Why it's Important to be Right.....

It happened again.

You don’t know what it’s like to hear someone rant and rave until you hear my husband go at it when he’s found a spelling or grammar error in a professional article. This time it was on-line, but as Dave says, that doesn’t matter.

The reporter, a professional, was writing about prostate cancer. Please note: p – r – o – s – t – a – t – e cancer. Twice, the first time being in the headline, the word was written as prostrate . Now, prostrate is a word, and I’m sure many victims of prostate cancer are prostrate over the news, ie lying down physically or overcome by concern over it. However, the disease is prostate cancer, the prostate being the part of the anatomy affected. At the end of the article, which was complete with medical jargon and expert quotes, the writer referred to a prostatectomy as being one of the treatments for the problem. At least she got that right.

You might say that it doesn’t matter; using prostrate in this way is a common mistake. Well, it’s a common mistake because so many people repeat it. And when a professional misuses it in an article that appears to be sound otherwise, then people take that as the correct usage, and the whole thing snowballs.

And, for that matter, is the article itself sound? If a writer is interviewing a medical expert in order to pass along information, everything must be correct. If I can’t trust that writer to take the time to get a simple spelling correct, how can I trust her to get the facts straight? How can I rely on any of the information that article contains?

Point being, it isn’t just appearance. A writer has a responsibility to be as accurate with facts as possible. That includes spelling. In non-fiction, especially reporting, the reader is relying on the article for accurate information. A writer who is too careless or lazy or even impatient to check things out risks losing readers when they finally learn the truth. No one keeps reading magazines or web sites that get it wrong. But if people keep writing this way, eventually so much wrong information will be out there, readers won’t know if what they get is right or not.

It’s one thing if this is about word usage. We can live with language and grammar changing out of people insisting on using words the wrong way. But when it leads to mis-information? That’s something else again.


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