How to address colleague’s poor grammar in team reports?

[Rentalqueries]

I work within a team who provide specialist knowledge to other parts of the company- we all WFH. Our manager is part time and by his own admission, has limited knowledge of our day to day work.

We provide reports to the director of the team we've supported and whoever happens to be working will write it up. My issue is that one member will write the report such as 'We was ...', 'We done ...', 'We is ....'. No ND/SEN and the rest of her report is fine. It makes her look ridiculous and likely reflects on the rest of our team. I'm sure I've made grammatical errors myself, but it makes be cringe. Would you try bringing it up with your colleague, forward the reports to our manager or do something/nothing else?

Can you suggest that all reports go through you or someone else for proofreading?

Talk to the person concerned, no one else to begin with.

I'd do nothing. Sounds like these reports are internal only. They may have poor grammar but at least they're trying and aren't getting AI to complete it. If a manager is at all concerned they'll pull them up on it.

That's how Alan sugar talks and its not done him no ,'arm

Being the grammar police has never gone well in any workplace.

It depends. Would a promotion mean moving to producing external reporting? If so, I would see if work could offer a ‘professional writing’ course. I once worked somewhere that did and we probably sent about 10% of certain grades on it. Many were not native speakers but many were and it was seen as a positive thing. (Others of us went on other development courses depending on where we needed most support for the next promotion).

I mean… I was a journalist and we were all grammar police. There was an entire desk of people called subs who were paid to be grammar police.

Stop talking nonsense.

My question is why no one is quality assuring the reports the team produce.

Part of our process as a team is to QA reports before they go out - sometimes it's peer review, sometimes it's the manager.

And he should at least have spell check and grammar on if it's a Microsoft product he's writing in.

I am the grammar police in my team. I’m not an arse about it but I will not let anything go with poor grammar. Several people have told me the really appreciate it and learn from it.

Spell check, grammar check and peer review before sending it outside of the department should be fairly standard.

I would cringe to see the type of grammar mistakes the PP has listed.

It just looks so unprofessional.

Just say all reports have to pass through Comms

Standard procedure

You will know there is a space before an ellipsis in UK English, in that case.

Their manger should tell them if they think there’s an issue or if the director has an issue. Does it impact you directly?

if they think there’s an issue they could introduce peer review if they think that adds to their specialist knowledge they bring to the company

Raise it with your manager. You could recommend that all reports get internally proofread before being sent out.

I wouldn’t allow crappy and unprofessional work product being distributed in my name.

“We is”?

Never met anyone who says that 😁

I work in Comms, I guarantee we’re pretty much a department of grammar police and if we sent out briefings/lines/press releases with bad grammar/spelling we’d look ridiculous.

Not for internal reports it’s not, I assume these reports are purely for the managers and not being published, it’s not a Comms job to proofread everyone’s internal work.

I have never worked anywhere where such poor grammar like this is acceptable. It looks careless and unprofessional.

My background is sales, marketing and website content, and poor spelling and grammar is a complete no no.

I had this with a former colleague. I had no problem bringing up stuff like this with my overseas colleagues (except they had been taught how verbs work for the most part,) and had some interesting conversations about aspects of English grammar. But the culprit was a native English speaker and I just didn't know what to say.

I currently have a colleague who writes "would of" but so far it's only been in transient Teams messages, though if he carries on passing me off as he currently is with other things, he might not survive to learn about could have would have should have and auxiliary verbs.

Isn’t the easy option to tell her to run it through grammarly, or similar, to check for errors?

Thanks everyone. To answer some questions:

-Our manager generally isn't CC'd into these updates and has previously said he doesn't need to be included in these reports.
-Majority are for internal teams. We do support other companies outside though, but not often. Its not a press release or worldwide reporting but still a professional update.
-She is a native English speaker- no other language. English is my 1st language if relevant.
-I shall suggest we proof read each others reports, but I'm not her manager nor are we always working on the same days.

Make it a rule that everyone uses the Edit function. It’s dispiriting that this isn’t a standard requirement. Microsoft underlines every grammar error in red if you set it correctly, including use of the passive voice.

Suggest using copilot for a grammar check?

Using incorrect grammar looks terrible!
It reflects really badly on you