A Spelling Error, A Thank You, and A Recommendation

On Friday 29 May 2009, I submitted what I believed to be a reasonable piece of work entitled Don’t Blame Ii on The Gord. Excuse my dyslexic typewriter, it should have read Don’t Blame It On The Gord! However, from recent experience on this site, I realise that a lot of the traffic is captured by startling or outstanding headings, and I am afraid this heading due to my inability to check and re-check my submission, fell way short!

Well what have you all missed?

Don’t get me wrong I can understand the immediate urge to reach for the funniest, most interesting, and perhaps more risque subject headed works, but in so doing we sometimes miss out on quality of content. For example I myself have on various sites searched out the most relevant (or what I thought to be), article/s of interest, only to find the written content full of spelling errors, so many indeed that by the time I have worked out what a certain word is, I have lost the thread, theme, or even the will to continue. In such instances I retreat feeling somewhat cheated and a tad frustrated.

Therefore, I would like to thank anybody who read further than the Title and Description in this instance, and further advise that I hope my future attempts to reach the wider audience will be more successful  both in the spelling, and topic interest categories.

As a subsequent afterthought it struck me, that like with most ailments in life there is a cure, if not a prevention, and, after a fine glass of wine and conversation with a friend of mine it was jointly decided that I should pluck up enough courage to offer other would be conversationalists and wannabe writers a little piece of advice based on my own down fall when writing for this site:

• Open with a sensational heading – Checking it’s spelling and validity.
• Keep content brief, and accurate, without embellishment if it is a report, or based on a report.
• Always have a beginning, middle, and end if it is a story.
• Try to ensure that content is widely acceptable, for example no unexplained jargon.
• Endeavour to involve your readership, and not patronise.
• Don’t be afraid or hesitate to cover a given topic purely because some may feel it to be too controversial. A well written piece without ageism, sexism and  racism can often be informative and helpful.

I am afraid the list went on as the drink freely went down, but I do hope that others may gain from my earlier mistakes, and continue to enjoy sharing the art of the written word, despite any criticism which may be levied against them, taking only from this piece what they believe relevant to them.

Thank you.