When measured by the number of responses, the most popular Harvard Business Review blog for 2012 was “I won’t hire people who use poor grammar. Here’s why” by Kyle Wiens. He advocates a “zero-tolerance” to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid.
Many of the responses to his blog challenge his own grammar, which is precisely what one might expect and perhaps he deserves. The author does have an “extenuating circumstances” clause, letting off certain people. He excuses “dyslexia, English language learners, etc.”, but does not say what the “etc.” includes.
Could it include extraverts, who trade off accuracy for speed and therefore are more prone to errors? Nor, for that matter, does he distinguish between the relative sinfulness of particular types of error: is a spelling mistake worse than a grammatical one? A misplaced apostrophe much worse than a colon, semicolon, comma confusion?
Are errors always indicators of trait sloppiness? Careless about grammar: careless about facts; careless when driving; careless about other people. Shall we try a spot of evidence-based personality theory?
And what about emails? Do they count too? Will forgive errors because people are required to be speedy? Electronic sloppiness OK; manuscript sloppiness NoNo? Oh yes, and the spoken word: grammatical sinfulness there too. You get to the interview with help from some software checking your CV and you mix up less and fewer, or say irregardless, or pepper your sentences with “kind-of”. Does that count to?
Psychologists have conducted studies of such variables as the visual and acoustic properties of letters and words and how they might affect error detection. They note intraword errors (misspellings, typos) and interword/contextual errors (faulty grammar, incorrect word usage). Some studies have looked at personality and ability correlates of proofreading. I have done some of these studies myself (Educational Psychology, 2010, Vol 30). There are three issues here:
First, the assumption that grammar is a trait marker. Consider his conclusion: “ I’ve found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing - like stocking shelves or labeling parts”. And later “And just like good writing and good grammar, when it comes to programming, the devil’s in the details. In fact, when it comes to my whole business, details are everything”.
I have noticed something rather different. Those who are apparently fetishistic about grammar tend to be rather OCD. They are slow, nitpickers with low emotional intelligence and zero creativity. Maladaptive perefectionists; hypercritical passive-aggressive, all-or-nothing thinkers. Unfair? No more than his assumptions.
Consider what kind of people become proofreaders or copy editors: look at their creative writing output. Would you choose to have lunch with a grammarian if you wanted a really good time?
There is no doubt that behaviours in different contexts go together. Freud noticed this when he talked of oral and anal characters. So the oral characters liked smoking, eating, drinking, kissing and chewing gum. They sublimate into humour and wit and may become food or wine experts. The nasty ones use the mouth to punish and become lawyers or dentists. And for those who react against this they might become speech purists, food faddists, prohibitionists or have a powerful dislike of milk products.
However the grammarian is more likely to be anal: obsessed with order and neatness. Meticulous and precise to the nth degree. Rigid and stubborn, stingy and constricted, petty but punctual.
Second, there is the issue of the relationship between grammar and communication. I look for vocabulary rather than grammar. I care more that someone knows what lugubrious, pusillanimous and pulchritudinous mean rather than how they are spelled. “Aah”, but I hear you say, “people with a big vocabulary can spell...they go together and it is called verbal intelligence or literariness”. And I bat back: possibly, where is the evidence? Does one read fiction or poetry because of its grammar? Remember e .e. cummings
And who cares about the role of the semi-colon? So what about “boldly going” and splitting infinitives? Of course, there is an issue where a grammatical error changes the meaning.
Third, there is the whole issue of the point of the CV in the first place. Wiens would bin a CV that had a few grammatical errors. He seems, as one might expect, more obsessed by presentation than content. We all know that CVs are impression-management documents that are increasingly peripherally correlated with the truth. And yes, spelling and grammar are part of the impression management. But is that all?
Remember the author of this article hires technical manual writers. There are those of us who never take technical manuals out of their condoms when they accompany technology. I believe those who have a zero-tolerance for grammar errors would not be much fun to work for, or with.
Pedants, purists and perfectionists: let battle begin!