Yes, grammar, punctuation and spelling do matter
As technology has become entrenched in our everyday lives, with cell phones and computers key to communication, the shorthand messaging that dominates threatens to undermine communication skills.
While it may be perfectly acceptable to abbreviate everything and ignore rules of punctuation in such electronic interpersonal communications with friends and family, it is completely unacceptable in formal writing. Formal communications require strict attention to rules of language usage, style, spelling, grammar and punctuation.
I fear that the understanding of these things is becoming less and less prevalent and I often wonder if the kids in school are even getting the education in the finer points of communication that they need in order to have successful careers in the future.
You cannot get very far in any field without having a thorough command of the English language and an in-depth understanding of proper usage. If you cannot express yourself in the proper way, you will have a very hard time, indeed, getting decision makers to take you serious.
No matter what you plan to do for a living, if you have poor language skills, you will limit your career progression.
You may think that such skills are secondary to your main interest in science, for instance, but you would be wrong. You can't be a serious scientist without the ability to express yourself and share the results of your work.
If you want to be an accountant, you must be good with numbers, but you must also be able to accurately communicate with clients and peers.
Earlier in my career, I was employee communications manager for a mid-size electronics corporation with 35,000 employees worldwide. We had just gotten a new president, an accomplished fellow who had previously been with IBM. There was no doubt that he had the skills and understanding of his field. But he also had fantastic communication skills and held those around him to a high standard in that regard.
An engineer by trade, he understood the importance of accuracy and clarity and insisted that those who worked for him were capable, not only in their specialties, but also in general business skills, including communication.
When I interviewed him for the article I was writing to introduce him to the company's employees, he waxed eloquent on the importance of good communications.
“You can be the most brilliant engineer in the world,” he observed, “but if you can't express your ideas to others, you won't get very far. You must have first-rate communication skills in order to be effective.”
Name any field – engineering, accounting, law, medicine, technology, or whatever – it isn't enough to just be expert in that discipline. You must also be able to communicate in a manner that clearly informs, makes sense, is logical and motivates.
If your written communications are full of misspellings, grammatical errors, misused words and such, you will come across as less than professional, at best, or as illiterate, even.
Whatever professional credibility you may have worked hard to achieve can be lost in an instant with poor communication skills.
The best advice I can offer is to always use spell check and grammar check on all your documents. And don't be afraid to take the time to look up words you are unsure of. It's never been easier to get it right, you just have to want to do so.
