Learn to write, and people will respect your writing, even if they disagree.

Look at a review. Yes, any review. Okay, maybe not any review, but let's at least stick to Gamespot game reviews. I wrote a review on Final Fantasy XII right after my girlfriend finally completed it. It wasn't anywhere near the score GameSpot gave it (5 vs a 9), but it was written well, as most people expect of me now. Now, the reviews there were mostly good reviews for FFXII with the occasional few among my ranks, so I expected to get a lot of thumbs down from mere disagreement.

However, much to my surprise, after 8 ratings only one person gave a thumbs down to me. I then found a review that gave it a 2.5, and it was so difficult to read that I just left it alone and began writing this (seriously). I then looked at its ratings: 0 out of 5 users agree with this review.

So, moral of the story, learn to write. If you're writing a MySpace comment or an AIM message, go ahead and use all the ntspk you like. But if you're writing a review or article, people tend to take you more seriously if you sound like you know what you're talking about. I dunno, maybe it's a professional thing...