The Illiteracy of Corporate American E-Mail

Dave writes "There is a pretty amusing/sad article about functional illiteracy when it comes to professional e-mails. Some of the samples are just ridiculous."

Comments

How they become?

[fembots]

How did these employees get into the company door in the first place? Didn't they have to write some sort of CV that their employers can understand? Or are they gradually getting worse in the corporate/email environment?

P.S. This are one of the Slashdot articles that I am so worrifiedably scared to be picked at by one of these Spelling/Grandma Nazis.

Re:How they become?

[eln]

A lot of people usually get a lot of help writing their resumes. Once they get into the workforce, there is a prevailing myth among the plebes that spelling and grammar don't matter, as long as the message is right. However, this ignores the fact that bad spelling and grammar can severely impact the coherency of any message, as well as hurting the credibility of the author.

There have been several times when advertising departments at places I've worked have let huge glossies and other very visible ads get all the way through printing with major spelling and grammatical errors. How can anyone take a company seriously if it looks like everyone at that company is illiterate?

Re:How they become?

[mordors9]

I work for a fairly large corporation and supervise a group of people. I used to think the spelling mistakes were just typing errors, that all of the grammatical mistakes and punctuation errors were just laziness. Don't get me wrong, I mistype words occasionally and I certainly do not always use perfect grammar. But, I see an awful lot of emails and reports that are nearly incomprehensible. I have also come to the conclusion that an awful lot of people really do not know how to spell or have a basic understanding of grammar. I guess further evidence that our public education system is failing miserably.

Re:How they become?

[calibanDNS]

With a CV, you can spend a lot of time reviewing it and have it professionaly reviewed. If you apply to any job without having at least one other person proof it, you're insane.

I think one of the problems with email is that it's so easy to prepare and send one that many people don't believe that an email needs to be correct. I don't claim to be very proficient with the English language, but I at least run spell check before sending an email, which is more than I can say for almost all of my coworkers.

Re:How they become?

[maxume]

I would imagine that illiterates don't spend too much time worrying over the correctness of the materials a company puts out and take them just as seriously as any other company.

Re:How they become?

[k4_pacific]

Given that the Nazi party was defeated in 1945, I'd say that most surviving Nazis are likely Grandmas or Grandpas.

Re:How they become?

[AndroidCat]

Possibly they paid someone else to polish it into shape? What are really sad are the posts on the *.jobs Usenet groups: frequently illiterate rants about how they never hear back from headhunters, and asking why language skills important for a technical position. (I know that their cover letters aren't any better. Many will fire a resume at any valid email address they can find, without bothering to read the post--which isn't a job offer.)

P.S. About that "worrifiedably" ... :)

Re:How they become?

[Fizzlewhiff]

I read Slashdot comments and wonder the same thing.

Re:How they become?

[Robber Baron]

If you apply to any job without having at least one other person proof it, you're insane.

Then who proofs the proofer's CV?

Re:How they become?

[uncommonlygood]

I agree, but modded you redundant, whoops. Posting here will prolly cancel it out though.

Re:How they become?

[antdude]

Probably lazy or they are in a hurry. I tend to do that in one of those.

Re:How they become?

[rocjoe71]

Doesn't matter where I work, the H.R. manager is one of the worst spellers in the company... Her problem is she forgets to proofread, but it still looks just as bad. I finally called her up about not proofreading stuff when she congratulated the wrong person for an internal promotion (not me).

Alot of people are just disinterested in proofreading-- they'd realize how atrocious their emails look if they actually read what they typed before pressing "Send".

As for your fear of spelling nazis, I fear you are justificated in the apparent normalcy of this disenfrenchfried bunch of losers that have nothing better to contribute.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a good reason I'm posting this anonymously, but my BOSS is an excellent example of this. He can't spell, punctuate, or put together decent grammar at ALL.

This goes all the way to the very top in many cases.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

You pretty much said it. I'd wager that the average /. poster has a college education.

Of course, you'd never guess it from the quality of the average post.

How do these people get jobs you ask? Easy, functional illiteracy is common (prevalent?) among college graduates.

Re:How they become?

[saden1]

An army of trained monkeys. The same army Shakespeare utilized to write his plays/books.

Re:How they become?

[Repton]

A man rides into a new town, and needs to get his CV proofread. The town has only two CV proofreaders. So he gets copies of their CVs to help him decide whom to go to. One of the CVs is beautifully presented, with impeccable spelling and grammar and a clear, logical layout. The other is messy, confused, and poorly spelt. There are many obvious grammatical mistakes.

Which proofreader does the man go to, and why?

Re:How they become?

[BigBir3d]

F7 in MS Word is a beautiful thing. and my email clients always scan for spelling before sending. does not catch my grammar though. most emails i got at my old job from chinese and taiwanese people were more comprehensible than the ones from my idiot american customers. of course, with a 12 or 13 hour time difference the message had to be correct the first time.

i think this is why IM is becoming more used in the corporate world. so the idiot clones know what they are stating to each other.

of course i work for a $700M corporation that has had no network access for my branch for 6 calendar days. took 5 days forr the to figure out it may be the router. turns out the guy that did the un-install at the old location cut off all the cat5 cables with metal snips, while the router was still running. being a person of laziness (note lack of caps), why would someone cut them, just to unplug them later? the cable was to be thrown away in either case. i don't get it...

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder the same thing, but I really need not wonder. It's the power of knowing people. What I find particularly amusing about the article is the following, "Considering how highly educated our people are, many can't write clearly in their day-to-day work." Can everyone please join me in screaming, "BULLSHIT!" Highly educated my ass!

I grew up in Africa. English is not my first language, yet I think my command of it is reasonable well. The frustrating thing is that people tend to put me down because of my accent. "Oh! You can't speak English." Funny as it this, these same peeps can't even write it and sadly it's the only language they speak and write!

Not to get off the gist of the article. I don't think anything can be done which is rather unfortunate. American society is degenerating into a big pile of turd. The state of education, and political ideas of our younger generation is just depressing, considering one would imagine us to be more advanced and sophiscated due to the rapid and recent advanced of technologies. .segmond

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got an idea. When I hire people for my company. Before we begin with the interview, I will ask them to give me all copies of their resume. I will keep one, tear the rest up and throw it into the trash. Then I will give them a sheet of paper and pen and tell them to write their resume. It better match the old one. .segmond

Re:How they become?

[StalinJoe]

If their remedial training budget is tight, they can always use /. grammar nazis. Mandatory: 3 /. posts per workday...

Re:How they become?

[Wandering Idiot]

does not catch my grammar though.

Not even capitalizing the first letter in a sentence and the word 'I'?

Pity.

Re:How they become?

[linusunil]

This explains the whole GW Bush phenomenon I guess. People pick the leaders they deserve, in this case, George... slayer of the English language.

Re:How they become?

[untaken_name]

The one who presented the messy CV. That is, if he/she did not proofread his/her own CV. Otherwise, go to the one with the better CV. This is where the old, barber-related puzzler surpasses yours. It's much more difficult to cut and style one's hair than it is to proofread one's CV.

Re:How they become?

[Pfhreakaz0id]

Yeah. I used to work in a print shop in the mornings back when I was reporter at a newspaper at night. You wouldn't belive some of the horrible writing I saw on resumes. It got to where we offered my editing services for a few dollars more.

Re:How they become?

[tompaulco]

>ads get all the way through printing with major spelling and grammatical errors
There is one where I work that reads something like "blah, blah, blah, with pinpoint precision, blah, blah, blah".
Great, so we can repeatedly get the same (but not necessarily correct) result every time with very little variance.

Re:How they become?

[Staplerh]

I would argue that many of these employees are gradually getting worse in the corporate/email environment. It must be stressed that e-mail communications must be treated the same way as letter communications.

I see it all the time. People who can write excellent essays, articles or letters on an actual physical piece of paper suddenly become illiterate idiots when they begin to write an e-mail.

It's a corporate culture that doesn't treat e-mail with respect. This is along the same vein as mass forwards to people that are not concerned with the e-mail, or FYI (For Your Information) forwards that are inconsequential. It'd be curious to compare pre e-mail cultures and post e-mail cultures, and see if the sheer amount of information sent via e-mail (FYIs, forwards, etc.) has a mitigating effect on the productivity gains.

Re:How they become?

[swb]

Many resumes aren't actually "read" for grammatical correctness, they're scanned for keywords either electronically or by people. Even when someone tries to read them, most resume books say "short and sweet" which precludes a lot of paragraph-type writing. Furthermore, the people reading them are often as weak at writing skills as the submitters, so any standard being applied is low to begin with.

And then there are the people who have professional services do their resumes, CVs and cover letters -- either once for manual submission, or as part of a headhunter type operation where fixing their clients weaknesses is part of the job.

And let's face it, when YOU were in college, what was the general intellectual orientation of most business/marketing school types, anyway? I found they nearly all fit the stereotype -- frat/sorority members with more interest in their personal appearance and social standing. Grades (and not necessarily *learning*) merely being important if they had some kind of status-oriented grad school plans or a cash payback plan from Mom and Dad for not flunking out.

To be fair, there were people that fit that description who were real smart, too, but most of them really weren't. College was something they were expected to do, like wear Polo-brand clothes, and join the right Greek house, and get a corporate job.

Is it any surprise that once this anti-intellectual group is in a position where they have to represent their ideas in writing that they fall apart? I think half the problem with them isn't just a lack of writing skills, it's also the quality of the ideas. It's hard to write well about a bad idea.

Re:How they become?

[tompaulco]

>If you apply to any job without having at least one other person proof it, you're insane.
But then it is no longer a fair assessment of good a CV you can write.

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

prolly?

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

What exectly is a constant-velocity proofreader?

Re:How they become?

[secretsquirel]

"I have also come to the conclusion that an awful lot of people really do not know how to spell or have a basic understanding of grammar. I guess further evidence that our public education system is failing miserably."

I'd say it's mostly due to spellcheck. You don't spend as much effort to learn correct spelling when your so used to it being auutomagically corrected. Personally my grammar sucks as, mostly due to the fact that I don't really care as long as the point gets accros. If It's for something "official" or something I'll take more care, do a spellcheck and use big words and stuff. I always thought it was kind of weird how people see the english language as set in stone as if it says in the bibble that it is forbidden to end a sentance in a preposition, use double negatives, etc.

