See on Scoop.it – M-learning, E-Learning, and Technical Communications
It’s a dicey business to reveal the secrets of the brotherhood to the laity; look at what happened to Edward Snowden. But I step forward today to tell you that the people you would imagine to be most knowledgeable about English grammar and usage, English teachers and editors, are often ill-informed and sometimes startlingly ignorant of basics.
Danielle M. Villegas‘s insight:
Here’s another gem that Larry Kunz picked up, and posted on Twitter. I admit, I was not an English major, but I did take a technical editing course in grad school, and generally did very well in it because I already had a strong foundation in grammar. (Sorry, I was never a huge literature fan, so here it’s worked to my advantage.) I agree that part of the problem that I see with journalism–especially digital journalism anymore–is that no one seems to understand basic rules of grammar anymore. It’s amazing, and yet disturbing for me to read.
Read this, and let me know what you think in the comments below. Do we need to get back to the basics for good writing? I think so.
–techcommgeekmom
See on www.baltimoresun.com
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Danielle M. Villegas is a technical communicator who currently employed at Cox Automotive, Inc., and freelances as her own technical communications consultancy, Dair Communications. She has worked at the International Refugee Committee, MetLife, Novo Nordisk, BASF North America, Merck, and Deloitte, with a background in content strategy, web content management, social media, project management, e-learning, and client services. Danielle is best known in the technical communications world for her blog, TechCommGeekMom.com, which has continued to flourish since it was launched during her graduate studies at NJIT in 2012. She has presented webinars and seminars for Adobe, the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the IEEE ProComm, TCUK (ISTC) and at Drexel University’s eLearning Conference. She has written articles for the STC Intercom, STC Notebook, the Content Rules blog, and The Content Wrangler as well. She is very active in the STC, as a former chapter president for the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter, and is currently serving on three STC Board committees. You can learn more about Danielle on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemvillegas, on Twitter @techcommgeekmom, or through her blog.
All content is the owner's opinions, and does not reflect those of her employers past or present.
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TechCommGeekMom 
You’re not a literature fan? Interesting. I can’t imagine getting along without it.
Perhaps I should clarify my statement. I’m not against literature itself. Without good literature, we miss out on a huge part of our humanities culture. I don’t personally enjoy studying literature. I like taking books at their face value and looking for my own conclusions rather than look for hidden meanings or writing style/writing strategy stuff. This is why I didn’t major in French in college. I knew I didn’t like studying literature in English, so why would I do it in another language? More power to those who do enjoy it. I prefer pulling out an old dusty history/non-fiction book and extrapolate facts about real-life events more. This is part of the reason I think history/social science majors are a great fit to be technical communicators.