There is no doubt this is now the norm. I can't remember the last time I read any article, anywhere, even from professional legit sites with highly decorated and awarded writers that didn't have many errors. Simple errors. Spelling, grammar, doubled up sentences, inaccurate years, facts and much more. Sometimes they even get the obvious gender of the subject wrong. Punctuation is also a huge issue.
None of this should be any kind of shock.
Firstly, I am not a professional writer. I have never taken a course for writing, and I don't have any degrees related to writing. I graduated high school and University, so obviously I had to have some writing skills in my skill set. But what I do have, more than writing skills, is common sense skills. And I have pride in my work. That is where the problem lies.
As a common sense person, I know you have to take pride in your work. The quality of your work. It has to mean something to you. I don't get paid for writing, and I likely never will. But in spite of that, I proofread everything I write, and I do that multiple times before I put anything out there. I don't have to do that. I don't have an income on the line if I don't. What I have on the line is my personal pride in my work.
With the free simple tools out there now, it's easy to avoid simple mistakes. Even if you only proofread one time through. In this last sentence, it told me I left an apostrophe out. It was easy to fix. If I make a spelling mistake, it highlights it. I just have to fix these things. You have to want to do it right.
But there is another part. The major part of the reason for the issue. That is the tools this generation, and even some up to my age, think that sites like Grammarly or spellcheck provide mean they don't have to proofread. Ever. That clearly has to be the reason why the level of quality is shockingly low. They have also bought into the AI hype that tells them it can do everything for them, so they don't have to do it themselves. And that is a lie. It doesn't. It wont, and it cant. They call it Artificial for a reason. It's not real writing, it's artificial.
When you add the lack of pride in your work, with the fallacy that these tools entitle you to not do the simple things that writers have to do when they present their work, you will end up with what we see now.
I can only tell you this. I have been in charge at many companies in my day. As you might have gathered, I have very high standards. And the most important thing that grabs me from the moment you engage me is how much effort you put into doing a good job and doing things the proper way. The care you take to have pride in your work. When I used to get resumes, or people had to write a report, if they had easily avoidable errors they immediately lost my respect, and if a job came down to 2 candidates, the one that took less care was going to lose out. If they were already employed at my company, I lost trust in them to do a good job and was suspicious of anything they did. People make mistakes, so one mistake here and there is tolerable. Repeated, lazy, careless mistakes are a pattern. A mistake almost every time is a sign they take no pride in their work. Writing or any other work they do.
If you are a writer, common sense tells you that words matter. It's how you convey your work. It is your work. You have to do the basic things. There are no tech shortcuts for any of that. Write carefully. Proofread as many times as you have to to get it right. Read over your work one last time. Does it all make sense? Fit together? It's part of the job. You can call yourself whatever you want, but you aren't a writer if you don't take the job of writing seriously. You are just being sold a bag of lies if you think tech tools can allow you not to do the basic job that you have to do to succeed.
Be professional. Or expect to not get professional jobs and if you luck into one and keep doing a poor job, you won't keep it and you won't work going forward. It's that simple.
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