Re:How they become?

[shrikel]

NO No no. It's barbers. A CV proofreader wouldn't have the other guy proofread his CV. He would know he did it well himself.

A barber, on the other hand, could reasonably be expected to have somebody other than himself cut his hair.

Re:How they become?

[Frymaster]

prolly?

hm. makes me think there should be a study on the illiteracy of slashdot posts.

Re:How they become?

[untaken_name]

You know, it's hard to reconcile the obvious need for better, clearer written communication with the hatred of those of us who alert people to mistakes in that area. What you're saying is that you wish people would write more clearly and yet you don't want anyone to correct you when you do not. It's obvious that the problem is not the spelling/grammar nazis, it's the relative scarcity of them. I could correct the five mistakes I found while reading your comment; since you're scared of us, I will not. There may be more, but I saw no reason to look more closely when my help will obviously not be appreciated. Good luck in the business world, and have fun in your remedial English training.

Re:How they become?

[Mantorp]

Must resist temptation to correct mistakes in above post. AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHH, reaching for the submit button.

Wait, were you being facetious and made the mistakes on purpose, or did you rush to get the first post and skipped proof reading?

Re:How they become?

[fishbot]

I finally called her up about not proofreading stuff when she congratulated the wrong person for an internal promotion (not me).

It can get worse than that. Soon after I started at the last company I worked for, the HR director stood up in front of the whole development department and announced that an ex-employee had rejoined the company.

However, upon announcing said employee's name, he got it completely wrong and announced an ex-employee who had not, in fact, returned to the company. The returning employee was not impressed, and the HR director looked like an idiot. However, that was the normal state of things and nobody noticed.

The previously named employee did, in fact, rejoin the company little over a month later. The HR director tried to cover his gaff by claiming that he knew about it, despite the returner not applying until a week after the incident.

Human resources; can't live with 'em... that's it.

Re:How they become?

[Moxon]

Perhaps if people were taught how to type at a computer without looking at their fingers, they could look at what they're typing on screen while typing it. *POOF*, no need to proofread.

Now for my next trick, I shall attempt to walk without looking at my feet!

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

"When I hire people for my company," WHAT? The scary thing is that on this thread dedicated to halfway literate discourse you can't even manage to use complete sentences.

Re:How they become?

[DaoudaW]

Too easy! You go to the one thats messy, confused and poorly spelled because that guy was too busy to worry about his on CV. The other guy obfiously nobody trusted so he spent hours in his Mom's basement fine-tuning his CV.

_or_

Obviously you go to the man with the beautifully presented CV because he's obviously new or he'd have run it by the messy guy who would have messed it up just like he did his own CV.

_or_

He needs to take it to both of them. One for style and one for content. For as everyone knows disorganization is often a sign of a brilliant mind.

Okay okay ... Go to messy because if they did each others CVs the one with the messy CV proofread the neat CV. (But I don't see any evidence of that in the story).

Re:How they become?

[Mazem]

I wrote this in another topic earlier today, but it applies here so I will quote myself:
"The bottom line is whether or not your target audience understands what you are trying to say - style be damned. The emphasis on correct spelling and grammar is not emphasized because it has immense value to society, but rather because it is a popular status symbol."

Re:How they become?

[RealAlaskan]

... bad spelling and grammar can severely impact the coherency of any message, as well as hurting the credibility of the author.

When I was teaching econ, I several times made the mistake of setting an essay test. It showed that the American students couldn't write. When I marked them down for incomprehensiblity, they were shocked! ``You should grade the econ, not the grammer.'' they said. Unfortunately, the grammer and organization was bad enough that there wasn't any coherent content to grade.

Some of them did know the material, but it doesn't matter what you know, if you can't communicate it clearly to others. If you can't communicate, you might as well know nothing, because that's what everyone will assume.

By contrast, some students for whom English was a second language had grammer problems, but their writing was coherent enough that I could figure out what they meant.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

(spelling and grammar) - Plural (group of things)
equiv. to 'they'

They don't matter

not

They doesn't matter

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

does not catch my grammar though

Is everything underlined in a squiggly green line? That would be the grammar check.

Re:How they become?

[ricochet81]

"But, I see an awful lot of emails and reports that are nearly incomprehensible."

hmm, maybe we shouldn't start sentences with "But,." or was that just an example of you not using perfect grammar? :)

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

So now someone's going to write a program that ALWAYS capitalizes "I" and when you try to write "Hassan i Sabbah" you're going to have to turn the bloody thing off just to get the case right. This is what these idiots are doing to us. And, no, it's not just inability. It's often simple laziness. I have watched folks touch type a message and then hit [send] without even reading over what they just wrote. That's where all this "teh" nonsense comes from.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once they get into the workforce, there is a prevailing myth among the plebes that spelling and grammar don't matter, as long as the message is right

Parent had it right. "Spelling and grammar" == "they".

Re:How they become?

[ThousandStars]

Exactly. There are businesses -- like mine, which is in my sig -- that proofread resumes, CVs and other documents for individuals.

Re:How they become?

[mobby_6kl]

Not exactly a spelling or grammar error, but still...

I got a D-Link AirPlusG+ 802.11g card and right on the top of the box, below the product name, it says: "Fastre Wireless Access for Your Laptop". Might be just British spelling though.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

But some of those rules were just made to break.

Re:How they become?

[ThousandStars]

-- like mine, which is in my sig --

I meant in my profile link.

Egg, meet face.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S. This are one of the Slashdot articles...

It seems prudent to correct this given the topic.

"This is one of the Slashdot articles..."

Re:How they become?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

1. You should have said: "Her problem is that she forgets to proofread."

2. It is "A lot", not "Alot".

3. "Disinterested" means one doesn't have a conflict of interest. You should have used "uninterested".

4. It is "justified", not "justificated".

5. It is "disenfranchised", not "disenfrenchfried", unless someone took away their French fries.

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

The problem is you have to stop and think what the idiot's trying to REALLY say every time you hit a "your" when he means to say "you're." Spellcheck doesn't catch that kind of error. And every time you have to stop and decypher what the guy is saying you just get more and more annoyed and finally give up and do business with somebody else.

As for the bibble, you'll have to con-sult yer lokal religeous fannatical.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

"with a 12 or 13 hour time difference the message had to be correct the first time."

That makes no sense... are you thinking that, because of the time difference, the email take 12 hours to arrive? I know you can't really be thinking that, but I'm drawing a blank here...

Re:How they become?

[spike hay]

Actually, starting sentences with "but" is not imperfect grammar. Sure, it is informal, nonacademic grammar, and you probably shouldn't use it on an English paper. But (sic), it is natural language, and thus should not necessarily be excluded from writing.

Re:How they become?

[Pr0Hak]

let me fill in the blank: You send a message at noon to someone who is twelve hours ahead of you. They get the message at midnight. They come in to work at 8:00 AM their time, and read your message. They send a response, but it is already 8:00 PM your time, so you don't see the message for another 12 hours when you come in to work the next day at 8:00 AM.

Having to go through multiple iterations of the message to make sure your point is clearly presented can slow things down significantly.

Re:How they become?

[dewke]

Most companies don't ask for a writing sample. In fact it would be insulting to ask for one once you get past a certain level. All that aside, I used to work at a fortune 500 company and I've seen emails that make the "examples" in that article look like great literary works. I'm not perfect, but I usually try to spell properly and use grammar and punctuation. It really *does* make a difference.

Re:How they become?

[kaustik]

"One of them leads to the castle, and the other one leads to -- " "Ba ba ba bum!" "Certain death!"

Re:How they become?

[Finuvir]

Sloppy writing implies carelessness at best, ineptitude at worst. It's not okay to write badly in a business setting; at least not in inter-business communication.

Re:How they become?

[Nik13]

I work for a very well recognized agency, and I always found it funny how the people whose first and only spoken language is english always turn to me for the spelling of simple words on a daily basis. Scary.

Re:How they become?

[brianosaurus]

Someone should have proofread your post ("...assessment of [HOW] good..." ?). Imagine the simple and easily overlooked mistakes you might have on your unchecked CV? ;)

People make mistakes. Unless you are applying for a very solitary job, you'll probably have the opportunity for a coworker to proofread your work. Proofreading will help catch the simple mistakes, but can only do so much for chronic bad writing (fixing that is called rewriting, not proofreading).

A bad CV with no gramatical mistakes is still a bad CV.

Re:How they become?

[trentblase]

Kinda reminds me of a Cablevision commercial where they tout the benefits of "high speed online". As in, I gotta get me some of that high speed online.

Re:How they become?

[glitch!]

1. You should have said: "Her problem is that she forgets to proofread."
2. It is "A lot", not "Alot".
3. "Disinterested" means one doesn't have a conflict of interest. You should have used "uninterested".
4. It is "justified", not "justificated".
5. It is "disenfranchised", not "disenfrenchfried", unless someone took away their French fries.


Then again, maybe these were intentional and slashdot just removed the <GWB> and </GWB> tags.

Re:How they become?

[SpecBear]

I don't know about the rest of corporate America, but it's easy to see why this is the case with programmers. It's quite common for an interviewer to say, "Write a function that does foo." I have never heard an interviewer say, "OK, now document it."

Re:How they become?

[amw]

Nope - we Brits spell it 'er' as well.

Back on topic ... a company I knew in the past had a CEO who didn't seem to care about the grammer or spelling of her emails; she and another director ended up having arguments based around the fact that she should either (a) proofread, or (b) stop sending out emails that could damage the company image.

As far as I could see, she knew how her emails could look to people. She just didn't really care; after all, she wasn't the one with the problem.

Re:How they become?

[Finuvir]

Every day I get printed college notes handed to me with obvious spell-check induced errors in them. You never see words like "teh" in spell-checked documents but this material is riddled with misplaced words. "Loose" is quickly becoming my least favourite word. "Your" vs. "you're" and "there" vs. "their" are other common misplacements. It's caused either by carelessness or incompetence, neither of which reflect well on the writer.

Re:How they become?

