Five Reasons to Think Before You Post

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today grousing about the increasing number of typo-ridden and confusing Facebook posts I’ve seen lately. Am I the only one who proofreads everything before I send it out into the world?

I won’t get into why everyone should carefully proofread other written material, from legal papers to letters, emails, and blogs. Obviously, those should be as accurate as possible, if only to avoid confusion, especially if the author is a professional writer, but a shocking number of people don’t seem to care if they leave careless mistakes in less-than-formal postings. What follows is my list, in no particular order, of reasons to reconsider that choice.

*Accidentally leaving out a key word, like not, will say the exact opposite of what you intended. Yes, keyboards on phones and iPads are small, making accurate typing difficult, and typos do creep in, no matter how careful you try to be, but an extra read-through after you “publish” is worth the effort. Typos and autocorrect errors can be fixed at any time. The three dots to the right of each comment allow you to edit or delete and the three dots on the top right of a post offer those choices and more.

*Typo or not, a wrong word can make you sound stupid and undercut whatever point you were trying to make. Sometimes it even provokes a laugh. A friend of mine posted a meme showing Kamala Harris as a WW II factory worker. Another friend of hers (I checked—she’s not a troll although she is a MAGA Republican) commented with a long list of all the reasons no one should vote for Kamala, starting with the “fact” that she is “anti-semantic.” I assume she meant anti-Semitic (since anti-semantic would, I presume, mean against language), a charge that’s hard enough to take seriously when Kamala’s husband is Jewish, but the misspelling sure didn’t help her argument.

*Mistyping numbers and dates is my own biggest weakness, but there is also a common numerical mistake that isn’t a typo: the nineteenth century is the 1800s, not the 1900s. There are enough problems with teaching history to young people without being confusing on that issue.

*Turing now to the “confusing” aspect of Facebook posts, when you share someone else’s post or meme and comment on it, without making it clear if your snide remark is aimed at the post or at the original poster, you create confusion and quite possibly upset friends who misinterpret the identity of your target. I’m pretty sure everyone in the world gets this one now, but when it first appeared, J. D. Vance’s quote about “childless cat ladies” being responsible for all the ills in this country wasn’t as widely repeated as it has been since. Sharing it with at least a partial explanation would have been helpful. I added one to my re-post.

*A great many posters assume whoever reads their post will understand the reference or joke or recognize the people in the accompanying photo. That’s fine if you truly don’t care whether everyone who follows you “gets it” or not, but if you want the maximum number of people to take your point, it helps to add a few words of your own to clarify what’s going on. A case in point is a recent photo purporting to show how a woman looks before and after leaving common sense behind in favor of embracing MAGA ideals. When I first saw this, I got the overall idea, but I had no idea who the woman was. It adds context, and emphasizes the point, to know that she’s Kimberly Guilfoyle. In the first photo she’s with her first of two husbands, current Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom. The second photo is (probably) from the Republican convention, and definitely after she became engaged to marry Donald Trump, Jr.

Any examples to add? I’d love to hear about them.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new omnibus e-book editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.