Who am I to Criticize Anyone?
How do you tell a person they are doing something wrong and how they can fix the problem? These days people tend to be a bit more sensitive about the things they say or do. Criticism is taken as an attack on their person rather than feedback to improve ones work. They get upset and either ignore the criticism or strike back with a reply of their own, sometimes being rude and insulting in the process.
Take for example the following comment made on a recent Famous Bloggers articles that was posted:
Thank you for your helpful voice. Honestly I think someone should write a post about spellchecking and reviewing a post before submitting it as a guest post. Most guest posts I’ve seen (even on other sites) have several mistakes in them, don’t have a clearly defined organization, or just repeat themselves endlessly. Someone needs to set these people straight! (You can find the post and comments ) Link
I agree with Laura Davis, spellchecking is a must not because we are all spellcheck police but because it’s simply the right way to do things. My problem is how do you tell people things like this. Jakes took it well and had his reason for why his post had what some would consider some grammatical and spelling errors. I can’t say for sure Laura’s intentions was to criticize his post and I’m sure she did not mean to be insulting in any way, but some people may take it the wrong way, still I think it’s necessary to mention it, but how to do it is the question.
Who am I to Criticize Anyone?
Really, who am I to criticize someone’s spelling and grammatical errors? I make mistakes too, my grammar is far from perfect and even my spellchecker can make mistakes. But does this mean one can’t point this out when one sees it? I think not, after all would you prefer we ignore the problems of life simply because we create them as well or should we point them out in the hopes we can all eventually correct ourselves as well?
Sometimes people need to see the positive side of what may come across as an insult when pointing out mistakes or contradicting a statement. An open mind is very important in order to make the world a better place because you may think you have a great idea to fix a problem but perhaps someone else has an even better one. The goal is the same so why concern ourselves with who reaches it first?
Sometimes we just have to accept the consequences in order to achieve a positive result
Too often I see people not take it upon themselves to correct a problem because A) they are not personally involved in the problem at the moment or B) they don’t think it’s their responsibility. But if the resolution to a problem can benefit everyone, why not involve yourself even if it had nothing to do with you in the first place?
Constructive criticism can be a good thing as long as the criticism is done with the intentions of helping so not only should the one getting the criticism be less sensitive and more open but the one criticizing should also be more considerate and do it for positive reasons not as a form of insult or attack.
Some Advise for you!
So here is some advise for everyone who enjoys posting articles on their blogs and as guestbloggers:
- Make sure you reread what you wrote before posting.
- Spellcheck your article before submitting. Don’t just use the built in spellchecker on what every you use to post the articles, do a visual inspection of your own. There are some words spellcheck may not catch due to grammatical reasons.
- Check for grammar errors, sometimes I write duplicate words without realizing it or use the wrong past tense form such as the “ed” or the ‘ing” at the end of the word.
- Check your links to ensure they are correct
- Make sure the paragraph spacing is good. There are times I post stuff on my blog, do a small edit and for some reason all the paragraph spaces disappear.
- Read it to yourself before submitting after all the error checking and editing. (this one is said alot )
- Most importantly, be confident it’s worth the read.
Don’t be afraid!
Don’t be afraid to be criticized. Some may have good intentions to help make you blog better (0therwise how would you know you are doing something wrong); those who don’t can easily be dismissed. Also don’t be afraid to criticize. Do it the right way though. Not everyone will be very receptive but you’d be surprised how many may actually pay attention and even say thank you.
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