[GWTPict]

No, it isn't a British spelling. However as we use metre and centre I can see where the confusion could arise.

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

A lot of this not-ending-a-sentence-with-a-preposition and not-starting-a-sentence-with-a-conjunction nonsense goes back to a failed 17th Century attempt to fashion English grammar after that of Latin. For every one of these rules there is a perfectly correct example from before the period of False Latinization. This silliness must be distinguished from true grammatical errors involving constructions that make it difficult or impossible to understand what the writer is trying to say. That is the key point here. Language is about communication. If it doesn't communicate well, it is BAD language.

Re:How they become?

[omeomi]

Ah, just because your students couldn't write well, that means that all American students can't write? We don't even know where you were teaching...maybe you teach at a crappy 2-year community college down in Arkansas where half of the students are two steps from dropping out. There are many fine schools in America, and many excellent students...

Re:How they become?

[asr_man]

...bad spelling and grammar can severely impact the coherency of any message, as well as hurting the credibility of the author.

"Hurting" above is incorrect. To agree with "impact" it should be "hurt":

Bad spelling and grammar can (do two things...#1:) severely impact...(and #2:) hurt...

But since this forum doesn't support editing, we'll forgive you.

The Grammar Nazis

Re:How they become?

[StalinJoe]

And how would that study classify *nix geeks that have lost the ability to capitalize letters at the start of sentences? (This is English, not bash, tsh, ksh or sh.)

Reminds me of a very recent /. poll...

Re:How they become?

[slayer99]

A variation on the old "best hairdresser" postulate. Not seen that is quite some time, well done :)

Re:How they become?

[Boronx]

My wife learned English as a second language in grade school. She understands mistakes like split infinitives and dangling participles. She knows what the subjunctive sense is.

I went to way above average public schools, and I've only encountered these in passing.

The first I'd ever heard of the subjunctive sense was in highschool Spanish. The concept was outlandish. The whole class was puzzled. The teacher finally explained to us that English also had a subjunctive sense.

The only conlusion is that they've cheated us.

Re:How they become?

[pipingguy]

I'm trying to remember that axiom that states something like, "dumb people only hire people that are dumber than themselves" (in order to preserve mediocre status and authority), but I can't recall what it is.

Re:How they become?

[Moofie]

I think the problem with American schools is related to the fact that they hire teachers that overgeneralize.

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

Case in point: I wrote an entire book on the origin of gameboards. I proofread it myself. The professional publisher's editor caught ONE WORD misspelled twice, one "grammatical error" involving the use of "farther" rather than "further" in a metaphor, and a too long sentence that needed to be broken up into smaller sentences. I am not William Shakespeare. I was not even an English major. I did work as a hand compositor (setting type) for three years. I learned this stuff in GRAMMAR SCHOOL. If nobody's learning it there now, there's something wrong with the schools or there's something wrong with the students. I suspect a lot of it has to do with television.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have watched folks touch type a message and then hit [send] without even reading over what they just wrote. That's where all this "teh" nonsense comes from.

Really? I thought people only wrote that when they were misguidedly attempting irony...

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is more a question of not taking the time to write a coherent message, rather than not knowing how. Most people take a lot of time to write proofread their resume/CV, and probably don't even look at the screen while they are typing email. Look at the quality of the average slashdot posting - most people don't really pay attention to spelling or grammar. It doesn't mean they don't know how to spell, only that they are typing too fast.

Re:How they become?

[sconeu]

Proofreads at exactly 1 word per minute, regardless of resume length, font size, etc...

Re:How they become?

[caswelmo]

In my experience I've found that I almost never type a correct message the first time through. I always make sure to go back and proof my emails & reports. Spellcheck doesn't catch everything and it certainly doesn't catch stupid statements. I have found it easy to tell who doesn't take the time to proof their messages.

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

It's only ironic because it occurs in reality. Irony always presupposes a non-ironical real situation. That's why it so often flies over the heads of those with limited life experience.

Re:How they become?

[networkBoy]

cantHelpIt. itsTheWayWeAreForcedTo_type_by_our_compilers :-)

I particularly liked: "instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen"

That made me snort soda onto my keyboard (sad thing is that it's sooo true!)
-nB

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, starting sentences with "but" is not imperfect grammar. Sure, it is informal, nonacademic grammar, and you probably shouldn't use it on an English paper. But (sic), it is natural language, and thus should not necessarily be excluded from writing.

I studied English at Oxford (one of the ancient British universities that Harvard and Yale modelled themselves on). I came out with a damn high grade.

Not waving my dick around here, just establishing that I took a course where good grammar might be considered a plus, and did well on it.

I also regularly began sentences with "and" and "but" in my essays and theses. It didn't seem to have any detrimental effect on marks. The logical conclusions are either that either English academics marking papers for a prestigious course in the English language don't give a fuck about formal English, or that opening a sentence with a conjunction is no longer even necessarily informal and non-academic. Up to you which line you choose to take, though...

Re:How they become?

[EggplantMan]

Hi, I have a slashdot comment proofreading business on the side, perhaps you could use my services?

Re:How they become?

[DrSkwid]

without even reading over what they just wrote

see that button marked 'preview'

Re:How they become?

[benna]

One would hope so, but in my AP European History class, at a high school in a reletivly affluent suburb, I have read some of the essays people write and alot of them are extremly painful to read. Much of the time it comes from people trying to sound smart by using big words they don't understand. AP students have big egos.

Re:How they become?

[cubicledrone]

Didn't they have to write some sort of CV that their employers can understand?

Can their employer read?

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

I wonder if something akin to those translation programs that ask you which of various choices you wish to use when they don't know what you want to say would be useful in a spell checking program. For example, you type "your"--the program asks you: "Do you want to talk about something that belongs to someone or do you wish to contract 'you are'?" Of course, you could turn if off if you did know the difference.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant in my profile link.
Egg, meet face.

Bah, don't fret it. We language professionals know that we don't proofread our own Slashdot posts. I mean, who'd ever know?

Re:How they become?

[Cromac]

Once they get into the workforce, there is a prevailing myth among the plebes that spelling and grammar don't matter, as long as the message is right.

That gets brought up time and again on forums from every topic you can think of. People use the excuse "I don't have time" to construct proper sentences or spell check because it's "just a forum" or "just a quick note" and no matter how many times people bring up what kind of impression that makes some just don't get it.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well played sir, well played.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, first line of his reply was "when i was teaching econ", surely meaning economics.

not that i would know, never having been to an establishment of higher learning n all.

--punctucation excluded because i damn well feel like leaving it out.

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

Huh?

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations. You win the annual Slashdot "whoosh!" award, 2004.

Re:How they become?

[Trifthen]

Unfortunately, it's more pervasive than it sometimes seems. I work at a company that interacts extensively with newspapers and other content publishers in the industry. Just the people you'd think would have a firm grasp on grammar, spelling, and punctuation, right? I could easily post dozens of examples that would unquestionably trump those cited in the article.

Though I have to admit there's something funny when the publisher of a newspaper uses the chat shortcuts we've all become accustomed to. Sometimes we'll pass along the more amusing examples around the office, though usually when an email is especially incomprehensible. Often, I've been tempted to simply respond to customer requests with: "wtf?"

Re:How they become?

[cubicledrone]

The emphasis on correct spelling and grammar is not emphasized because it has immense value to society, but rather because it is a popular status symbol.

Wearing a tuxedo to a marriage is not emphasized because it has immense value to society, but rather because it shows a reverence and respect for the event.

There's more to society than cash.

Re:How they become?

[Trogre]

I would suspect that most people either put considerable work into their CV's and pass them around their family and friends for review, or hire comeone to do it for them.

Re:How they become?

[landrocker]

The messy one
He's never needed another job, so he hasn't spent any time on his CV

Re:How they become?

[Cromac]

We also have a 25% functional illiteracy rate among high school graduates, who knows how many drop outs are illiterate. Even among the 75% who don't classify as illiterate it wouldn't surprise me if 1/2 of them had problems writing a clear answer to an essay question.

There are many fine schools and students in America, no argument at all, but we definately have a serious problem with the schools/students/teachers when we have a lower literacy rate than there was in 1900.

Re:How they become?

[cubicledrone]

If you apply to any job without having at least one other person proof it, you're insane.

I wrote resumes, applied for jobs and got hired without anyone proofreading the resumes. Both the spelling and grammar were perfect in the first draft each time.

Of course, I know how to read and write. That didn't help me keep the jobs, of course, because firing people for no reason (see the recent AOL story for an example) apparently doesn't require competency with the written word.

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

"When I was teaching econ, I several times made the mistake of setting an essay test. It showed that the American students couldn't write. When I marked them down for incomprehensiblity, they were shocked! ``You should grade the econ, not the grammer.'' they said. Unfortunately, the grammer and organization was bad enough that there wasn't any coherent content to grade."

I have had the exact inverse of this experience. I took a college level (Johns Hopkins) economics final exam where I knew virtually nothing about the subject but expressed myself clearly and interestingly. I received a good grade with just a small note from the instructor suggesting I stick more closely to my subject.... I guess he was just happy to have something good to read for a change.

Re:How they become?

[Trifthen]

your?

auutomagically?

"sucks as?"

accros?

something "official" or something?

bibble?

sentance?

Trifthen's head explodes.

Here, I fixed it...

I'd say it's mostly due to spellcheck. You don't spend as much effort to learn correct spelling when you're so used to it being automagically corrected. Personally my grammar sucks ass; mostly due to the fact that I don't really care as long as the point gets across. If It's for something "official," I'll take more care: do a spellcheck and use big words and stuff. I always thought it was kind of weird how people see the English language as set in stone, as if it says in The Bible that it is forbidden to end a sentence in a preposition, use double negatives, etc.

See, was that so hard?

Re:How they become?

[jeffkjo1]

One of my professors has a parallel situation. He started his career at The University of Baton Rouge (or perhaps it was another Lousiana Public University, anyway.) He said that his first semester teaching at my current school (another public university in a different state) he gave almost all of the research papers he graded very very high grades. It worked out well for me because I had him his first semester here. He was grading at my school on the same scale he used in Louisiana, and he said that the students just weren't as good at writing. However, this year, he says he's revamped his grading process. We'll see what I get on my paper...

