
A Different Prospective
However, I decided to post about her comments online to see what other people thought.
I mentioned Lorraine’s concerns on Face Book, and I told people I was going to do much better with my future social media posts.
I got an unusual reply from my friend Alex Okoroji.
She said that in Nigeria, where she is from; there is a natural skepticism about people online. She said this is because there are so many people out there whose only goal is to separate people from their money.
And she shared with me that when she first heard about me as The Blind Blogger, she thought how could that be. She thought with all the work that it takes for a sighted person to run a blog that a blind person doing it sounded a bit far fetched. She concluded by saying it was only my mistakes in my first email and in later posts that convinced her I was legit.
I have heard that people are less likely to watch videos on youtube if they appear too polished or slick. I hadn’t thought that I was more believable when I made mistakes in my emails, blog posts, and social media comments.
But I eventually decided that I need to make a better effort to follow the rules of proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation where possible given the rules of whatever network I am posting to.
Correcting New Bad Habits
And I thought I was done with this topic until a few days ago.
Lorraine called me out on Face Book and asked me why I had slid back into my old sloppy ways online. I told her this was because I was depending on my Iphone more and more and was using the dictate function instead of typing the posts.
She challenged me to figure out how to use the dictate function and still maintain my new higher standard for social media participation.
Lorraine suggested pausing between sentences. This didn’t work. I either got cut off by the dictate feature for taking too long, or my sentences still didn’t have punctuation or capitalization.
Next, she suggested saying the punctuation mark out loud. This worked for the most part except for when I tried to end a sentence with question.
She told me to try saying question mark. This worked, and gave me the idea to try exclamation point, comma, colon, and semi colon. They all worked. 😀
So, now I can not only post to social media with my laptop, but I can also do it from my iphone. And I can do both in a professional manner that inspires confidence in me as a writer, coach, and speaker.
When being around a blind person some people will always worry what is the better choice. They will wonder should I tell him that his clothes don’t match, he is dropping food on the floor, or someone is cheating him; or should I just say nothing.
I can imagine its just as difficult knowing when to speak up and when to keep quiet even if the person in question isn’t blind.
Luckily, I have a good friend like Lorraine who knows me well enough that she is comfortable telling me when I’m not doing enough to set a good example and act like a professional business owner.
Thanks to her, I found out I was doing this or I guess I found out I was not doing it. 🙂 And she went the next step to help me correct the issue.
How About You?
Is there something in your personal or professional life where you could do better?
Is there a friend, family member, or coworker who has something that they could correct if you had the courage to point it out to them?
I realize that its not always easy or possible to point these things out, but I hope you will at least think about it.
We recently celebrated July 4th in America and they celebrated Canada Day North of the Boarder. This is a time of thoughts about independence. And this could be a time to help someone you know gain independence from bad habits.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments. And don’t forget that you can also use the contact form to email me if you aren’t comfortable talking about this online.
I hope you will help out by sharing this post with your friends, family, and coworkers. And please click the buttons below to share on your social media networks. And even if you aren’t an author; I hope you will improve the quality of posts on social sites by deciding to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation in your own posts and comments.
I know its not always easy to know what the rules are, but we can all strive to do better.
Thanks for your continued support. I couldn’t do this without you. And I know that you have lots of demands on your time as well as choices for how to spend what little you do have to spare.
Until next time thanks and take care out there, Max
Enjoyed reading this Max ! Great job ❤️
Hi Paula; How cool it is to have you reading one of my posts and leaving a comment. Love you, Max
Max:
First of all, I completely agree with this!
The first impression people have of us typically is what will Drive the direction of the relationship you have with them.
That being said, I’ve always known that spelling and grammar were my worst subject, and technology has both Helped and hindered my progress.
One thing to remember is that I’m not always going to be perfect if I however put an effort into doing the job and not doing it half ass, then True differences can happen.
Dictation is wonderful, and sometimes I think it’s allowed me to get a lot of the thoughts out of my head.
The Apple dictation software is pretty good, however if you haven’t tried the Dragon anywhere app you should give it a spin.
Full disclaimer before I provide more information about this application I am not currently paying for it, however I did take the trial and pay for a couple of months of it.
Dragon anymore will allow you to use Dragon dictation software and dictate an unlimited amount vs the limited amount of time apple gives you. You can not dictate directly within the app your using, so for the every day tasks on your iPhone it may be better to just rely on the native dictation abilities, however for dictating blog posts or chapters of books this software would be wonderful.
I find the accuracy of this software to be quite a bit better then apple’s native dictation, but it could just be me.
You can save it to your notes, email it to yourself, or do just about anything with it.
You can get the app here:
http://www.nuance.com/for-business/by-product/dragon/dragon-anywhere/
And if you want to try it out you will need an account on Nuance®’s site, the company that produces this app. They give you a 14 day trial, then it’s like $15 a month. May be worth trying to see how well it works for you.
