Grammatical Errors: Challenge Boss or Drop It?
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Anonymous
| My boss will proofread things I write before they are published (announcements, social media content, emails, etc.) The issue I am having is that he believes I am making grammatical errors when he himself is the one making them. Things like affect/effect, insure/ensure, they’re/their/there. No amount of Grammarly, explaining, etc, will change his mind, so they get posted with these errors. He gets really upset when you challenge him. These errors in no way reflect on me, as they are published by the company as a whole, not by a particular person. He’s top of chain of command so I can go to no one else higher for help with this. And it’s not just me, it’s others, though they don’t seem to mind like I do. Is this something I should stop caring about, too? |
Anonymous
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Prepare a cheat sheet with commonly mixed up words, post it by your workstation or share it. Hopefully he sees it.
Maintain correct grammar in your drafts, but if it gets changed and you don't have any input after those changes, let it go. Keep originals, though. You may have to prove that you don't make mistakes during performance review time. |
Anonymous
| Are you considered the 'preparer' of these docs? If so, I agree with PP, save your work, and any docs showing the boss's changes. Other than worrying about blow-back on my competency, I'd stop caring if there was nothing I could do about it. |
Anonymous
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Who posts or publishes these things? Can you have that person fix the errors before posting?
This would drive me mad. Grammar errors are so easily fixable these days. |
Anonymous
| How cringe of him! If your name is not attached I would let him do what he wants unless this is a situation where your title involves communications and posts might be traceable to you if you applied for other jobs and they looked up samples. |
Anonymous
He posts them. Trust me, it’s infuriating. |
Anonymous
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Where do you work? I’ll print it out, take a red pen to it, and mail it to your CEO.
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Anonymous
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If he is really using they're, their and there or it's and its incorrectly I would guess English isn't his first language. But with ensure/insure, affect/effect, further/farther.... for people who are not well versed in the differences it can feel confusing and they might not trust you do know better.
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Anonymous
So he "corrects" your use of then/than and effects/affects but introduces mistakes? Oh gd this would drive me MAD. Can you run his edited copy through Grammarly and show that the app wants to change things back to how you had them? I would probably look for a new job, honestly! |
Anonymous
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What is the nature of your relationship?
I might grab 30 minutes with him and “align” There was a good suggestion above: have a member of the public contact the company to point out mistakes. |