Re:How they become?

[Mazem]

Sloppy writing implies carelessness at best, ineptitude at worst.

What exactly are you alledging here? If the employee is inept, he/she should be fired. There are more effective means of testing ineptitude than evaluating email transcripts.

On the other hand, if the intended recipient is "careless", and by "careless" you really mean lazy or too busy to write in complete sentences, but the intended recipient still understands the message then who cares?

It's not okay to write badly in a business setting;

And why not? If you get the point across to your coworkers, why should you waste an extra 20 seconds checking your grammar? Sure, its only 20 seconds, but the only point in editing your message is to conform to implied social norms - an objective that has nothing to do with getting the job done. Thankfully those silly social norms have not yet been applied to emails yet.

at least not in inter-business communication.

Ok, you may have a point here. Inter-business commuication is on a different playing field where making your company look good is an additional factor beyond just "getting the job done".

Re:How they become?

[DrSkwid]

If your hypothesis is correct then only half of the posts here are posted by college educated individuals.

My business partner has a degree in Business Studies.

He still uses loose for lose, confuses their, there and they're, confuses your and you're, end statements with question marks such that I don't know if he is passing information on to me or requesting it such as : "you've not been answering your phone today?"

Makes him look a bit thick and I wonder what our clients think of his correspondence.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have said: "Her problem is that she forgets to proofread."

"That" is almost always superfluous following "is."

It is "disenfranchised", not "disenfrenchfried", unless someone took away their French fries.

That would have to be the most elaborate typo in the history of language.

Re:How they become?

[roman_mir]

I guess further evidence that our public education system is failing miserably. - I hope you realize that this is not a complete sentence?

Re:How they become?

[The Cydonian]

I received a good grade with just a small note from the instructor suggesting I stick more closely to my subject.... I guess he was just happy to have something good to read for a change

Heheh, same here. ALWAYS used to get that. :-)

Re:How they become?

[tomhudson]

Great, so we can repeatedly get the same (but not necessarily correct) result every time with very little variance.

Ah, grasshopper, now you understand the value of ISO 9001 certification.

Re:How they become?

[fireman sam]

How often have you written you CV in about 1 minute? CVs are written, rewritten and the proofread to make them "the best they can be". An email explaining that a server had to manually be rebooted does not have to win the Nobel prize for literature.

An email can be considered a POST-IT note. Either attached to a document or stuck on a persons monitor. Nothing more.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't communicate, you might as well know nothing, because that's what everyone will assume.

You were teaching Sophistry in our schools?!

Re:How they become?

[zurab]

... we definately have a serious problem with the schools/students/teachers when we have a lower literacy rate than there was in 1900.

You sound very convincing in your argument.

Re:How they become?

[Ambush_Bug]

This is a slippery slope argument, though. At some point the grammar becomes so atrocious that it *can't* be understood. This was the crux of the article -- that other people were unable to understand the emails and had to have them clarified. I would say that correct spelling and grammar is valuable to society.

Re:How they become?

[evilquaker]

Let me fill in the blank: You send a message at noon to someone who is twelve hours ahead of you. They get the message at midnight. They come in to work at 8:00 AM their time, and read your message. They send a response, but it is already 8:00 PM your time, so you don't see the message for another 12 hours when you come in to work the next day at 8:00 AM.

Having to go through multiple iterations of the message to make sure your point is clearly presented can slow things down significantly.

One of the first things you learn when working with people several time zones away from you is to pick up the damn phone and call them. You don't need to go through multiple iterations of that process. You go through one or two, and if you're not making progress, you call them. Sometimes email is the right solution, and other times it's not.

Re:How they become?

[cammoblammo]

It's true---a lot of those examples in the story seem to be thought drool. That's fine as far as it goes\. I sometimes write like that, especially when I'm coding. Like a lot of others I might use some sort of English/coding language hybrid, just to get the main ideas out, and get some sort of structure in place. But then I have to go back and fill in the gaps, rearrange the structure, and recode it into something a compiler will understand.

It's the same when I'm writing prose. It's one thing to brain drool into your mail client, word processor or whetver, but the next step isto go through and actually have a read of your own writing.

That's why /. has a 'Preview' button.

It only takes two seconds for an otherwise literate person to realise what they've written is a load of cerebral saliva that needs to be reworked slightly.

Re:How they become?

[tylernt]

It seems like I see/hear 'prolly' frequently in British media, so maybe it's a perfectly normal slang term there?

Re:How they become?

[CyberSlugGump]

"One of them leads to the castle, and the other one leads to -- " "Ba ba ba bum!" "Certain death!"

Cool, a Labyrinth reference.

Re:How they become?

[Martin Blank]

How you speak -- and write -- affects others' perceptions of you. When you write a report or an e-mail, you don't always know who will be reading it along the way. particularly in larger organizations. The county government for which I work has 16,000 employees, 14,000 of them with e-mail accounts. I see e-mails from other IT departments on a fairly routine basis, and some of them are simply painful to read. They may have aced their CCIE exam, but if I don't already know them then I may not take them to be so bright if they don't know basic grammar like where to capitalize and where to put periods and commas (overuse of which are probably the most common non-spelling error I see). Pretty much everyone is using Outlook 2002 or 2003, and the vast majority of them are using Word as their e-mail editor, so they really have little excuse as the checks are turned on by default.

I've offered to buy a couple of grammar manuals for the department, but no one seems to be interested, and no one with purchasing power will authorize it through normal channels.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I always thought it was kind of weird how people see the english language as set in stone as if it says in the bibble that it is forbidden to end a sentance in a preposition, use double negatives, etc."

Actually both of those were not originally incorrect. They grew to be seen that way, just like calling non-M.D.'s "Doctor."

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

Well put. Hear! Hear! I counted five not including the last paragraph, which is apparently some kind of attempt at being ironic....

Re:How they become?

[bladesjester]

The thing that really amused me was one of my previous bosses. He typed exactly the same way that he spoke. This is where I should mention that he was a little African-American guy from Arkansas (and fit the stereotypes, frighteningly enough).

It was painful to read his emails. I would almost swear that I felt brain cells dying while trying to read his slaughtering of the English language.

Re:How they become?

[bluGill]

I agree with everything excpet that very last sentence. More than once I have read my message, before sending. Then a day latter I read the replys and I'm embarresed at how horrid it is.

If anyone has a solution to this, please let me know.

Re:How they become?

[tylernt]

Aaauugh! I shouldn't ever read the posts to /. stories that have anything to do with spelling, grammar, or literacy. At least half the posts inevitably make fun of the spelling, grammar, or literacy of other posters.

It's too bad I don't have 200 'Redundant' mod points to award right now...

Re:How they become?

[Flower]

but the intended recipient still understands the message then who cares?

Everybody should care because the intended recipient may not be the only recipient as a matter is discussed. My emails get forwarded and (b)cc:'d to others all the time and I receive similiar correspondance every day. Concise, understandable emails mean I don't have to repeat myself.

They also stand the test of time. Ever have an email come up a few months or a year later and have to address it? Something well composed is easier to explain than a choppy stream of consciousness.

Sure, its only 20 seconds, but the only point in editing your message is to conform to implied social norms - an objective that has nothing to do with getting the job done. Thankfully those silly social norms have not yet been applied to emails yet.

This shows such a lack of business savvy and professionalism it is actually depressing. You can't even invest half a minute into reviewing your work and making sure it's presentable because in your limited view it has nothing to do with your actual job. The simple fact is that in any organization you don't exist in a vacuum and being able to effectively communicate is a primary job function not some "silly social norm." Save those anarchist tendencies for IRC and /. Whether it is "fair" or not, in a business environment consistently poor writing is going to get you labeled as stupid and inept. The big problem with this is the judgement will many times come from upper management due to the simple fact that your email is the primary work product they see.

Soft skills count and as the job market gets tighter those skills will be the ones that differentiate you from the rest of the pack. It is actually called reality and not "silly social norm."

Re:How they become?

[malfunct]

I work in a multi cultural office and I think we might get in trouble on the discrimination front if we tried to enforce decent grammar with some of the people that work here. That said the people who are fully american, myself included, often have horrible grammar. Spelling isn't so much an issue as a result of outlook doing spell checking, though there is a stray homonym tends to sneak in.

Re:How they become?

[starm_]

I've been studying linguistics in the past year. The more I know about linguistics the less I trust grammar.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the first things you learn when working with people several time zones away from you is to pick up the damn phone and call them. You don't need to go through multiple iterations of that process. You go through one or two, and if you're not making progress, you call them. Sometimes email is the right solution, and other times it's not.

Another one of the things that sompe people learn about working with people several timezones away from you (like the 12-hour scenario mentioned) is that if you attempt to pick up the damn phone and call them, they don't answer!

Re:How they become?

[Winkhorst]

There was a top executive at our company who would take three paragraphs to say what he could have said in one sentence, for example: Please charge your time on a daily basis so the government will pay us our money more rapidly and I can get a bigger bonus next year....

Re:How they become?

[RollingThunder]

How, exactly, can you "pick up the damn phone and call them" when it's midnight there when you would be picking up the phone?

I'm not considering that the implied solution is acceptable - the utter surrender of personal time to the interruptions of the job. To hell with that, my time is my time, and work time is work time.

Re:How they become?

[cduffy]

On the other hand, if the intended recipient is "careless", and by "careless" you really mean lazy or too busy to write in complete sentences, but the intended recipient still understands the message then who cares?

The recipient, for one.

I may be able to interpret poorly written English, but that's not to say it's enjoyable. Presentation errors not only make the individual committing them look bad, but also take away focus from the actual content.

I expect people communicating with me in a business context to make a reasonable effort to communicate clearly in much the same way that I would be offended if a coworker chose to give me messages scribbled in sloppily written crayon: Poor presentation distracts from the content. The scribbled memo would needlessly require extra time to read and interpret; likewise do poorly spelled messages.

Another aspect that falls out of the above is one of respect. Since comprehending sloppily-written messages takes more time and effort, writing well is nothing less than displaying respect for the value of the time of one's readers, whereas writing poorly is stating that your time and effort is more valuable than that of the individual to whom you send your message. I make a serious effort to do this when writing material for others' consumption; consequently, I find it only reasonable for others to respond in kind.

