“Details make the difference.”
Dear Leader,
I’ve worked with colleagues who consistently fail to grasp the concept of the possessive apostrophe.
They would consistently write stuff like “…can I have all the PTW’s/PO’s/RAM’s for…”, and such.
Now, this these were not uneducated people. They were smart, capable, qualified professionals who hold degrees and vocational qualifications, and the like. Clearly, however, somehow, they never learned the rules of the apostrophe.
Of course, as is my wont, I regularly corrected these errors. In the early days they would get annoyed and try to convince me that it was unimportant.
It was, at these junctures that I realised that I was not so much never learning the rules, but simply forgetting, or disregarding them. To such individuals, “who really cares, except the grammar police”?
Naturally, I completely disagreed, on many levels. Apart from the actual grammatical necessity to get it right (it is the punctuation equivalent of using “their” for “there” or “here” instead of “hear”, differences that very few would get wrong, but if they did, would be met with an unchallenged acceptance of error, accompanied with certain level of embarrassment – which is still keenly felt when misspelling but not felt, nor apparently cared about, when miss-apostrophe-ing!) the point here today is also one of attention to detail.
Bear in mind, that some of these colleagues would work in the accountants department. So, what if they had the same carefree attitude to decimal points as they do commas and apostrophes? Instead of paying £1000, a careless, laissez-faire disregard to tiny dots in specific places might result in paying £10,000, or a £100,000!
Why should it be more important for math than writing? If this type decimal deviation was picked up, I doubt the one making the mistake would cry: “who are you – the decimal police”? Obviously, one factor that suggests necessity of accuracy here is that the damage would be intolerably financial. Few can afford to underpay, or over pay, by a factor of ten, one hundred, or more.
If you dependably dished out decimals in wrong places when working for an accounts team you would not be in the job for long. No one, however (unless they work in Editing), is likely to get fired for throwing apostrophes about like apples at a free-fruit farm.
Why should that stand as a valid reason not to pay attention to “non-financial” details when writing? Life is more than just money: and professional quality is demonstrated in many other ways than what is paid or earned. Many, sadly, just do not care about the impression and image given to others by poor spelling, punctuation or grammar.
Note To Self!
Getting the small bits right is a concern about mental discipline and integrity for precision as much as rules and regulations of writing.
If I cannot get it right in one area (such as accuracy in writing) – and I stress, this is not about a one-off mistake but a repeated violation – then why would anyone have confidence that I can get it right anywhere else or with anything else?
Making the effort to get the small things right – and in the right place – is the seeds of getting the bigger things right. If I demonstrate accuracy with the small things, then I can give confidence for integrity with the big things.
This is not about a lack of education but a lack of attention.
As Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do: Excellence is a habit, not an action.”
The details make the difference!
Living Life, Learning Lessons!
Live | Learn | Lead
