Don’t be misunderestimated

It's easy enough to laugh at the obvious verbal gaffes of former president George W. Bush, other public figures or the intentionally warped grammar and spelling of the Internet phenomenon called "lolcats." We can all share a laugh at the blatant lingual mishaps that everyone can recognize.

Maybe we should be a little more concerned with our own grammar mistakes that our eyes so often glaze over. These mistakes find their way into places like storefront signs, technical manuals, periodicals, student essays and even books.

There are several errors that are fairly common, and we could probably fill at least a page outlining all of them. Apostrophes tend to trip people up, and get used in plurals when they never, ever should. In turn they are left out of contractions and possessives. "Loose" is mistaken for the opposite of "win," "everyday" is used to describe something that happens every day and "alot" in place of "a lot" should be sent back to the despicable depths from which it came.

Certainly nobody is perfect all the time, not even the most vigilant writers among us. There is a reason the Northern Iowan has not just a copy editor but also editorial assistants to catch what another pair of eyes may have missed.

That doesn't mean, however, that it's not worth the effort. Martha Brockenbrough, author of "Things That Make Us (Sic)" and contributor to Encarta, concedes in her book that "...there are cases when ‘good' is either good enough, or better than perfect." But she adds, "What we seek above all else is clarity, for ourselves, and for the people we're communicating with."

Clear communication has obvious applications in one's personal life, in academic work, and definitely in the workplace. A November 2009 article entitled "How not to ruin a job interview," in Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail, reports that resumé typos and grammar errors are a deal-breaker for about 58 percent of employers. Additionally, an application or resumé riddled with errors may eliminate your chances of even getting an interview.

Some people might scoff at the Martha Brockenbroughs and the spelling bee contestants. Words are just words, after all. What's all the fuss about? Why should anyone be that tedious about their writing? The children's humor book "How to Get a Horse Out of the Bathtub" sums it up nicely: "Man's laughter is funny, while manslaughter is not."