Does poor grammar give you a bad impression of your co-workers?

A survey found that many employers attribute the growing use of improper grammar at the workplace to text messaging, Twitter and other venues where shortcuts or slang are common. (Image from CBC N.L.'s Seen blog)

Have you ever cringed when a co-worker tells you, "There's some things I need to do soon," or something similar?

You're not the only one who notices bad grammar creeping into our everyday speech patterns. The Wall Street Journal's Sue Shellenbarger reports that 45 per cent of employers surveyed are making efforts to improve workplace grammar.

Don Silver, a senior vice-president at a Florida-based marketing company, has imposed a 25-cent fine for each grammatical error perpetrated by new employees.

"I am losing the battle," Silver told the Shellenbarger. "I cringe every time I hear people misuse 'is' for 'are.'"

The Society for Human Resource Management and AARP, who conducted the survey, found that most of the people surveyed blamed younger workers in their 20s and 30s for the encroachment of improper pronoun use and errant apostrophes in work emails.

The growing prevalence of shorthand, rapid-fire communication such as text messages or Twitter updates has acclimated employees to speaking and writing in a more casual tone while at work, said Shellenbarger.

In response to Shellenbarger's article, Jen Doll on The Atlantic Wire compiled a list of some of the most common grammatical errors in speech or writing - common mistakes such as confusing its and it's or the horror of misspelled words in a website URL.

Proving the astute grammarians have yet to disappear, several readers pointed out a handful of errors in the article, including the very first sentence, "Some of us never forget the first sentence we conjugated."

"As Edward Saslow informed me by email (and as numerous of you commented), 'One conjugates a verb; one parses a sentence; and, for completeness, one declines a noun or pronoun,' wrote Doll in an update.

Does improper grammar give you a bad impression of your co-workers? Do you risk becoming the workplace grammar police officer by correcting grammar and spelling in other co-workers' emails? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.


(This survey is not scientific. Results are based on readers' responses.)