Thankfully those silly social norms have not yet been applied to emails yet.

They should and do. People who send poorly written email (particularly mass mailings) are genuinely and rightly offensive, for all the reasons above.

Re:How they become?

[fiftyfly]

I cut my own hair. Oh, wait - you mean barbers who don't measure their hair by the 1/16"?

Re:How they become?

[caswelmo]

Oh, I hear you. That's why I always wait a day or two before turning in any reports or important memo's. I think the brain getting some sleep knocks some of the retarded out.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... people can proofread their own CV, but you can't cut your own hair.

Re:How they become?

[rocjoe71]

my help will obviously not be appreciated

Thank you! It really isn't.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

For interest's sake - a new movie, inspired by Labyrinth, and written by Neil Gaiman is nearing completion. It is being done in association with Jim Henson pictures too :)

Google for MirrorMask :)

Re:How they become?

[Phroggy]

Once they get into the workforce, there is a prevailing myth among the plebes that spelling and grammar don't matter, as long as the message is right.

This myth prevails because it's what students are taught in school.

Re:How they become?

[curious.corn]

Hadn't the author interjected "as well as" it would have been correct in giving a consecutive causality meaning rather than an enumeration of effects. Yeah, it's tough... probably the two forms superposed while she/he was typing her comment and mixed up. EN isn't my mother tounge and it took me a good 3 minutes to write the first sentence; unfortunately I happen to experience the same in my native language but I believe it's because I often compete for attention. The final outcome is that I don't have much time to transpose the concepts in proper medium, thus introducing symbolic interference; trouble is, the habit sets in. Shame... stupidified by environmental behavioural pollution.

Re:How they become?

[Artifakt]

How often do you actually write the name of the Old Man of the Mountain? Even including all the times you quote e.e. cummings, for most of us,that wouldn't add up to a yearly occurrence, unless of course, you are Robert Anton Wilson. Fortunately, there's outlining, where a lowercase Roman numeral i is ubiquitous. A program that tries to fix poor writing and ends up breaking outlining functions might as well throw in Clippy.

Re:How they become?

[corbettw]

Reminds me of how I learned the difference between "who" and "whom". It was because my 9th grade German teacher beat into us (not literally, she wasn't actually German herself) the proper use of "wer" and "wem". None of the English teachers I'd had before or since, in both public and private schools, had ever even brought up the concept. Kinda scary, actually.

Re:How they become?

[Martin Blank]

I cut some people some slack if it looks like they might be relatively new, but we have some people who have been in the country for 20+ years and still write with an accent. I rarely take things up with them directly unless they get something horrendously wrong, but it still makes me wince.

Re:How they become?

[1u3hr]

why should you waste an extra 20 seconds checking your grammar?

1) So the recipient doesn't have to spend 20 seconds trying to work out what your meant, or wasting both his and your time by replying asking for a clarification.
2) So people don't think you're a moron.
3) So people outside the company don't think you're all morons (if the message is forwarded, as often happens, sometimes inadvertently).

Anything you write, anywhere, can come back to haunt you.

Re:How they become?

[mcrbids]

...and where to put periods and commas (overuse of which are probably the most common non-spelling error I see)...

I, for one, welcome, to the full extent possible, our new, lovely, comma, overlords!

Re:How they become?

[malkavian]

Nope - we Brits spell it 'er' as well.

I take it you're talking about 'Grammar'. We Brits spell it with 'ar', according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to my dad...he cuts his own hair and does a pretty good job of it. I wouldn't trust the bastard with my own hair though.

Re:How they become?

[maw]

I guess further evidence that our public education system is failing miserably.

Hmm. Maybe. The system certainly isn't perfect, but it has a tough task to do.

Many people will tell you that writing according to the rules is less important than getting your message across. Others will tell you that many English rules are the result of scholars hundreds of years ago trying to shoehorn Latin rules onto English.

They're both good points. Still, you do need to know the rules before you can effectively break them. (It just occurred to me, by the way, that "tired cliche" is a tired cliche.)

So, I guess the problem is partly one of people taking legit reasons to break the rules and applying them to excuse what really is laziness. And a lot of people encourage it, too.

That, and crappy schools, too.

Re:How they become?

[rocjoe71]

1. You should have said: "Her problem is that she forgets to proofread."
2. It is "A lot", not "Alot".
3. "Disinterested" means one doesn't have a conflict of interest. You should have used "uninterested".
4. It is "justified", not "justificated".
5. It is "disenfranchised", not "disenfrenchfried", unless someone took away their French fries.

1. The "that" is really is superfluous.

2. Got me.

3. There's more than one "disinterested".

4 & 5, I was being ironic, you nitwit. Where's your sense of humous?

Seriously, I have a go at the spelling nazis because their contribution is about as fun and interesting as a session with a word processor.

Pointing out spelling mistakes only demonstrates a paucity of insight into the conversation at hand.

Re:How they become?

[zurab]

It's too bad I don't have 200 'Redundant' mod points to award right now...

That wouldn't really help because you can't moderate your own posts.

Re:How they become?

[trol_menn]

Perhaps you should have taken those 20 seconds yourself.

1: "receive similiar correspondance every day."
similar correspondence

2: "...with this is the judgement ...".
judgment

Re:How they become?

[DrMaurer]

Here's why correctness is important:

You work in a purchasing department, can you tell me what this person wanted?

"Onetwenty foot lenth of steel, 1/2 in thk, 3 in angle."

Here, we're not so much concerned about the spelling. Is this a twenty foot length of steel? Or is it a 120 length of steel? Either one could be wrong, (though one is far more likely than the other) so you have to call for clarification, which takes time, and instead of processing the purchase, you have to call this chap on the radio, phone, and/or e-mail and wait for him to get back, and god-forbid if it's a hot project, and he's now on vacation or hit by a beer truck. Time, by the cliched equasion, equals currancy, aka, business.

This is just metal, simple metal, hunks of steel, imagine something more complicated. Something electronic? Something computer-related? Imagine the confusion of a common omission of the final comma in a list, exemplified by this famous line:

"My parents, God and Ayn Rand."

Put a comma in between "God" and "And" and it's slightly more clear it's a list. Unless that person is claiming divine lineage or a chunk of an Objectivist trust fund . . .

Okay, obviously, that's a purchase, we hope that person is specific as they are conveying a need (though I can tell you that often those folks expect you to know what they want). Critical stuff. So, what about e-mail then? What about normal stuff?

People judge you, rightly or wrongly, by the words that you use. Beyond the base level technical things, it's a game, where even ORDER on the TO: line can have something to do with how the item is read. ("Can" does not equal always, by the way.) Stupid, perhaps, but it is so.

And if takes you 20 minutes to check your grammar for anything of normal length, you haven't internalized the rules, and thusly are inefficient. It's not about perfect grammar, either; hyper-correctness is, in itself, totally obnoxious and useless and paralyzing. (I know I misspelled a few things in here, a few grammar gaffaws, but I hope I'm clear enough.)

I agree, if you're clear and everything is good, then great. You needn't be able to diagram the perfect sentance, but you should be able to state your goal clearly; and if anyone comes back with questions, or, worse, doesn't ask you the questions they have, then your language has failed, or maybe the person is an idiot.

People you may or may not ever meet make decisions based on your communication. Treat it as such.

In the interests of full disclosure: my Masters Degree is going to be in Rhetoric and Professional Writing. Waste of time for some, I imagine, but I think it's interesting. Takes all kinds, I guess.

Re:How they become?

[cduffy]

Of course, I know how to read and write. That didn't help me keep the jobs, of course, because firing people for no reason (see the recent AOL story for an example) apparently doesn't require competency with the written word.

A touch bitter, eh? Well, it gets worse. Getting fired generally comes down to (1) your choice of employers, or (2) you. Arguably, your choice of employers in and of itself reflects on you, making the core issue in job retention... well, you.

Working for a company such as AOL -- large enough that the CEO can say "fire N people" without knowing each of those N people whom he's dismissing -- is arguably a mistake. Working for a small company under management that doesn't care about their employees is a mistake, too. Publicly blaming anyone but yourself for your problems -- any kind of problems -- is likewise a mistake, because it's less than endearing to those who care about personal responsibility. I don't know you beyond what you've posted here on Slashdot, but the responsibility-disclaiming attitude present in your posts has gotten on my nerves -- and I'm senior tech staff, involved in hiring decisions. (And yes -- I've been fired too, even by places for which I did good work. Nonetheless, it was my fault every time, and I've taken steps not to make the same mistakes again)

Stop blaming other people, and look at what you can do yourself to improve your own lot in life. It's one heckuva lot more effective, and less annoying to the bystanders.

Re:How they become?

[cduffy]

If you apply to any job without having at least one other person proof it, you're insane.

But then it is no longer a fair assessment of good a CV you can write.

No, but nobody else's is either.

Although the quality of writing on a CV today may no longer indicate how effectively an applicant can write, a poorly written one nonetheless sends a message that the individual behind it is unconcerned with getting the details right and willing to cut corners (such as skipping the expected step of having a 3rd party proof their CV).

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... people can proofread their own CV, but you can't cut your own hair.

one word: Flowbee.

Re:How they become?

[malowman]

And in doing so, they consistently include their own misspellings and grammatical nightmares.

Spelling does count. My sister just ordered a decorative stone for my parents' garden. The stone is supposed to say "The Harveys". The idiot woman who took the order insisted that it must be spelled "The Harvey's", as in "belonging to the Harvey". A friend of mine who is a talented graphic designer but horrible speller designed a sign for "Asbury Hospitle". No one at the company noticed the error, and they wasted $3000 creating a misspelled sign.

Do run your spellchecker. Do find someone to proofread your important memos and emails. People who aren't spelling and grammar whizzes may not mind a cascade of errors, but those who do notice will think you are either lazy or a fool.

I don't think spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, etc. are quite as important in informal communications, but when someone like a department chair sends out a grammatical trainwreck of an email to the whole campus, he looks like an idiot and loses credibility.

Re:How they become?

