Orange Envelopes | Small Business Optimized Marketing > By Design

With nearly 80% of the general population now publishing their own blog (according to a statistic that I just made up), it’s inevitable that most of those writing for internet consumption will publish without any editorial oversight.

As someone who grew up in a family of talented writers and had his early publishing efforts edited ruthlessly, I appreciate the value that editors bring to the publishing process. I’ve frequently relied upon the sharp editing eye of my blog readers to point out minor errors or miscues in my posts and have found their feedback to be useful and edifying. Yet I see every day the carnage wrought in the blogging universe by bloggers who have never submitted their work to an editor and view any editorial comment as a personal attack.

Scan any cross-section of blogs and you’ll run across those that contain repeated grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, the misuse of I/me, your/you’re, their/they’re, complimentary/complementary, and other niggling errors that diminish the impact of their posts and suggest a verbal slovenliness.

Typically, when I encounter an error on a blog that I read regularly, I’ll send a private message to the author identifying any errors in their post. I had always assumed that the blogger would appreciate being made aware of their published errors so they could correct it before it was observed by future readers. However, several recent communiques have indicated I might be dead wrong.

It’s important to note that my messages to the authors were always private, were courteous and praised their work before identifying the error contained within their post. In return, I received comments including:

It’s so annoying when you tell me my mistakes.

So who are you? The internet police?

It’s a blog, not the New York Times.

You can guess whose blogs I’ve stopped reading.

There appears to be a generational component to the level of receptiveness to editorial comments. Those authors over 40 have been unanimously appreciative of editorial feedback while those under 30 have exhibited extreme sensitivity towards feedback that they perceive as critique and chastisement, even when none was intended.

So, in this era of social media dominance, is it appropriate to engage in crowd-editing? Or should I keep my red pen firmly in pocket and simply move along?