Ask HN: How Important is Spelling and Grammar? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How Important is Spelling and Grammar?

How Important is Spelling and Grammar?

I have recently spotted spelling and grammar mistakes on well established websites. One was an error message received when typing in the incorrect username. Another was within the product, describing how to use that part of functionality.

Should we be concerned? Does it matter?

From a customer perspective, it may just damper the user experience but not the end of the world.

From a coding perspective, does this hint of a more serious problem? What tools are available to reduce these mistakes hitting the front/back end?

Edit - Changed title grammar (irony).

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I believe that the context matters, but yes, spelling and grammar are important. Anything that causes your readers and potential customers to trip over your words and have to re-read to try to understand what you meant is bad.

Now re-read that last sentence, and compare with this one:

  It's bad when something causes your reader
  to stumble and have to re-read things.

Moving the "bad" bit to the front means your reader doesn't have to wait for the punch-line in the sentence. Does it matter? Maybe. It reduces the cognitive burden. It also results in fewer "Garden path" sentences.

Copy editing matters - it really does.

There are grammar, style and spelling checkers out there, but natural language is complicated. In the past I've used the link grammar package with some success, but it's very time intensive. TANSTAAFL.

Sure context matters. Time and cost are a constraint. You pay a premium to have good code/product however where do you draw the line?

If the Apple OS was full of spelling or grammar errors but looked great would consumers not buy it?

Although it's not necessarily authoritative, and isn't necessarily backed by hard research, let me quote from this page about landing pages: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/landing-page-design-infographic/...

Quote:

    3. Impeccable Grammar

    In the example of an online retailer who is
    asking for visitors to purchase and provide
    personal and billing information, the trust
    of the customer will be risked if there are
    spelling errors and sloppy grammar.

Are

Yes and no.
I own a tent made in some place like China (i.e. Some place with cheaper labor where English is not the native language) and sold at Walmart. The instructions are full of grammatical and spelling mistakes. I keep buying the same tent anyway because it is the best product for my needs, even though my sons and I crack jokes about it. But I am talented at figuring out how things go together and I have a long history of assembling things without bothering to read the instructions. It is entirely possible these errors are costing Walmart customers, possibly in the form of returns when they can't get it assembled.
You could write them and nicely point out the error(s). If they correct it and thank you, it would concern me a lot less (because typos happen, no matter how good you are). If you are ignored or mistreated, be more concerned, not less.

Would you buy a parachute with badly written instructions?
Does good grammar or spelling portray a level of quality?

I have never been parachuting. I have difficulty imagining that I would use a parachute for the first time relying solely on written instructions as I did with sleeping in a tent this year because I happen to be homeless. I imagine if I ever went parachuting, my preference would be to get a parachute from a company which required its workers to occassionally use one of their own parachutes which they personally packed. But most products aren't going to kill you if the instructions have a typo so I find your question a bit ridiculous. Obviously for some products the standards need to be quite high.
One of the questions you are asking amounts to "Can I use spelling and grammar quality as a proxy for general product quality?" Many people will but it doesn't necessarily make a good proxy. There are extremely brilliant people who have problems with things like spelling or handwriting. Yes, you should try to get it right but you should also try to find a better, more relevant means to do a quick and dirty inference to measure quality. Many consumers do not themselves spell or write well enough to notice nitpicky errors of that sort. And a lot of very intelligent people who will nitpick things like that spend so much time and energy wrapped around the axle about their perfectionistic tendencies that they can't get much of anything done. You need to seek a realistic balance if you want both quality and accomplishment.

Maybe a parachute is a bad example. The questions are:
1) Is good quality associated with good grammar? (ie are these variables correlated?) 2) Does poor grammar signal other deficiencies? (ie where there is smoke, is there fire?)
Yes, poorly written instructions are not vital. However a menu with spelling errors in a high end restaurant may signal poor attention to detail/standards elsewhere.

A high end resaurant which presumably charges a lot of money is going to generally be held to a higher standard in all things across the board. I feel I have made my view clear from the outset that a) yes, such things matter and also b) spelling and grammar are not always the best proxy for infering general quality. I do not know what else to say to satisfy you.
Best of luck.

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