[warfarin]

Read some of the mission statements of various corporations. They peppered with grammatical errors.

Re:How they become?

[Lucidwray]

Just a thought, but maybe the education system is failing because the people teaching our children are products of that very system their selves.

Back 15 years ago or so, my 8th grade Texas history teacher argued with me that Dallas was the largest city in Texas and not Houston. (For y'all non Texans, The 2000 Census ranked Houston as the nations 4th largest city.)

That was the first time I realized I was more intelligent than most of my teachers.

Re:How they become?

[XMyth]

So, have you ever sent an email that was incoherent due to bad spelling and/or grammar? If so, you wasted someone else's time. Don't you understand this is a *BAD THING* ?

Re:How they become?

[gordo3000]

Instead of blaming the education system, it might be easier to blame the vast majority of society that doesn't mind these errors. When I am in my classes that demand writing skills, I shape up quickly. It is very obvious because everything else I write becomes more comprehensible. But when I have semester's loaded down with math and physics, I don't need anything but the most basic of writing skills, and it shows everywhere else. Maybe the best person to blame is the manager or director who is either ok with these errors or too ignorant to notice the errors.

Re:How they become?

[malowman]

Spellcheck is a great tool, but only if people actually read what is being suggested by the spellchecker. The two most common errors translated into new errors I see are "alot" -> "allot" (as in "There were allot of people there") and "definately" -> "defiantly" (as in "I defiantly want to get a good job").

Re:How they become?

[Mazem]

1) So the recipient doesn't have to spend 20 seconds trying to work out what your meant, or wasting both his and your time by replying asking for a clarification.

Ok, fine. That may be a valid reason to check your grammar if its atrocious, but most grammatical mistakes are small ones that you instantly understand and correct for while reading. See what I mean? ;)

2) So people don't think you're a moron.
3) So people outside the company don't think you're all morons (if the message is forwarded, as often happens, sometimes inadvertently).

Both of these options focus on YOU rather than the person who is reading the email. That is missing the issue. When YOU writez0r teh bad grammer, OTHER PEOPLE think YOU are a moron. But when those OTHER PEOPLE judge you based on your grammar, they are doing so primarily based on how much your grammar differed from social norms rather than how difficult it was for them to understand what you were saying.

My point is that the judgement passed by the OTHER PEOPLE on YOU is unreasonable.

Re:How they become?

[Artifakt]

These are both rules where there are appropriate exceptions. The meta-rule behind them doesn't have any exceptions at all, in English.
(That meta-rule does get bent a bit in classical German, but most native German speakers are much clearer on when to follow German formal usage on their verbs-at-the-end-of-sentence rules, than we English speakers seem to be for analogous rules in our language).
I'm referring to the rule, apparently hardwired into the human speech center, that structure in language is indicated by proximity. A conjunction is normally placed between two terms for the same reason that a mathematical operator is normally placed between two numbers. A preposition is not normally left at the end of a sentence, because the thought is easier to understand if the preposition can be placed closer to what it modifies. Breaking these rules when they are invoked merely to mimic Latinate structure is unlikely to draw anyone's ire*, but the risk lies, as you put it, in making it (more) difficult to understand what the writer is trying to say, by imposing extra distance.
In the same way as your examples, dependent clauses normally take a placement that makes it easy to see what they depend on. (There, I broke a rule, rather than write "that on which they depend", which would sound stilted and archaic, but nicely Latinate). Pronouns, particularly possessive ones, occur both close to the nouns they are derived from, and only after at least one use of the noun.

* Except possibly Dean Irwin Pettybone Prufrock, head of Dear Old U's romance languages department, but he's a spooty-head.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

People judge you all the time. With every word you say, and every action you take. You may think it is unreasonable, but it's reality.

Re:How they become?

[wurp]

"It's not okay to write badly in a business setting; at least not in inter-business communication."

Your semicolon should be a comma. The second part can't stand on its own as a sentence. ;-)

Re:How they become?

[ahodgson]

It's common in MMORPG chat channels, that's for sure.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that I could take serious advice about grammar from someone who says, "It has companies tearing their hair out." Companies rarely have hair, with the possible exception of wigmakers, etc. It would be more gammatically correct to say "company executives," "company employees," etc.

Your friend,
Grammar Nazi # 273492B

Re:How they become?

[malowman]

when she congratulated the wrong person for an internal promotion

The HR manager where I used to work had two employees with very similar first names and identical last names; one had recently been fired. Guess which one she invited to the Christmas party?

Re:How they become?

[Mazem]

Yes indeed they do, but again that is missing the point.

Just think about this the next time you read an email with grammatical mistakes - are your judgements of the email sender simply based on how hard it was to understand the email, or are they also based on grammatical mistakes that didn't detract from your understanding?

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Onetwenty foot lenth of steel, 1/2 in thk, 3 in angle."
> Is this a twenty foot length of steel?

More likely a twenty-foot length.

Re:How they become?

[Xugumad]

I'd just like to second this; it takes me a _lot_ longer to read a poorly put together e-mail, than one with good grammar and punctuation. More than a few times I've had to send back "What do you mean?" e-mails!

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why not? If you get the point across to your coworkers, why should you waste an extra 20 seconds checking your grammar? Sure, its only 20 seconds, but the only point in editing your message is to conform to implied social norms - an objective that has nothing to do with getting the job done. Thankfully those silly social norms have not yet been applied to emails yet.

fuckin a dude!@ who care abuot chikign granner and slpeking anuwsy?? i mesn shit if'n pipul unerstn yo hoo car wut ti look like?

Get my point?

Re:How they become?

[jco]

Hear, hear! The same "False Latinization" of English underlies the rule prohibiting split infinitives. Which rule is doubly ridiculous when one considers that in Latin it is impossible to split an infinitive - an infinitive is indicated by the spelling of the verb, not by the addition of a preposition.

I concur with those who've pointed out that grammar and spelling are less often sacrificed on the altar of Clarity than on that of Pure Laziness. It's been my experience that messages replete with errors are harder to read than messages which have had some attention lavished on them, even a little. On the other hand, one or two of the messages presented in the article suffered from another affliction at least as much as from poor spelling and grammar: an affliction I once heard termed "the rhetoric of nasrcissism." That means that the writing is affectatious; it's aimed more at impressing someone with the eloquence and (by implication) intelligence of the writer than it is at clear communication.

Re:How they become?

[LazloTheDog]

I was "disenfrenchfried" at age four when my father, after me being a brat at the dinner table, told me I could never eat french fries again.

JM

Re:How they become?

[Misanthropy]

Exactly. If somebody can't even bother to make sure that they spell words correctly then you start to wonder what else they might be careless about. Plus it just makes them look like a dumbass.

I have to say, though, that one of the most irritating things is writing 'you' as 'u' or "your/you're" as 'ur'. That drives me nuts. Also, is it just me or does that make a message much harder to read?

Other things people mess up that really get on my nerves:
its/it's
then/than
misspelling important things.
(Example: Somebody sent out an answer sheet to some x-rays from anatomy lab, and they misspelled structures! How could you trust that the answers were correct when they couldn't even spell them? It was like they had heard somebody say the name and just figured out a spelling that looked right, but never bothered to actually look at it in the book.)

So in conclusion, if you want to be taken seriously, at least write coherently and spell correctly.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

...grammer...grammer...grammer...

GRAMMAR

I hate that I notice things like that, because I don't want to be a Nazi, but I just can't help it. Sorry.

Re:How they become?

[robertl234]

alot...?

Re:How they become?

[Lemmy Caution]

Small spelling errors and relatively minor errors in punctuation do not bother me. They are, as often as not, "brain-farts": someone who knows better, and is otherwise coherent, mis-thinking or mis-typing a couple words. Even most professional writers make those sorts of mistakes - that's why they have editors.

That's not the issue at hand. We're talking about writing that is so bad, it's incoherent. It's about a complete disinterest in standard grammar and sentence structure, much less punctuation. About people who must barely read, because they don't seem to understand the practice of written communication.

Re:How they become?

[aldousd666]

camelCase.embarrasing() =~ camelToe.embarassing(); I can understand to a point people getting upset about publications, or announcements that hit a lot of people representing an official viewpoint, and especially communications to external customers being sloppy. On the other hand I know, writing as many emails as I do in a day, grammar checking is absolutely not as important as the message. ME: "We need to buy more licenses" THEM: "how many?" ME: "ten or so" THEM: "ok" or, ME: "hey frank did you get that config info I asked you about" FRANK: nope, I'll get to it after lunch I'm not going to get out the grammar checker and make sure I capitalize all of my letters for stuff like that. If the boss happens to get one of my emails like that, and can't figure it out, then he's the illiterate one. If they want me to get more work done in a day, then they can't expect more of my day to go into proofreading.

Re:How they become?

[untaken_name]

I wasn't speaking to you. Thank you for expressing your feelings, however. I'm sure you're perfect, so my help isn't needed. However, many people haven't attained the lofty heights you apparently inhabit. Don't worry, whether you need my help or not, if I see you abusing the English language, I may provide it anyway. Sure, most of the people I correct didn't solicit my help, or want it...any more than I solicited or wanted to read their mangling of my mother tongue. I'll make a deal with you: if everyone stops making simple mistakes in their posts, I'll stop correcting them. It's just that easy. In fact, here's some advice for all of you who do not like being corrected by people like me: don't make stupid errors. How much simpler could it be? I have myself been corrected on occasion, and I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong. Apparently that's uncommon around here.

Re:How they become?

[untaken_name]

In fact, I just made an error. I misread your user name, and I actually *was* speaking to you. My mistake. See how easy it is to admit error and take responsibility for it? Parenthetically, even if you choose not to get help from me....please, get it somewhere. It's for your own good.

Re:How they become?

[smithmc]

A lot of people usually get a lot of help writing their resumes. Once they get into the workforce, there is a prevailing myth among the plebes that spelling and grammar don't matter, as long as the message is right.

Sadly, in my experience, this myth is by no means limited to the "plebes".

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

"2) So people don't think you're a moron.
3) So people outside the company don't think you're all morons (if the message is forwarded, as often happens, sometimes inadvertently)."

