I'm writing this as a plea from our archive admins - even if they didn't exactly ask me to write it. I still tend to glance at every story posted here and I wanted to take a moment to comment about a few things.

We're getting a little bit sloppy.

I'll admit - there are times I'm so excited about posting something that I don't take the time to send it to a beta - I just want to get it out there. But even if you don't have a person who you go to for a second set of eyes there is something to be said for taking a deep breath, stepping away for a bit, taking another glance and THEN going back to post.

MTT was created as a place to archive quality Office fanfic. I'd really like to keep it that way.

Running spell check is the absolute minimum you should do. Formatting of your story needs to be correct - run on sentences and paragraphs are not acceptable. Things like typos of things as important as character names can happen so that is why I strongly suggest authors find a trusty beta or two. Not only can they catch things like that - they can help to polish and tighten up your work. Ideally you want one who shares your view of the characters you're writing about and another who is completely brutal where the mechanics of writing are concerned.

Sometimes you can find both in one person if you are lucky enough.

If you are questioning correct grammar usage there are a multitude of websites that can assist you. Tricky things like its and it's and lie and lay happen all the time. Not taking the time to find out if you're doing something right or wrong is really pure laziness. This may sound harsh but when I - personally - see an author hasn't taken the time to polish their work I wonder why I'm wasting my time reading it.

If you look to the left of this note there are links to both our pool of betas and the Grammar Girl website.

The tools we all need are here. There are really no excuses.

I'm not saying I'm not guilty of rushing myself - the desire for feedback and to put something out there that you hope others will enjoy is very strong. But these days I'm really forcing myself to slow down and take my time in order to be sure what I put out there is the best I can do.

My greatest wish is that I could get more people on board with that.