While TBN is certainly a target rich environment for grammatical and spelling errors, I am in the camp that feels that if the message gets across there is no problem. However, just as in speech, writing does give insight into the person who creates it. Some folks are very careful and proper, others loose and colloquial. A few clearly slept through English class. Quite a few have English as a second or third language and for those writers I am just amazed that they don't make more errors. English grammar is a PITA for native speakers and must be a real nightmare to a non native speaker. Still, my bottom line is if the message is clear that's what counts. The primary purpose of language is communication after all.
I do however find there are a few misspelled words that always make me cringe (various misspellings of "hydraulic" for example). Not sure exactly why that bugs me. While I find it easy to ignore or forgive classic errors such as "there" for "their" etc, somehow a completely misspelled technical term always gets my attention. Not sure I would feel confident in a mechanic who cannot spell hydraulic as it makes me wonder if he understands the repair manual well enough to put the correct fluid back in. I know perfectly well that the guy who spells it "hydolic" probably has lots more experience with the stuff than I do but it still makes me wonder. Would you want a surgeon to operating on you who couldn't spell "appendix" properly?? I also don't consider buying from websites with misspellings. Maybe it is just that I can accept misspellings in normal casual speech/writing but have higher expectations for business and technical matters.
