Recently, an incident occurred at one of the local malls (the largest mall locally, in fact) that prompted an armed police presence. People were, of course, commenting on news stories that local media were publishing on their social media accounts.
Take a look at the first comment below taken from a Facebook post:
Here, the commenter stated, “Jesus can’t even go to the mall without being fearful.”
This is an example of why it’s important to write clearly and use proper punctuation. The way this comment was written suggests that Jesus is afraid of going to the mall. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be the Jesus, or if it is a local Latino man named Jesús.
It’s obvious that the commenter meant, however, to use Jesus as a way to emphasize their frustration. And I want to avoid ridiculing the commenter as uneducated. The intent of this sentence is apparent to most readers, but for other sentences, the meaning isn’t so evident. As such, it’s always important to write as clearly as possible to mitigate the risk of your reader misunderstanding you.
In this example, the writer could’ve reworded it as:
Jesus! You can’t even go to the mall without being fearful.
Remember. Write clearly and proofread before commenting on social media.
