When should you grammar?

The classic "slow children" sign.
Perhaps CAUTION or Drive Slowly
would have been a better choice.
© Second Print Productions

Edited using picnick.  Painted over the
original boy image and replaced with
a stamp.

Today’s assignment is to edit a photo online using two different online editors.  Once I have finished that, I am to post the photos online describing the programs I used, the methods for editing, and which program I preferred.  The task is simple enough, but it does not have much to do with grammar. So I thought I would add a little twist to keep my theme and to stress when grammar is essential.   

A Neck Dote All Evidense

I work part time in the trade industry in order to pay the bills while in school.  Doing so has brought up the interesting dichotomy of being an English major in an environment where little value is placed upon whether or not you can identify a word usage error.  But, even here the importance of grammar comes up every now and then.  When he is in a good mood, my boss is fully capable of self deprecation, and one of his favourite stories to tell is the one where he had to engrave a plaque for an award.  Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and my boss is a very intelligent person, but English is definitely not his strong point, particularly spelling. 

Edited with Sumopaint.  Cut and pasted the boy image to
right.  Created a cartoon bomb using the paint features.
Cropped.

The story goes; he was tasked to engrave a safety award which he did with exquisite precision.  The award looked very professional and it was presented to the company and put on display immediately.  Unfortunately my boss never made a safety award; instead, he made a SAFTY award.  The error was not found until months after the award had been on display and as a result he was suitably embarrassed.

That being said, anytime your work is on display for public scrutiny grammar receives great importance.  If you want to look professional and you don’t want the message you're conveying construed into something completely different, then you had better care about grammar.  Otherwise you end up seeing things like actual church signs which read “Dont let worries kill you let the church help.”

  

--Blake

Review: It has been a while since I have edited a photo but both Picnik and Sumopaint were pretty straightforward.  Picnik definitely took less time to achieve the desired result, but I guess what I did with Sumopaint was a little more complex. The biggest thing I liked about Sumopaint was the ability to Ctrl Z to undo, which is something that I do very often when editing photos.  The simple user interface is probably Picnik's best feature.  I don't have a real strong preference to either at the moment, however, if pressed I would probably lean towards Picnik.