Swing Shift Volume 11- The Grammar Police

My friend Dharma e-mailed me a few weeks ago:

This isn’t really a question, but I thought it might be a topic you could cover on Swing Shift because it seems like your readers are a relatively intelligent group of folks.

We’re all writers, right?  I mean, we blog out of a desire to write, so it stands to reason that we pay attention to things like spelling and grammar, etc. I am finding this to be a problem for me when I’m perusing profiles on the swinging websites. An errant comma or randomly misspelled word or typo doesn’t turn me off, but profiles overflowing with lazy language, disregard for punctuation, capitalization, etc. just simply turn me off.

I know I’m too critical for my own good, and I know I’m not perfect. AND I know there are plenty of perfectly intelligent, appealing people out there who aren’t the World’s Greatest Spellers/Writers, and no one came by my house and appointed me the Grammar Police. But still, first impressions are everything, right? Never mind the one-liner, ALL CAPS, “let’s get it on” emails that show up in our inbox…I have no problem skipping right past those. But I’m having a problem turning off the editor in me and putting down my red pen when I’m perusing profiles.

What’s a Grammar Nazi to do?

Thanks muchly, (see? is that even a word?)

We’ve gotten messages exactly like you’re talking about and can sympathize.  Now I don’t think we’re actually the grammar police, because as anyone who has ever chatted with me online can attest, my spelling and grammar can be pretty tortured…  (Veronica: Heck, I have typos and grammatical issues all the time, but for me it’s mostly that I rush in writing my posts so I get posts up at all.)

We see our profile as how we present ourselves to the swinger community and take care to show ourselves in a flattering light.  Not just our pictures, but in what we write.  (Veronica:  I see our profile as mini commercial for us.  It should capture the attention, but leave you wanting to know more about us.)

Now do you think this couple took the same care when they wrote their profile?

This is a couple I found on a search for poorly written profiles, and it only took me about 10 minutes to find this gem.  Take a moment and actually read some of that profile.  But you know what?  The tortured English by itself is not enough for us to blow them off should they contact us.  Yes, it’s pretty bad, but if they’re attractive AND have a well-written e-mail to us, we’ll give them a chance.

Case in point, long-time readers might remember Max and Irma from last winter.  Veronica and I had a 3some with her once while he was away and on another occasion we swapped with them.  The grammar in their profile was terrible and chatting online with them could be tortuous, but as soon as we learned that they were not native English speakers, we were VERY forgiving.  (Veronica:  Especially since they were hot and she was fun with some awesome and tasty boobs).

More annoying than the poorly written profile is the empty profile.  Take a look at this one:

At least the couple I use for the first example tells us something about them, even if it’s hard to read.  What have we really learned from this second couple from their profile?  Could their answers be any more generic?  This is the type of profile that we quickly skip over.

(Veronica:  Once again think mini commercial.  It’s one thing to leave the people wanting more.  It’s another thing to have the reader go ‘WTF?’   I am not expecting literature from profiles, but I do want to read it and be able to understand a little bit about who you are and what you want.  If I can’t determine these things, then how can I tell if you might be compatible with us?  And at the risk of sounding snotty, Hubman and I are intelligent people.  We consider good conversation to be stimulating.  We consider intelligence to be sexy.  If your profile makes you sound illiterate then we are not going to be intrigued.)

To return to Dharma’s point, if a well-crafted and -written profile is of paramount importance, by all means look for that.  It’s not for us, though it is something that could be a turn-off.  What is important to us? Pictures. Remember, we view swinging as sport-fucking and we’re shallow, we only want to fuck other good looking people (presuming, of course, that you think we’re good looking…) so we ONLY search for or reply to couples who have pictures on their profile.

Thanks for the question Dharma!

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With this post, I’ve used up the back-log of questions.  As always, if you have a question, please feel free to comment here or if you’d rather remain anonymous to my readers, e-mail me at hubman38 at gmail dot com.

Anyone wanna come over and play with us?

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