I've spent my share of time on the now ubiquitous dating sites...cupid.com, chemistry.com, Yahoo! Personals, etc. I even wrote an article about my online dating adventures. I've been more or less off those sites for a little while now. I do still get emails from them, however. Here are my observations...
- I probably first looked at a dating site in May or June of last year. I'm amazed that I still see the same people from back then featured in these emails.
- Don't use so many exclamation points! At least not at the end of every sentence! They're supposed to be for emphasis! Or in my case sarcastic effect!
- I mentioned this in my article, but it bears repeating: USE SPELL CHECK! That's what it's there for. I would also suggest giving your profile at least a cursory review before you post it. This way you can avoid giving a grevious misimpression, like saying your son is 111 years old. While I did figure out that this person meant to state that her son was 11, it was still pretty funny.
- While I'm at it, do try to keep your sentence length at well under the 122 word level. Commas are a pretty good idea too.
Having said all that, the dating sites do work. I have had the privilege of spending time with two gorgeous, intelligent women as a result of my online dating tenure. It can work, if you work it right.
Posts
2 comments:
What is it with people and the awful spelling? I mean, an occasional typo is OK and easy to forgive, but if you KNOW you're a terrible speller, HELLO, there's a great invention for that called spellcheck! As an English teacher, it's against my body chemistry to give the time of day to any ad with bad spelling or grammar. Delete.
Personally, I overuse "..." I put it in whenever I want to pause... you know... like I need to catch a breath... it annoys a lot of people... hopefully not you...
Loving the blog,
Tena
Thanks Tena.
I must confess, I am an ellipsis addict myself.
You'll appreciate this...there was one time I got a message from someone off one of these sites. It was pretty much one long run-on sentence, full of mispellings and bad grammar. At the end of the message, the person professed to be a teacher. I don't believe they were an English teacher!
Post a Comment