People care.
That’s the message ACES President Teresa Schmedding delivered Thursday, March 20, in the annual state of ACES speech, which opened the 18th national conference of the American Copy Editors Society.
While it’s difficult to enumerate the value of something that doesn’t happen (namely errors), Schmedding told the gathering that research and data show people do care about the end result of what copy editors work to deliver — clean, clear and error-free copy.
In prepared remarks, Schmedding said:
“Some may think this conference is just a bunch of crazy, uptight, grammar freaks crying in the desert … People fighting for punctuation and subjective clause justice to an uncaring, unfeeling world.
“But I know — and you know — that we are serious about our business and what we do matters, despite what you might hear.
“Long before Abraham Hyatt stirred controversy last month with his erroneous, over punctuated statement about copyediting: ‘No. One. Cared.’ – the world has long debated our value.
“It mystifies me that the argument still exists despite data to the contrary. All reports show that seats belts save lives. Wearing them is the law. Why? Because research on top of research has proven it’s true. And we have research that copy editors save writers lives and publishers’ bacon.
“I’ll admit, we don’t have as much research as I’d like on the value of copy editing. We have the ground-breaking work that Fred (Vultee) has done. And we’re continuing to encourage research via the ACES editing research award.
“One of the challenges is that it’s hard to prove the value of the absence of something – namely errors.
“But there is data that shows the value of quality and good grammar.
“Research out of Britain (Disruptive Communication) shows that 42.5 percent of people said ‘poor spelling or grammar’ on social media would most likely damage their opinion of a brand.
“Another study (Global Lingo) showed that 59 percent of Britons would not use a company that had obvious grammatical or spelling mistakes on its website or marketing material. And – beware those of you who outsource — 82 percent would not use a company that had not correctly translated its material into English. Just 4 percent continued to use the website or purchase something from it.
“Another survey, this one done by Jobvite, showed that nearly two-thirds of participating companies said profanity, spelling and grammar mistakes on social media reflected poorly on job applicants.
“And if that’s not enough to convince you, match.com cites good teeth and grammar as top draws for dates. And Wired magazine reported men who correctly use whom get 31 percent more contacts from women.
“We are not alone. Whether it’s bosses looking to hire, people consuming news or those looking for love online, people care. And you care.
“You care enough to join ACES. This year, ACES is setting membership records, surpassing more than 1,000 members.
“You care enough to come to Las Vegas. (We’re probably the only conference that comes to Sin City whose members will spend more time in training sessions than in a casino and more money on an autographed dictionary than a poker game.)
“You care. And the world cares. Never doubt your value. Never doubt yourself.”
