Business Writing
The consequences of poor grammar are endless. As we went over last week, having a strong business writing voice is so important in your career and success. Grammatical errors do not support a strong business writing voice.
One of the consequences of bad grammar would be missing an opportunity for a promotion. For example, someone is up for a promotion at work and asked to do an analysis on the team’s roles that they would be managing. The employee does interviews with his or her team members, and spends countless hours preparing the content for this analysis. After constructing the analysis, the employee gives the paper to his or her boss with numerous grammatical errors. Regardless of how much effort went into collecting the data for the paper, the employer may not be able to look past the disregard for grammar mistakes. While this example is only an internal mistake, the employer is not looking at it from that level. If that analysis were to be a public document and the company’s consumers, clients, or investors noticed the mistakes as well, that could affect the company’s sales and long-term reputation.
There are companies that are really beginning to crack down on the zero tolerance rule. Kyle Wines, a writer and CEO of two writing based companies, takes this zero tolerance rule very seriously. He gives all of his potential employees a grammar test. In his article on the importance of grammar he states, “Good grammar makes good business sense — and not just when it comes to hiring writers. Writing is not in the official job description of most people in our office. Still, we give our grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff, and our programmers.” He later goes on to say, “So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write.” (Weins, 2012) If the employees do not pass the test, he discards their application. His reasoning for taking grammar so seriously is attention to detail. He feels the ability to pay close attention to grammar will result in the employee paying close attention to their work as well. He closes his article with, “Grammar is my litmus test. All applicants say they’re detail-oriented; I just make my employees prove it.” (CITED).