In a previous post, I talked about how it’s necessary to avoid flame wars and advised you to exercise diplomacy with editors.
While it is true, you do have to be careful about what you post, you also need to be concerned with how you publish your thoughts, emails, etc. online.
What was I talking about here? Emails, IMs, blogs, vlogs and forum posts. When you throw yourself out there on the web, you open yourself up to criticism–especially if you are a writer. It’s essential that you realize this, because every word you type could be read by a potential employer and many do research you online as part of the hiring process.
The most common complaint that I hear publishers, editors, and colleagues talking about is this: “Why would I hire someone to write for me who can’t spell?” While Human Resource departments have the luxury of screening employees out based on a resume, many freelance writing jobs do not require one. I’ve been hired for quite a few assignments based on networking alone.
Over the years I have run into several writers who rely on the fact that “someone else will edit their work.” Those writers have yet to be published or, if they were, they quickly developed a reputation as a “hack” writer and were not invited for subsequent assignments. As a manager for a book line, I’ve also received resumes and emails from several people asking for work. Of those resumes and emails, almost a full quarter of them had misspelled submissions, poor grammar, and horrid typing.
While the idea about improving online communications may sound fairly high-brow to some, try to think about it another way. If you are a writer, words are the tools of your trade and sentences are your building blocks. If you can’t find the right words to put a grammatically correct sentence together in an email, why would someone pay you for your finished work?
So avoid l33tspeak, typing in all caps, fumbling around on the keyboard, and bad punctuation–represent yourself well so your potential client has no reason not to hire you.
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