This week (December 22-26), I’m giving you a Christmas gift. If you’re one of the people who reads this blog and hasn’t gotten a copy of Baker’s Dozen, now’s your chance to grab a free one on your Kindle. Just click this link and grab the book from Amazon. And if you like the book, please don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

I wasn’t originally going to write this post, but this morning something really bothered me so here you go. 

This morning I was looking at an Amazon listing of an erotica author who is rather prolific both in the writing and the marketing aspect of things. Her description on the book used the phrase “wet your appetite”. 

That is not how you spell it. Not in that usage. 

You’re a writer. You should be proofreading everything. At least twice. And I know I’m not perfect; I’m sure I’ve made some mistakes. But I find them, and I fix them. One thing I don’t do, though, is use the wrong version of a word, which is something that usually doesn’t get picked up by proofreading software because it’s still spelled correctly. 

But that’s just one mistake, and one mistake is forgivable. 

Remember a few months ago how I talked about a sock puppet account that was created to (supposedly) support someone who got cancelled in the Atlanta kink community? Well, that someone is back, and hosting events again. They are (supposedly) not directly affiliated with Atlanta’s new dungeon space, but they hold all of their events there and as far as I can tell they’re the only ones who do, so take what you will from that. 

However, if you’re going to promote events, the least you could do is take some pride in your promotion. I swear every event posting this person posts is rife with spelling errors — the most recent being “beofre” instead of “before” in the title of the event. It would take literally ten seconds to correct that, but they don’t even bother. It’s not endearing, like the Chick-fil-A cow ads, either. This person is (I believe) in their 50s and while they may not be the most computer-literate person on the planet they should at least know how to spell “before”. 

Simple proofreading errors drive me nuts. And it’s not just in the kink world. At work last week, I got a message from one of my European colleagues, to which I replied in the affirmative. His reply to me: “greaqt”. Look, dude, I know English is not your first language, but that was clearly a finger slip on your keyboard that you could’ve fixed in ten seconds. 

Take a little pride in your work, people. It doesn’t take much time, and it can go a long way toward improving your appearance and standing in whatever you do.