Recently I was contacted by a submission site because they rejected an article I wrote. Okay. It happens. (Dare I say?) Even to me. I only say that because I work very hard to produce professional, thought-provoking and, most of all, informative articles. But, hey, it happens to the best of us.
The REASON my article was rejected, however, was insulting. Now, I realize there was a lot more going on "under the surface" so to speak, (see my companion blog, TrackerMosIA for background), but that was no excuse to insult me. The reason given was never really stated. All WAS stated was this: "Please proofread and spellcheck your article and resubmit it." And they spelled "re-submit" wrong, which is NOT one word.
Despite the under-lying motives for this, I did, indeed, read the article again. (I did not spell-check because, if you know anything about me, you know how I feel about spell-checkers.) Who knows? Perhaps there was an uncommon amount of typos. But afterwards (finding NONE whatsoever), I wondered about their decision to reject my article on these grounds.
Of course, in the article in question, I did use a few words that are not as common to the vocabulary of some people. Perhaps this was the problem. It is alarming how limited some people's vocabulary's seem to be, not to mention their understanding of the proper grammar for complex sentence structure.
And this is why I bring this topic up.
Developing a good vocabulary is a life-long endeavor, especially for anyone interested in writing. While I don't expect anyone to read the dictionary, since the first rule of becoming a writer is to READ all the time -- everything you can get your hands on -- and, when you encounter an unfamiliar word, look it up. Not just for greater reading comprehension, but because, in order to use a word properly, a full understanding of its meaning is essential. Plus, the originator of that email (rejection) would know that, had any of the words in my article been either mis-spelled or mis-used, believe, I would have known about it.--mo
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