Is good grammar dead?

I know that times 'they are a changing'. I know that with email and texting and Twitter and Instagram and whatever else we are all in a hurry to get information out there....and to heck with the English language. I get it. I know LOL. I know LMAO. I know a million and one short cuts and I use them. I also know that I am not perfect and I make mistakes (Really! It's true! Ask my husband). And I know I take liberties with my writing (as in all the 'ands' I used in the preceding sentence and how I started this sentence with 'and'). But this is not about me, it's about YOU!

But what about when you are presenting yourself to the public. In this case, let's say you are presenting yourself for a job. You want that job. You read the posting or heard from a search firm or saw the ad on a company's website or even just heard about the opening from a friend or colleague or in your network generally.

Great. Fantastic. They want a resume. Hopefully you have one up to date and ready to go. Maybe you have to tweak one. Maybe you want to tailor it to this particular job. Maybe you don't have one at all and are crafting one from scratch. There are a lot of tools out there to help you do that so it's all good.

OK, now you have your resume, you've read it forwards and backwards to ensure it's accurate. You've proof-read it and run it through spell check. You've even had all your family and friends read it. Off it goes.

Well, in a perfect world, all is good. But what I've seen in this last week alone tells me that is not the case. I was always taught that your resume (like your business card) is a reflection of you. It's you putting your best foot forward. It's you presenting the best YOU. If it's inaccurate, if there are typos, well, that shows you either just don't care or have a very poor attention to detail or just don't have a good command of the language. When you hand out a dog-eared business card what does it say? It says you just don't care about how you present yourself.

But I digress. In the last week alone I had the opportunity to screen hundreds of resumes. It's rare to find one without a mistake. It's even rarer to find a LinkedIn profile without typos, grammatical errors or spelling errors. And don't even get me started on cover letters.

How can you avoid falling into that trap? First of all, take the time and care to prepare your resume. Don't just slap it together. The same with your LinkedIn profile. Secondly, run it through spell check but know that is not the be all and end all. Spell check will NOT find all the mistakes. In one instance, it did not find spelling errors when they were all initial caps. Check your settings and ensure your spell check is in fact checking words that are all upper case. This is a common rookie mistake. Thirdly, read it slowly and read each word. We often cannot find our own mistakes because we know what we want to say and assume the words are all there (this is my biggest problem). Someone once told me they read everything backwards. That might catch the spelling errors but probably not the grammar. Fourthly (is there such a word?) have a few people read through your resume. But please don't have someone read it whose language skills are worse than yours. I had two people tell me this week alone tell me that they had numerous people read their resumes and didn't pick up the typos (two in one resume; a whopping nine in another). Lastly, really take the time before hitting that 'send' button. Your resume is a reflection of you. Sloppy work, sloppy worker.

If you don't care about the work you submit which represents you, how can an employer trust that you will care about the work you do for them? And if you find some typos in this article, please let me know.