Have you ever been scrolling through a website only to see a word misspelled? Have you ever read an ad on Facebook that uses the wrong there/their/they’re? Have you ever been sent a memo that was completely unorganized and just poorly written? Have you ever received an email from a coworker with a comma splice or without any punctuation?

Think back and remember how you felt when you caught those errors or got lost in a professional document because of poor writing. Were you accepting of it? Did your eyes just float over the error? Or did you become hypercritical? Did you search for more errors or think about how you could write it better?

Good grammar and writing  is credibility.

It doesn’t matter what you do for a living; you’re more credible if you can write well. From the moment you send an application in to a job, your writing needs to be impeciable because your cover letter and resume are how you’re presenting your skills to that hiring manager and company. If you’re already working, your writing shows your boss a lot about who you are as a worker.

Writing isn’t just for the writers. There are many ways having good writing skills can benefit you in any job.

It demonstrates work ethic.

Maybe you weren’t paying attention in that 10th grade English class when grammar was being taught, or perhaps you just never learned it properly. Either way, at a certain point, that excuse is no longer valid. If you’re ten years out of high school, and you still can’t distinguish the difference between to and too, then it’s probably a lack of interest issue than a lack of trying.

Proper grammar shows a certain level of work ethic in a person. Are you willing to look up and teach yourself the difference to improve your own communiation skills? Are you willing to work at this skill you’re poor at in order to improve?

It shows attention to detail.

Good writing, especially good grammar, show a person’s attention to detail. Nobody writes every single sentence grammatically correct every single time, so it’s important to have good editing skills. Going back over your writing and checking for those comma errors and misplaced modifiers shows that you are detail-oriented, and details are everything in any business.

It helps you organize your ideas better.

Good writing skills helps your brain to naturally organize information better in your head. When writing a proposal for a job or a memo for the office, you’ll be able to quickly draft the document in your head in a way that would make sense for the reader. This allows your reader to easily process the information you give them.

It helps you communicate more effectively. 

Unless you work by yourself, communication is key in any job, and even if you do work alone, you probably need to communicate with a customer or corporation at some point. Honing your writing skills will allow you to communicate more easily with any customer, coworker, or higher-up both in-writing and in-person. You’ll be able to accurately get your ideas across in writing and present those ideas well in clean prose. It will make you more credible.