Well, it seems we have a theme to the comments. We agree that putting forth an effort and giving the appearance you care is the important thing. I think its kind of cool that my problem with homophones has lead to lorraine having a series of posts about this subject. And now that I at least know how the dictate function works I can’t wait for the next upgrade to the Apple operating system in which they have promised to add seri and the dictate function so we have this option on all our devices. Thanks for sharing, Max
I saw that. I heard your run-on sentences on Facebook statuses and knew it was because you didn’t use proper punctuation. I didn’t realize you weren’t always aware that saying “period” at the end of your sentences during dictation on the iPhone, the phone knows. Of course, it does depend on how you say it. You must speak slow enough. It can take a while to get the hang of it. It is better, but the only issue with anyone who is a teacher, and I love what teachers do, but Lorraine is a teacher, forever and always. I think sometimes teachers forget that not everyone will be as consistently perfect with punctuation and grammar. I do my best. I am even picky on dating sites online, when it comes to a guy’s spelling and grammar in their profiles and during times when they message me. If they show that they are at least trying, there is no problem, but it’s when they make absolutely no effort that I move on with little hesitation. I do think it is a good thing that you are taking Lorraine’s advice though, for the most part, because impressions, first impressions most of all, they will influence how second, third, fourth impressions and so on will go.
As for another thing you said in this post, I respect other cultures and I certainly understand the suspicions that anyone online is looking to scam or only cares about selling something. On the other hand, I am never about to act like I don’t know something, just so someone in another country, who may not know any better, just so they believe it is really the blind me behind the computer screen. I just won’t.
You are right though that we are so afraid of being accused of interfering that we are afraid to speak up when we know we should or could help another person. This is a shame. I would hope, that if I realized anyone else was being taken advantage of, that I would speak up and let them know what I know. We try to mind our own business, to the point of neglect and apathy. That is part of why the world is so focused on “me” and nothing else.
Kerry recently posted…Catch “Ketchup On Pancakes” #Siblings #Podcast
Hi Kerry; I wouldn’t appear to not know something just to put someone else at ease. I have actually gotten into trouble a few times in my life when someone called me dumb. I will admit to sometimes thickening my accent. If you listen to the videos where I have recorded country music without an accompanying message you will notice this. I just try my best. Sometimes you can give a great effort and still be wrong. It is about appearing to care. On dating profiles misspelling and less formal sentence structure is okay as long as they filled in all the boxes so I know they are serious. Thanks for your comment. Be blessed, Max
Lorraine is pretty sharp. I’m lucky to have never fallen into the habits that I see occurring on many social media profiles, probably because I’m an old guy stuck in his ways. lol Those of us who write or do almost anything are already critiqued based on our social media statements and profiles but giving people an obvious target when we claim to be one thing and show them something else is totally detrimental to what we’re hoping to achieve.
Good luck to you as you push forward; I know you’re going to be great! 😉
Mitch Mitchell recently posted…1,701 Blog Articles… Oops!
Hi Mitch; Yes, Lorraine is a very sharp person. And she isn’t afraid to tell her friends when she thinks they are doing things to harm themselves be it in their personal or professional lives. I recently had a blind friend tell me that he had noticed but decided not to take the chance of pointing it out to me. Thanks again, I’m sure you will be amazing too. I agree that those of us who learned writing first long hand and then on type writers seem to do better at this than those who have grown up with social media and texting. Take care, Max
Hi Maxwell, Wonderful article indeed. I love reading this post.
You are absolutely right that using social media we forgot to write properly. I forgot to use the capital letter at the start of sentence many times. It is because of why using social media site where we easily chat in simple and common word that affects in our important documentation too.
People are addicted to use social media but forgetting the English writing and I’m sure they fail in English writing comparing with a little KG student. You have instructed very well, I’m sure it will help to correct our English writing skill.
Thanks for finding and reporting on latest problem of people’s writing.
– Ravi.
Hello; Thanks for that kind reply to my post. It is really Lorraine who deserves the credit for noticing a short coming and having the courage to point it out to me and then to help me fix it. The english language is very difficult. We have so many different versions of it depending on gender, age, race, income, geography, and use. What is acceptable in a conversation wouldn’t be good at a job interview or a university class paper. Language used in texting and twitter wouldn’t cut it on your business site or writing blog. Glad we could help, Max
When I started blogging, I hade some formatting issues with my posts. Someone said they wouldn’t recommend my blog to anyone until these were fixed. Great advice, I think.
Hi Amanda; Its always good to do your best and take criticism from people who know what they are doing. Unfortunately, there are mean people out there who will say such things whether they are true or not. I’m glad you didn’t stop blogging. I have read a couple of your posts now, and you are doing very well. Keep it up, Max