I received a letter the other day from a 16 year old girl who writes short stories. She'd seen our advert in Yellow Pages and wanted some help in publishing her work - but her letter was full of spelling errors.
Now, I know I'm old-fashioned about this, but surely if you want to impress a publisher, the least you could do is use the spell check (limited value, but at least it shows willing) or a dictionary.
It's trumpeted throughout cyberspace that anyone can publish on the Web but in these post Eats, Shoots and Leaves days shouldn't "self-policing" include some spelling and punctuation criticism?
I attended a course a while ago at which I was told that articles for Web publication should not contain paragraphs longer than 4 lines - for "browser optimation" purposes.
Imagine buying a ream of paper and being told not to use the letter "L" more than 12 times per page...
First thought for 2005: don't surrender the English language to the texting generation or the cyber-geeks.
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