There is no doubt that social media has drastically changed the way we communicate with each other.

Our social media marketing course reflects the fact that these platforms have provided new ways to reach our friends and family, whether that’s replacing birthday cards with wall posts and phone calls with tweets.

However, not all the changes have come with a benefit. Some of our online social media marketing course students wonder whether or not social media has decreased the quality of the written word, and made spelling and grammar matter less.

There are those who believe that it doesn’t actually matter how you express your thoughts, as long as the others can understand you.

On the other side of the barricade are those that sustain that the written word matters greatly, regardless if in print or online; they say that the way you handle your language can directly reflect your intelligence level.

Therefore, this debate raises important questions: should grammar and spelling matter when communicating in social media? Should proofreading courses militate for this cause?

Grammar and spelling shouldn’t matter if you are trying to be funny or make a point. Silly spelling and grammar mistakes on purpose have a unique way of conveying a message.

In this case, all you’re doing is inviting people to focus beyond the words, and not on the actual characters that you’re using.

In the same way, spelling shouldn’t be of great importance when you are trying to stick to a certain number of characters. No one will mind if you use ‘cuz’ instead of ‘because’, ‘’til’ instead of ‘until’ or insert the ‘&’ symbol instead of typing ‘and’, so that you don’t go over the character limit.

Nevertheless, spelling and grammar are vital when you are trying to create yourself a professional image in social media.
While typos can be easily forgiven on personal social media accounts, professional accounts require a higher standard.

After all, most of the people have the tendency to form opinions of others based on their writing, and not necessarily on ideas beyond the words. Any proofreading course would advise you to take a look at your text before posting it.

Last but not least, grammar and spelling matter if you want your message to actually be understood.

You may think that people will understand you just because they can find the meaning beyond the mistakes, but this is not always the case.

For example, the sentence ‘I goed too my sister, which have started to built hers house’ will definitely not help you create a positive image or even start a conversation with your connections.

All in all, we can definitely conclude that social media has changed the standards applied to grammar and spelling, making them seem less important.

However, a person who respects his image and wants to communicate correctly will always proofread the content he publishes.

After all, online proofreading courses are not that hard to find and they can help you avoid the hot spotlight of grammar mistakes.

See our proofreading courses