A grammatical rant...

Earlier this morning, I received a forwarded email from my father-in-law about a campaign to rid our lives of aspartame. My father-in-law strongly believes in the health hazzards of this sweetener, and me not being a scientist, have no basis to argue this fact. I wish them well on their mission of banning this item from our lives, if in fact it is hazardous. But this not the reason for this blog post.

The email mentioned above was written by someone with a doctor salutation. I've no knowledge of what this person is a doctor of, nor how this person is employed. The email was a long plea to the FDA asking them to ban Aspartame, citing many studies, calling for the resignation of an corrupt individual who was a lobbyist and on FDA payroll, etc. Sadly, I can't relate to you the gist of their argument because of the multiple grammatical and punctuation errors throughout the entire letter. I found myself too distracted to even pay attention to what they were trying to convey.

I know many people whose first language is not English, and yet, they have a better grasp of writing in our language than many native speakers. Why is this? Why do we not take the time to proofread before we send to a million people? Why do those in the professional sector not take the time to edit? If one wants to get a point across, or inspire activism, then one might want to avoid distracting the reader with numerous errors. *sigh*