Words matter: Use them wisely

The gulf between a person who obsesses over writing mistakes and one who doesn't care.

In casual conversation, on social media or in text messages, I'm not going to nitpick over errors. Spell a word incorrectly? No problem. Type “their” instead of “they’re,” I won’t utter a word – most of the time.

However, I do believe if you write something with the intent of influencing public opinion, you should proofread it and have another set of eyes look it over. Because a mistake, however slight, can detract from your message.

This happened in a social media thread regarding images coming out of Los Angeles after recent (June 2025) protests.

My friend, Danny, copied and pasted the article. The original author, in attempting to point out the disparity in how national media cover certain events, mentioned violence after sports championships.

Several years ago, I actually looked up some of those incidents. Remember the BLM protests after the deaths of Michael Brown, Philando Castille and others? Several people I know asked, "How come they don't protest black-on-black crime?" I told that person such crimes are protested. He didn't know about them because national media doesn’t cover peaceful protests. They have a tendency to show up only when there's looting, vandalism, or a clash between law enforcement and civilians.

Also around that time, I wrote commentary (unpublished) mentioning the above as well as pointing out how media use different language. When it's black people protesting police brutality, violent actors are called "thugs" and "criminals." But when white people do the same thing during a sports celebration, they're called "unruly fans."

Zak Cheney-Rice, writing for MIC, noted the differences in the article, "One Tweet Shows the Hypocrisy of America's Reaction to White People Rioting at Ohio State." The article notes that those people were called "revelers," "celebrants," "fans" and "students." Yet those who participated in similar violence in Ferguson, Missouri, were called "rioters," "thugs" and "savages."

Cheney-Rice’s article, as well as some others I found, mentioned other places where riots happened after championship games, including Denver, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

Which brings me back to the social media post.

The article in Danny’s post said riots have happened after the "Dodgers won a championship” and after the "Clippers won a championship," among others.

I made the comment that I agreed with all points of the article, except the Clippers have never won a title. I thought maybe the author meant the Lakers. I told Danny I wished people would proofread or get someone else to look at their articles before publishing/posting. Because an error, however innocuous, can detract. You might get somebody like me pointing it out, and the discussion shifts to my comment rather than the article.

Danny proved my point.

In his first reply, he said if "you search for errors," you'll find them. I said a person doesn't have to search for anything to know the Clippers never won a title. To be fair, Danny may care nothing about sports. Which is fine. However, I believe any author of commentary who wants to use sports as a reference point must use accurate information. Few things scream, “I don’t know what I’m talking about,” louder than saying the Clippers won a championship. A reader who gets that impression may dismiss the entire article.

In his second reply, Danny chided me, saying not everybody follows sports enough to know anything about the Clippers. My parting shot was to tell him that he proved my point. During our back-and-forth about the error, no one said anything in the thread about protests or the article.


It's one thing to write something without concern for accuracy, grammar or correct spelling. Quite another for a person to defend poor writing, saying as Danny did that it was an accident. Spelling "Lakers" with an "u" (Lakurs) is an accident. Saying the Clippers won a title is sloppy at best, ignorant at worst.

Words matter.

Is it too much to ask that people make sure theirs are correct?