Bad grammar can certainly be funny. Just one comma out of place and a sentence like "Tables are for eating customers only" goes from instructive to ridiculously cannibalistic. It makes you think that people would put a lot of effort into spelling things correctly and putting punctuation marks where they belong. Alas, that isn't always the case.
Ironically, the younger generation is the most irked by grammar mistakes they see in the real world, online, or when texting others. According to the same Harris poll, 74% of people under 35 said that spelling mistakes on social media were annoying. This may seem surprising, since they're the generation most likely to use abbreviations and are typically associated with lax grammar online.
Interestingly, there's also a gender disparity when it comes to who notices grammar mistakes more. Women appear to be more perceptive when spotting bad spelling, with 75% of women saying they often find errors in things like ads, restaurant menus, and store signs. In contrast, 66% of the men in the survey said they spotted grammar mistakes often.
Yet one grammar peeve was consistent among all ages, genders, and professions. English speakers just can't stand it when people can't correctly spell and tell the difference between "their, they're, and there." I have to say, I'm right there with them – and English isn't even my first language!
Different rules apply to texting and messaging online, though. Although only a quarter of Gen Zers admit that they use full stops, capital letters, commas, and quotation marks on social media, 69% use correct grammar when texting. Perhaps it's who they are communicating with: texting is often reserved for parents and older people, and social media is how they communicate with peers.
Good grammar matters in the context of dating, too. A 2016 survey from the dating site Zoosk showed that 48% of people in the dating market consider poor grammar skills a deal breaker in online dating. Interestingly, women seem to have higher standards: 65% said they would stop chatting with a bad speller, and only 60% of men said they pay attention to a prospective partner's grammar.
Still, the majority found obvious spelling and punctuation mistakes to be turn-offs. And it's not just bad grammar that people hate; silly hype words such as "LOL" and "YOLO" were found to drastically decrease response rates.
Our personal lives aren't the only context in which good spelling and punctuation matter. Which CV do you think would be tossed away immediately: one with blatant grammar mistakes or a carefully proofread one? Certified professional résumé writer Drew Roark says that spelling or punctuation mistakes are about more than just grammar knowledge.
"Mistakes on your résumé can expose traits about yourself, which can ultimately keep an employer from offering you a job," Roark explains. "Employers are less concerned about your spelling (knowing you probably just made a typo) and more concerned with the fact that you overlooked an error, which speaks volumes about your tendencies."