If you read the article, I don't see how morons can differentiate from one another.

Re:How they become?

[Flower]

fwiw, I *did* put in a 20 second proofread on that post.... Caught three typos too. Btw, judgement is a viable variant of judgment. I checked.

Now just think what I could have done had I spent another five seconds with a spellchecker :P

Re:How they become?

[Mattintosh]

Better yet...

An adventurer is walking through the jungle, looking for a village of completely honest people. He knows that in this same area is a village of completely untrustworthy liars. He comes to a fork in the road, and there are two men standing there - one from each village. The adventurer must determine which way he should go to get to the truth-tellers' village. What question does he ask these two men?

I'll reply with the answer.

Re:How they become?

[Mattintosh]

The question the adventurer should ask is...

"Which path would the other man say is the path to the truth-tellers' village?"

The liar will lyingly say that the truth-teller will direct him to the liars' village.

The truth teller will truthfully say that the liar would direct the adventurer to the liars' village.

Now the adventurer knows to go the other way.

Re:How they become?

[veg_all]

Bad spelling and grammar can (do two things...#1:) severely impact...(and #2:) hurt...

Hmmm. "Impact" as a transitive verb? Maybe the grammar Nazis in your dictatorship can go with that particular flow, but over here in the true fatherland, you'd be buying a one-way ticket to a nice camp with fun activities such as 'wasting away,' and 'dying of typhoid fever.'

Re:How they become?

[grangerg]

Or he could just ask "Which path leads to your village?"
Both people will point to the truth-tellers' village.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I hire people for my company.

Sentence fragment.

Your friend,
Grammar Nazi #314159

Re:How they become?

[gblues]

"Which direction would the other man take to the honest village?"

Then go the opposite direction.

Let's say the honest town is to the left. If you ask "what would the other guy say" to the liar, the liar knows the honest guy would say "left" so he lies and says "right." Likewise, the honest guy knows the other guy is a liar and says "right."

Nathan

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been several times when advertising departments at places I've worked have let huge glossies and other very visible ads get all the way through printing with major spelling and grammatical errors.

I'm wearing a watch that got all the way to the store with an LCD circuit that says ALRAM.

Re:How they become?

[benna]

I just KNEW somebody would catch something in their to correct. It was unavoidable under the circumstances.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you remove the comma between comma and overlords then that sentence will be acceptible.

Re:How they become?

[mrchaotica]

If you apply to any job without having at least one other person proof it, you're insane.

Excuse me, could you point me to the nearest asylum? I've just been informed that my confidence in my grammatical skills are an indication that I am not sound of mind.

Thanks.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Grammar Nazi Association of North America (GNANA)

Pfffftnghth...! I just laughed so hard I need new underware!!!

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

The second, of course. The CV looked perfectly fine to him, while the first guy had lots of stuff spelled strangely.

Re:How they become?

[Dr. Evil]

Your example of the comma preceeding the word "and" is one of the trickier aspects of English grammar.

If the context were ambiguous, I'd reword the list so that the posessive word "my" appears at the end of the list.

"Ayn Rand, God and my parents."

If somebody were to make a mistake like that in an email, I would interpret the meaning of the sentence from the context.

Not that I disagree, just that I think there are far more serious problems with English usage these days.

Re:How they become?

[LuxFX]

it takes me a _lot_ longer to read a poorly put together e-mail, than one with good grammar and punctuation. More than a few times I've had to send back "What do you mean?"

This has recently plagued me. One of the companies I subcontract with has recently hired a new part-time project manager. Prime temp agency material.

While she might be nice personally, she can't communicate through email to save her life. Now when I am asked for estimates on projects, it takes a minimum of three rounds of clarifications to figure out what the original email meant.

My first experience with her I couldn't tell if she was asking me to design a label for a CDROM or to create a full photo gallery presentation for a CDROM. Three emails later, I realize all she wants me to do is create thumbnail/fullsize versions of a group of photos she has on CDROM.

I went back to the original email and still couldn't figure out how to read it, even knowing what she was trying to say.

Re:How they become?

[amokk]

To hell with that, my time is my time, and work time is work time.

This is probably the main reaon you'll be swabbing toilets for the rest of your life.

Re:How they become?

[amokk]

Her problem is she forgets to proofread, but it still looks just as bad.

Go back and proofread that sentence. What the hell does it mean?

Pot calling the kettle black?

Re:How they become?

[recursiv]

Then you take it wrong. He's talking about 'faster/fastre'. If you don't believe me, try reading the post to which he responded.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a self admitted work-place grammar criminal, I can say that my offenses really are a matter of efficiency.

However nothing forgives the lack of proof-reading and/or coherence that known 'grammatically aware' writers commit with far too much regularity.

My work-place neighbors have heard many a frustrated growl, and I'm sure I've managed to subtly (if not slightly - and in a good hearted way - snidely) communicate my annoyance at having to ask for clarification or context

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The emphasis ... is not emphasized". And this is your second draft, for God's sake.

Re:How they become?

[kencurry]

WTF is grammer?

Re:How they become?

[Jucius Maximus]

"why should you waste an extra 20 seconds checking your grammar?"

"2) So people don't think you're a moron."

Exactly! In 2002, I wrote this one short e-mail to the IT security people correcting them on some small thing they put on the company intranet regarding the dangers of e-mail attachments. There was a small but obvious typo in the message that made it look like I had made a grammar error.

To my surprise, three weeks later my e-mail was printed in the company newsletter being distributed to 10,000 people, with a note congratulating me on helping to increase the computer networks' security. My typo was there for all to conclude that I was a grammar-ignorant idiot.

Moral of the story: You never know who will read what you write, even if it is an internal company e-mail. Spending that 20 seconds to check your grammar/spelling/etc is worthwhile. You never know what small thing might come back and bite you in the butt later on.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

s/their/there/

Re:How they become?

[frdmfghtr]

What exactly are you alledging here? If the employee is inept, he/she should be fired. There are more effective means of testing ineptitude than evaluating email transcripts.


This is true; however, as the previous post stated, it implies carelessness and/or ineptitude.

On the other hand, if the intended recipient is "careless", and by "careless" you really mean lazy or too busy to write in complete sentences, but the intended recipient still understands the message then who cares?

The content of the message is the important part. However, using proper lauguage and writing technique ensures that the message is received as intended, since a common set of rules are used to write and read the message.

There's also a question of formality and how the writer intends the message to be taken. Example: if I write an email message to a co-worker with spelling errors galore and no punctuation, he may think it's an informal message and not to be taken seriously. If I write it in proper language with the correct spelling and structure, it's going to be taken more seriously.

Consider respect for the reader. If you write just to get the message across without using proper structure, the reader may take that to mean that the reader wasn't worth the time to properly construct a sentence. "I wasn't worth the 20 extra seconds to check grammer, so why should I take the message seriously?"

If you're going to expect me to take the time to read it, I'm going to expect you to take the time to write it properly.

Re:How they become?

[kurzweilfreak]

FRANK: nope, I'll get to it after lunch I'm not going to get out the grammar checker and make sure I capitalize all of my letters for stuff like that.

Maybe if you used some quotation marks and puncutation in that sentence, people wouldn't have to stop and say "whoa, wtf" where that period should have been between "lunch" and "I'm" because that was confusing as shit. When your message content takes a nose-dive because it's incomprehensible, grammar checking certainly becomes pretty important. You shouldn't have to take tons of time proofreading if you just slow down your typing a little bit and know what you're doing the first time around.

"This compiler sucks because it can't figure out my terribly typed code. What a piece of shit!"

Re:How they become?

[d474]

What in the hell does "CV" stand for?

I can tell in has something to do with resumes or cover letters or something - but CV?! Don't tell me this is an American thing because I've never heard of "CV" before...help!

Re:How they become?

[apdt]

It was all going soo well until the last 2 commas...

Re:How they become?

[cduffy]

What about grammatical mistakes that don't detract from my final understanding, but do detract from my ability to comfortably (ie. in a single, high-speed pass) read the content?

That's a very large class.

Re:How they become?

[kaustik]

That was the only thing I could think of when I saw the parent, hence my response... and my 25 minutes of searching to find a site that didn't have the entire script in ALL CAPS. Damn, that copy and paste makes me lazy...

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why America is failing, because you can't devise simple solutions...

"Which way to your villiage?"

The truth teller will point to the truth teller villiage, the liar will lie and point to the truth teller villiage.

As always people over complicate things.

Re:How they become?

[Darkangael]

Actually it is Latin. It stands for Curriculum Vitae. I know it gets at least mentioned in Australia, but then again we coulda learnt it from the yanks :P CV is also a lot easier to say and type than Resume (and especially easier to type considering I have no idea how to make an e with the little mark above it lol).

Re:How they become?

[tmasssey]

in their

Someone else wrote the post? Or did you mean "in there"?

That's 2 posts and two mistakes. Care to try again? :)

Re:How they become?

[d474]

Ah-haa...now that looks familiar. Thanks for responding in a polite fashion.

Re:How they become?

[Grishnakh]

"Judgement" isn't only viable, it's the correct variant if you happen to live in the UK or Australia. I wonder if the previous poster also criticizes posters who use the words "colour", "manoeuvre", "centre", etc. There's a lot of non-US posters here; assuming someone is from the US is rather naive.

Re:How they become?

[dbIII]

0nc3 th3y g3t int0 th3 w0rkf0rc3, th3r3 i$ @ pr3v@iling |v|yth @|v|0ng th3 pl3b3$ th@t $p3lling @nd gr@|v||v|@r d0n't |v|@tt3r, @$ l0ng @$ th3 |v|3$$@g3 i$ right. H0w3v3r, thi$ ign0r3$ th3 f@ct th@t b@d $p3lling @nd gr@|v||v|@r c@n $3v3r3ly i|v|p@ct th3 c0h3r3ncy 0f @ny |v|3$$@g3, @$ w3ll @$ hurting th3 cr3dibility 0f th3 @uth0r.

B0ll0ck$ - w3 !$ pr0ff3$$!0n@l$.

Re:How they become?

[realityfighter]

There's a reason we have an entire "English" department to teach kids to read and write. It's too bad so few students use that resource or take it seriously.

