Many people will tell you that younger generations just don’t know how to communicate. They’ll say texting abbreviations and Twitter hashtags are so common, that grammar and spelling has lost its importance.  

Well, not in my world, nor the PR one.  Grammar is still incredibly important if you want to be taken seriously.  Andrew Hindes, a writer for PR News, listed six reasons why grammar still matters in the digital age.

1. Credibility: Press materials with grammatical errors indicate ignorance or carelessness on the part of the writer, which may cause journalists to question the accuracy of the content.
2. Professionalism: Similarly, sloppily written materials can create a negative impression on clients and corporate higher-ups.
3. Respect: Underpaid and overworked journalists may resent receiving a document filled with errors that would earn them a stern rebuke from the copy desk.
4. Clarity: Grammar and punctuation errors can result in ambiguities or misunderstandings.
5. Convenience: Harried journalists often opt to copy whole sentences or even paragraphs of PR materials verbatim. If your grammatical gaffe slips through, it makes them look bad.
6. Posterity: Press materials distributed across the Internet live on forever—along with any mistakes they contain.

In fact, human beings communicate through written word more today than at any other time in history. With so much writing out there, you want to make sure your thoughts stand the test of time, and just plain stands out, by being grammatically correct. Who knows, maybe hundreds of years from now an anthropologist will look back at your writing and remark how well-respected you must have been.

  Kerri Linsenbigler attends St. Bonaventure and interns at TC.