SmallBizResource Blog -- Marketing

Happy National Grammar Day

Posted by Gayle Kesten Monday, Mar 3, 2008, 10:22 PM ET

Presidential primaries aside, March 4th is a very important day.

That's because the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG) has declared Tuesday to be National Grammar Day.

As the site says: We owe much to our mother tongue. It is through speech and writing that we understand each other and can attend to our needs and differences. If we don't respect and honor the rules of English, we lose our ability to communicate clearly and well. In short, we invite mayhem, misery, madness, and inevitably even more bad things that start with letters other than M. (Seriously—sort of. But it is true that misplaced commas have cost companies millions of dollars. Murderers have been identified based on idiosyncratic grammar errors. And even the oft-maligned semicolon has changed the outcome of court cases.)

Bringing it back home, use this holiday of sorts to review your printed material, your Web site, your business card -- anything that, in words, represents your business. Make sure what you're saying is, indeed, what you mean, and that you're free of typos that may undermine even the most complex products and services on the planet. To get you started, SPOGG offers these 10 grammar tips.

As for the presidential hook mentioned in my opener: Turns out SPOGG has named our very own George W. as the celebrity most guilty of grammar and language offenses. Fantastic. Maybe before the November election rolls around we should subject the candidates to a spelling bee instead of yet another debate.

Marketing