On Point: Grads might LOL over this advice on social media

By Deon Roberts The Daily Record Newswire Dear recent college graduate, It's June, and you're probably stretched out on a beach somewhere after throwing your cap in the air last month. That's a good way to spend your summer, since you'll probably find it tough to land a job in this employment market. Anyway, congratulations on your degree. If you somehow came across this column -- maybe your father or mother emailed it to you as you were applying sunscreen and it popped up on your smart phone -- thanks for taking the time to read it. My hope is that it helps you when you bravely venture into the job market. Grads, I'd like to share with you the frustration I feel just about every time I'm on Facebook or Twitter. Perhaps it's because I'm an editor and spend all day correcting other people's sentences, but I am becoming increasingly enraged at the grammatical errors and misspellings that litter the microblogging world. I worry, grads, that you might think it's OK to write like that all the time or that your grammar and spelling skills really are that poor. As a person who hires people, let me tell you that some of us still look for proper English in job-application materials, despite the destruction our language has suffered at the hands of Facebook, Twitter and texting. As a journalist, it pains me to watch some of my Facebook "friends" violating basic rules of their native language. For example, some of my "friends" are in the medical field as nurses and technicians. I imagine that to get those jobs they had to go to college and read medical textbooks. But, at least based on the grammar they use in some of their Facebook posts, I would have flunked them in the third grade. As one of my pet peeves, some of my "friends," and I'm not just talking about the medical folks, don't use contractions properly. They write "thats" instead of "that's." They write "Hey Bill. How's it going." Proper grammar is "Hey, Bill." They write, "Love you man." Correct grammar is "Love you, man." If I ever saw someone on Facebook or Twitter use a compound modifier properly, like "I went to the beach and saw a man-eating shark," I believe I'd have a heart attack. It's more likely that someone would post "I went to the beach and saw a man eating shark," which would be an interesting sight, to be sure, although that's probably not what they saw. Maybe I should not expect good grammar or proper spelling on Facebook and Twitter. After all, does it matter anyway when people are posting such insightful jewels as "OMG did u see how hot steven tyler looked last night on idol?" (Actually, I'd be surprised if the question mark were included in that post.) But I have every right to be mad and so does anyone else who cares about the English language and was told that if you couldn't write or speak well, you wouldn't be more than a garbage collector. Maybe my Facebook "friends" and the people I follow on Twitter write like an English professor when it matters, like in a business letter, when applying for a job or in emails to coworkers. I doubt that they do. If you don't follow your language's rules on Facebook, it's hard for me to believe that you do at other times. All of this is to say the following to those of you who graduated from college this year and plan to get a job: Be careful when you send an email or a letter applying for work. For me and, hopefully, plenty of other employers, sloppy spelling and shoddy grammar are turnoffs. When applying for your first job, don't abuse your language the way it's being done on Facebook and Twitter. If you do, your cover letter could find itself covering an employer's half-eaten bologna sandwich in his garbage can. Stick that in your post and tweet it. Published: Fri, Jun 17, 2011