I used to manage a staff of writers and editors. One of my least favourite parts of the job was scanning through the hundreds of resumes I’d receive in response to a job posting. (Really, hundreds. And that was before the economy tanked. Just imagine how many people are competing for new jobs these days.) It didn’t take much for me to eliminate a candidate. A spelling error in a cover letter, a misused semi-colon, or (worst of all, and surprisingly common) the misspelling of my name or the company’s name might get an otherwise decent candidate overlooked. Hiring managers simply don’t have the time to give you a chance if you don’t put in the time to send in a perfect cover letter and resume — especially for writing or editing jobs.
A recent article from the Telegraph offers some tragically funny examples of how poor punctuation and grammar can send your resume straight into the “no” pile. Here are some of the worst blunders:
– My interests include cooking dogs and interesting people.
– I am a pubic relations officer
– I was responsible for dissatisfied customers
– I have excellent editing and poof-reading skills
– I am a prooficient typist
– I was responsible for fraudulent claims
– While working in this role, I had intercourse with a variety of people
You can see more resume errors in the full article, available here.
and 
, as well as Bill Walsh’s excellent 
and 
, though I think they’re all more technically accurate and satisfying for a real language curmudgeon.
What I mean, of course, is not that I’m confused by President Obama’s speeches, but that he has a tendency to choose the wrong pronoun when referring to himself. Like many people, he seems to have had the “Suzy, Sally, Billy, and I” pattern drilled into his head as a child to the extent that he finds it difficult ever to say “Michelle and me,” even when that’s the correct choice (as in, “Thank you for inviting Michelle and me to this event”).
