I’ve hammered my online students about their grammar, spelling and punctuation to the point that I’m sure they’d want to throw spitballs if we were in the same room together.
This book review and the author’s responses – http://bit.ly/hAwofG – make me cringe. This poor misguided author self-published her book and apparently waited for the accolades to roll in. What she got instead was a reviewer speaking the truth and asking her to face reality, which she seems either unable or unwilling to do. She still swears by the quality of her writing. The fact that her many e-mails in outraged response to the reviewer display even more typos and even more examples of bad grammar and bad writing just compound her original errors. I end up wondering why on earth she would subject herself to such humiliation rather than crawl back into her home, work on her writing skills for a few years, then try again.
I’ve always thought that to write is to open a vein in your arm and let it bleed – in public. You have to be ready, and brave; you must have something so finely crafted that even if people don’t really like it, at least they can’t tear it apart based on the most fundamental aspects of sentence structure and clarity.
I’m very gratified to read some of the responses to this author; certainly there are still people out there who care about the language.
Simple Conversations 
As a former student, I can honestly say that I appreciate the hammering. After reading the book review and comments, I find myself even more grateful.
Thanks so much, Erin. You always helped to keep me motivated!
A lifetime of writing has taught me three things: everyone needs an editor; writers need to be thick-skinned; and you must set high standards for your work. You might say that high standards are only required for the best writers. But I believe that if you want to be read at all, you must write clearly. To do that, your writing must be free of spelling and grammatical errors.
Thanks, Diane! Clear writing takes clear thinking, too — a problem for some.