Perfection is the goal of every writer and every creative artist or performer. It can be extended to anyone engaged in work of any kind. If one is asked to do a job, then one should do it properly.
Imagine the following:
Imagine indeed. Could be worse though. Imagine putting an apostrophe in the wrong place in a word in your award-winning, short story competition entry. Or worse, omitting one when it should’ve been included. Or even far worse, including one when it should’ve been omitted. Con Houlihan, regarded as one of Ireland’s greatest sportswriters, once remarked that a person who put an apostrophe in the wrong place could never be trusted. In Con we trust.
RESULT: SUCCESS coupled with EMBARRASSMENT. Never to be forgotten. Which of the two you may well ask? The success or the embarrassment? However,writers would much prefer to be embarrassed rather than ridiculed as happened in times long gone, according to a recently-published book on English spelling.
Submitting an article for publication – without blemish – to a magazine or newspaper or entering a short story for a literary competition could be the catalyst for a successful career as a journalist, a radio / television script writer, an author, etc.
Equally, writers of brochures, booklets, pamphlets, prospectuses, essays, press releases, etc., also have audiences to impress and win over. The quality of the content of any article to be published or submitted for consideration should never be diminished by fairly obvious mistakes in spellings, grammar and punctuation. Irregularities in the tenses of verbs-other than in the past, present and future-may not be that evident to an unsuspecting reader, but basic errors will be noticed and, almost certainly, will detract from an article that may well be inspirational.