I’ve been on a slow boil for months over bloggers who abuse basic rules of grammar and spelling. This morning, a Drugwonks post put me over the edge (Drugwonks, fyi, is a pro-industry blog). Robert Goldberg writes a post taking Peter Rost to task for some revelations about Viracept marketing. Here is an excerpt that would make any English teacher cry:
- Pfizer, according to Rost, was quick to launch marketing materials regarding Viracept. It’s materials were not issued and released INTERNALLY consisted with it’s own guidelines and the release was shut down. Therefore Rost cannot contain his glee at the expense of the former employe whom he drew a no-show salary from to the tune of over $600K a year while suing them.
If you want to be taken seriously, why would you undermine your credibility by packing so many errors into one paragraph? It’s/its. Consisted/consistent. Employe/employer. The second sentence defies all attempts at logical interpretation. And the construction of that last sentence should lead to an arrest for grammatical abuse.
I have a suggestion, not only for Drugwonks, but for all bloggers. Read your post before you publish. Then, read it again on the site after you publish (I’ve caught many of my own errors this way simply because of the format change). And learn the rules of basic English spelling and grammar. Then your message might actually get through, instead of getting lost due to eroded credibility…
There, I feel better now. Sorry, DW, that you had to be in the way with that post when the lid blew. Now, do yourselves a favor and invest a few minutes in a re-write, will you?
Great advice! And if you republish your post after making corrections, it may rise to the top of your feed giving you an extra boost on pharmagather, for example. You’ll see a lot of DruWonks entries there.
I think there’s a typo in your second to last sentence. What does “had to be in way” mean?
John,
Touche! Now fixed.
Here’s one trick: Snce neither Bogger (free online blogging from Google) and Moveable Type a popular blogging software used by many (my only experience is with these) offer spell and grammar checks. Why not write your post in Word and then copy and paste into your blog…..then one can take advantage of Mr. Gates lovely software’s robust featires
A comment to Dr. Wayne’s question: Copying into Blogger or Moveable Type from Word can cause all sorts of (interesting) formatting problems. It would be nice if it worked reliably, but you can thank Mr. Gates for that :>
Leigh/Dr. Wayne,
The Word formatting problem is also an issue with the WordPress.com platform, which I use. An amazing tangle of spaghetti-like HTML code comes with the words, and must be fumigated before the post is ready to publish…!
Hey Steve,
As an aside, one other thing struck me about their post – Peter was actually linking to my post about Viracept, which you can see here..
http://www.pharmalot.com/2007/06/at-pfizer-improper-marketing-is-an-infectious-disease-drugmaker-probes-another-aids-med/
and here..
http://www.pharmalot.com/2007/06/improper-marketing-as-an-infectious-disease-pfizer-probe-looks-at-cme-payments/
I’m not trying to steal Peter’s thunder, but if someone wants to rail about the item, then I take full responsibility, since it originated with me.
Cheers
ed
Ed,
You’re right, of course. I was focusing on grammar and spelling; one other thing I should have mentioned was attribution!