Uh... surely we didn't need a survey to point out those rather basic facts? - Juha Saarinen from FriendFeed MT Plugin

@Juha, see Kathleen's comment above - lots of people don't believe this yet. Also, as we wrote in the post, even if it's intuitive - these numbers put additional emphasis on making the right decision in a split-second blogging environment. Rick - isn't that crazy that this is what the world has come to? You have to give some thought to whether you are going to click the little "share" button in Google Reader because the content you share is going to reflect on you? That seems nuts to me, but that's totally how it works! Jean-Michel - fact is though that even on a long-developed post, you will find errors from even the best writers. It is *so* much easier said than done, even with modern tools. I know because I publish at least one spelling or grammar error every few days - maybe more! I try to catch them, but there are competing priorities and competitive pressures. I've got posts to write right now, in a hurry before I have to stop working for the day, so I hope I've spelled everything correctly an - Marshall Kirkpatrick from FriendFeed MT Plugin

For writing learnin' I'm interested in reading http://www.copyblogger.com/ - Marshall Kirkpatrick from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Um, talking about credibility, this study was conducted by a "copy editing" service. What do you think they are going to find? - Erick Schonfeld

Erick, you can see the questions asked and the sample set was from Amazon Turk, so it seems pretty legit as lightweight anecdotal stuff goes. Calling this tiny startup a "service" may be overstating it too, it's like a couple of cats in their bedrooms building on a cool idea. I think their doing a survey is a great idea and found the results interesting. Besides, who funds studies that doesn't have an interest in the topic? That's reason to be suspect but not sufficient reason to reject it I think. - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Maybe you were just goofing around though and I took your comment way too seriously :) We need a service that crowdsources humor detection in web content. Seriously. - Marshall Kirkpatrick

<p>Following is <a href="http://www.goosegrade.com/reader-...">gooseGrade's abstract</a> introducing the results of their study. I've made several corrections (original in <b><i>bold italic</i></b>) to grammar and spelling.</p> <blockquote><p>ABSTRACT: It appears that grammar, spelling, factual, and other errors do affect <b><i>(reader opinion)</i></b> readers' opinions as well as how likely they are to share or link to an article. These errors also seem to dictate the <b><i>(readers)</i></b> reader's opinion of the author's skills as a writer. 65.86% of internet users say that a tool like gooseGrade would increase their confidence in the content they are reading. Filtering further shows that 9 out of 10 newspaper readers say that a tool like gooseGrade would increase their confidence in <b><i>(author's)</i></b> authors' content. This <b><i>(merrits)</i></b> merits further investigation of newspaper readers and could show a path for new media to take more market share.</p></blockquote>< - evan orensky from FriendFeed MT Plugin

I love how this post generates so many comments. It shows that more people care about language than we may think. I'll forgive typos and a few spelling mistakes. But not if it becomes too distracting. I've given up reading a few blogs because of too many errors. And that's a shame -- they were informative but badly written. - Joy-Mari Cloete from FriendFeed MT Plugin