AIBU to think DH's shockingly bad spelling & grammar might hinder his career?

[williaminajetfighter]

DP works as a public sector manager and a portion of his time is spent writing documents and, of course, communicating via email.

However I am concerned about how totally awful his writing is. This is something I have really only noticed this over the last few years as he is less able to talk on the phone privately in his current job and therefore he emails me much more.

In general I'd say his spelling is dreadful with even basic words spelled incorrectly and his grammar is rubbish. He doesn't understand punctuation and mixes commas and full stops and uses colons and semi-colons incorrectly. It's not just a few errors here and there - every sentence seems jumbled and in a normal email to me I can count more than 20 errors.

I hesitate to provide a very detailed example but here is his out of office message that everyone got when he was away on hols:

I am on Paternity leave this week so will have limited acess to email during the next 5 days ., Though If it is urgent plese do not hesitat to contact me on XXXXX . Otherwsie please copy in XXXX on all emails that need action so they can be picked up .

Seriously. DP says he spellchecks and checks the grammar on his email and documents but if you don't know what's right and what's wrong it's a little hard to check properly, IFSWIM. I have also seen some of his draft presentations for new jobs and have had to correct a LOT of mistakes.

DP admits that he had a rubbish education, scraped by through school and only got a University degree as part of his army training so he probably hasn't been taught or really learned some of the principles. He isn't dyslexic nor does he have any latent SEN. I have tried to raise this with him as an area where he could probably do some 'professional development' but he says my role is to 'support him, not criticize him'

I work in an academic environment so am acutely aware of things like grammar but surely, even in an everyday office environment, people would see communication like this and think WTF or judge him? He's obviously gotten by until now but I worry it impacts on how he's seen especially by managers.

(Was going to post in Pedants Corner but they would all that YANBU -- want some general, non-partial advice!) Advice appreciated....

That out of office is terrible!

He really really needs to learn basic pronunciation but if he isn't willing to try and thinks it fine then not sure how he can improve!

Does he read at all? Reading books and newspapers should help him see when and how to use punctuation.

It would make me think that the person was somewhat unprofessional if they were unable to communicate using correct grammar and spelling.

I am possibly fortunate in that one of my Uni tutors (I'm doing an MSc) is very hot on these issues, and my work is often returned with markups which I have overlooked. However, he tells me that of our group, mine requires the least correction, which is a little worrying.

Both of my late parents had a disrupted education (WW2), and often as not, we'd all be helping each other with spelling in the old days of using dictionaries. My Dad had dreadful grammar/spelling if he was writing things down but was very eloquent. We'd all pitch in to help with any job applications that needed statements on.

FWIW, I have several friends with learning difficulties and they would always ensure any emails/letters being sent out were correctly spelled etc.

Yep it's an issue... but the spell checker should have picked up on those mistakes. And tbh those mistakes look like typos not bad spelling/punctuation.

I think he needs to learn to take a second and look for the squiggly underlining.

I'd never judge anyone for not being able to do something they haven't been taught, but I'd be less than impressed by a graduate professional in a communication-based field who refused to acknowledge an area of improvement as obvious - and easily judged - as this.

But I do appreciate the difficulty in getting across the fact that it's not a character judgement, and I can see why he'd be defensive about his education, especially if you're more traditionally academic than he is. Has it never come up in formal appraisals?

I think in the age of spell check sending out an email that looks like that just shows the person is too lazy to check their work. I wouldn't avoid doing business with the person but it would definitely make me think they didn't care enough about the correspondence to spell check it first.

If he's saying he's running a spell checker on his work and that's all getting through he's either fibbing or he's clicked on 'add to dictionary' whenever these incorrect spellings come up, making the comp think they're spelled correctly.

I work in my second language. I write everything in word with spelling and grammar check, then copy paste to the appropriate program. Yes i judge people who cannot do this in their own language. Thing is my typing isnt great, so sometimes it looks like i cant spell when actually im kust crap at typing, especially on phone.

I work in the public sector, and most people write extremely well. I know one person at my (managerial) level who has similarly poor spelling/grammar/proof-reading skills and he is known for it. I've had emails from external contacts telling me they don't have a clue what he's trying to say, so I'd say his reputation is being damaged by it.

Why doesn't he have the spellchecker set so it underlines incorrectly spelt words as he types? It will flag it for him. Or hit the spellchecker button at the end of writing anything? I understand that he may not see the errors himself but he needs to get into the habit of using spellchecker.

I also work in the public sector, and part of my job is writing hearing decisions. If my supervisor sent me an email like the one in the example, I would not be impressed. I rely on my supervisor to be able to proofread my work, and to give me advice on my writing if necessary. I couldn't trust the OP's husband to do that. It's one thing to relax the rules a little bit in a forum like this, but not at work.

Unfortunately, if he refuses to see it as an issue I don't know what can be done about it. Has his supervisor never said anything to him about it? If I were his supervisor, this issue would certainly be addressed at his annual evaluation.

Thx for all your posts and comments. Good to know that I'm not alone and really must get this sorted and get him to look at this in terms of his development. Feel I might not be able to teach an old dog new tricks but we'll see. I may show him this thread but he will probably respond with a humph just as he did when his teacher corrected him, no doubt

Manchester - 'untilizing' - hilarious. It might, just might make sense if you put a 'c' in front of it, god forbid.

K - there must be gorgeous academics somewhere! I used to work in advertising where EVERYONE is stunning, gorgeous and polished (lots of office affairs, no surprise) and now it is very different!!