I have a hard science friend who can't even read a clearly worded sentence. We'll get into long, angry arguments over something I wrote before either of us notices that he just didn't read the original message well enough to understand. It sucks.

Re:How they become?

[RollingThunder]

Nice try, unless 1400 UNIX servers and 2000+ databases is the new definition of "swabbing toilets".

Re:How they become?

[monktus]

It's all a bit frightening; tonight I had to remind my girlfriend (a 3rd year literature student) what apostrophes and hyphens were called.

Re:How they become?

[tbo]

Sloppy writing implies carelessness at best, ineptitude at worst.

Sometimes, sloppy writing is the rational way to go. I've been coming to the realization that writing careful, clear emails is a waste of time, because nobody reads them in any detail anyway.

For several months, my boss and I have been on different continents, communicating only by email. If I take the time to write her a detailed but succinct email, I'll often just get back a two-line response that makes it clear she didn't read half of what I wrote.

Why bother?

Re:How they become?

[Mazem]

Certainly those sorts of things should be dealt with on a case by case basis, but overall I've found that difficult-to-understand writing (where you have to read it twice, for instance) is usually due to the writer having a poor grasp on the underlying material rather than having a poor grasp on grammar.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should post everything to slashdot with a request for correction by the grammar nazis before sending the official version. For example:

"I agree with everything except that very last sentence. More than once have I read my message before sending, only to read the replies a day later and be embarrassed by how horrid it is."

Re:How they become?

[rking]

"Judgement" isn't only viable, it's the correct variant if you happen to live in the UK or Australia.

Wrong. I don't know about Autralia, but in the UK "judgement" and "judgment" are both valid spellings, except amongst members of the legal profession. Lawyers in the UK invariably spell it "judgment". It's pretty much a shibboleth, if you spell it "judgement" in legal writings then your "error" will get noticed.

Re:How they become?

[drivinghighway61]

Of course, in America, the correct answer is: "I will give you each $20 if you tell me the correct path to the village of honesty."

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

They may have aced their CCIE exam, but if I don't already know them then I may not take them to be so bright if they don't know basic grammar like where to capitalize and where to put periods and commas (overuse of which are probably the most common non-spelling error I see).

This is a good example of a run-on sentence. Poor use of multiple "ifs" in a single sentence (though to be fair, that sentence should have been about three). It's ironic that you are criticising others for misunderstanding "where to put periods and commas" while doing so yourself.

Re:How they become?

[TrevorB]

To the proofreader with the messy CV.

Logic as follows

The proofreaders also need their CV's proofread. They each only have one proofreader they can pass their CV to. So they must pass their CV to each other. The proofreader with the messy CV was proofread by the messy proofreader, therefore he must be the clear proofreader.

Isn't it great to be a mathematician where wisdom doesn't need to impinge on logic?

Re:How they become?

[cubicledrone]

but the responsibility-disclaiming attitude present in your posts has gotten on my nerves -- and I'm senior tech staff, involved in hiring decisions. (And yes -- I've been fired too, even by places for which I did good work. Nonetheless, it was my fault every time, and I've taken steps not to make the same mistakes again

So managers are never going to be required to take the responsibility, are they? They're never going to have to explain why they fire people, are they? They're never going to have to explain why they are allowed to destroy people's finances and their careers and their income for no reason at all.

We did what we were supposed to do. We went to school and spent years getting educations which managers declare worthless. We have years of professional experience which managers declare worthless. We have skills which managers declare worthless and we are NEVER ALLOWED TO COMPLAIN. You can read it right here in this thread. Management is blameless. They never make a mistake. It's always the employee's fault. Always.

So what do we do? Just keep working temp jobs into our 30s and 40s? Give up on ever owning a home? Give up on a career? Give up on retirement? Because at this rate we can't afford any of those things. I worked my ass off for years and years and I have absolutely nothing to show for it.

Manager after manager lied to and cheated me and my coworkers. Hundreds were fired. People lost homes, cars, savings, credit, careers. Years of work were flushed into a toilet.

And now, I'm expected to say "yep, you're right, it was all my fault" and go right back to a temp job.

Re:How they become?

[Vo0k]

Two more options:

- Fill in a ready resume template.
- Buy your resume from a professional resume writer. (yes, there are such services)

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can someone write with an accent?

Re:How they become?

[DrSkwid]

s/they have wrote/they have written/

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Did you know they're serving free beer in the truth-tellers' village?"

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why not? If you get the point across to your coworkers, why should you waste an extra 20 seconds checking your grammar? Sure, its only 20 seconds, but the only point in editing your message is to conform to implied social norms - an objective that has nothing to do with getting the job done. Thankfully those silly social norms have not yet been applied to emails yet.

You don't get it. Part of these 'social norms' is NOT telling people who can't write properly that they are fucking dumbshits and should go back to primary school and learn how to read and write. I will happily read un-intelligible trash if I can insult the author's command of the English language.

Re:How they become?

[rsidd]

Somewhat offtopic, but a book I was looking at recently (Introduction to automata theory... by Hopcroft et al) says in the first chapter, "If you studied plane geometry in high school any time before the 1990's, you most likely had to do some detailed 'deductive proofs'... In the USA of the 1990s it became popular to teach proof as a matter of personal feelings about the statement."

Is this really true? It ties in with what you say -- if the message is right the details don't matter -- except that while badly-framed arguments are an annoyance in language, they're completely fatal in mathematics.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Grammar Nazis

You misspelled "grammer."

Re:How they become?

[KanSer]

The point of literacy is not to proofread, it is to spell correctly in the first place. There is no extra time invested in executing it, only in practicing it. And if I'm not mistaken you had at minimum 12 years of schooling, followed by college/university.

That an employer has to pay for even more training, as opposed to hiring people who were awake during English, is a testament to the quality of the American public school system.

And in the end that is why we will be marginalized by Asia.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scary. I would guess a lot of these people use professional CV writing services.

At my last job interview i had to write a short "What I did last weekend" essay to check my literacy. Mind you, I was applying for a job with a certain type of government agency. Perhaps they really did want to know what I did last weekend.

Re:How they become?

[Alioth]

But the point is many sloppily-written emails DO NOT get the point across to co-workers. Far more than 20 seconds can be wasted by not proof reading. For example:

I will send my fiends around to pick up the diamonds

has a very different meaning to:

I will send my friends around to pick up the diamonds

despite only one letter difference. Sure, this is a fairly absurd example to illustrate the point, but I'm sure plenty of time has been wasted following false instructions or interpreting messages wrongly because the author didn't bother to at least re-read the message before hitting Send.

Re:How they become?

[MysteriousPreacher]

I used to work in a call centre. I remember trying to get two particular native English speakers to use captal letters in names and addresses. For some reason, they just didn't see why you had to use capital letters, correct spelling or the correct format for post codes (that's zip code to you buddy).

If the addresses were bad enough, you should have seen their documented records of the calls. They may as well have been writing in mobile phone text language. In case anyone asks. No, they weren't dyslexic. They just did not care. of course this made us look like arses when we sent letters out to

jhon smith
33 big street
london
se151qy

Arrrghhh, rant over.

By the way. For those who've not had the pleasure of a call centre job, this site will give you an idea.
The Chronicles of George

Re:How they become?

[Nurgled]

People fail to understand that spoken English and written English are, in recent times, different languages. While punctuation originally existed to express the pauses and other markers of speech, today's written language has become optimised for reading. It has been my experience that people who read more have an "optimised" reading technique, and it is these people who are "tripped up" by unusual sentence constructions. Those that read less almost seem as if they are "saying" the words to themselves and "listening" to the result. This is reflected in a person's reading speed, too.

When people tell me they "don't have time" for writing properly, I usually tell them that learning to write in a coherent and "correct" manner takes practice, and the best way to practice is to write well even where it might be unimportant to do so. It also shows a lack of respect for the recipient to send an unstructured email: it forces someone else to spend more time understanding the message than they otherwise would have done.

Re:How they become?

[DrMaurer]

More likely a twenty-foot length.

Exactly, more likely, but not necessarily.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to get out the grammar checker and make sure I capitalize all of my letters for stuff like that.

That simply makes you lazy and sloppy. I wouldn't want to employ somebody who is lazy and sloppy.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully not, and I'm baffled as to were you've heard this term used outside of Slashdot or IRC. I have never once seen the "word" "prolly" used in British print or broadcast media.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

my confidence in my grammatical skills are an
indication

I think that you mean your confidence...is and indication that you are not of sound mind. Perhaps you really should have your grammar reviewed a little more often...

Re:How they become?

[Tiram]

Do we have the same HR manager, by any chance ...? She skips proofreading; does she write "lyrical" and soppy goodbye mail and similar, too?

Re:How they become?

[Trix606]

And why not? If you get the point across to your coworkers, why should you waste an extra 20 seconds checking your grammar? Sure, its only 20 seconds, but the only point in editing your message is to conform to implied social norms - an objective that has nothing to do with getting the job done. Thankfully those silly social norms have not yet been applied to emails yet.

You mean social norms like wearing clothes to work?

It should not take 20 seconds to edit your message if you know how to use grammar correctly and how to spell. If practiced on a regular basis, these skills should be second nature.

Everyone makes mistakes with grammar and spelling on occasion, however it is the attitude that it really doesn't matter that is troubling.

It probably has to do with all those classes outside of English where everyone whined about if spelling counted.
It should've counted but usually didn't.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

The great American work ethic doesn't seem to have stemed the massive flow of outsourced jobs to Asia, does it? Yet here I am in the UK with a 40 hour work week prescribed by EU law and an enconomy which has outperformed the US and most of the EU by some margin. I think I'll stick to working to live, not living to work.

Re:How they become?

[cazzazullu]

When we had a test at the school I went to, grammar and punctuation was always graded. No matter what kind of test, whether it was french, dutch, german, math, physics, history, ... you always lost (a lot of) points for making grammatical mistakes. In the beginning this was weird of course (like getting a 4/10 on math without making one error... in the math), but after a while you didn't make spelling or grammatical errors anymore. I still consider this to be a good thing in the end.

PS: I do not speak english natively, so please do not start ranting about possible errors in the above :)

Re:How they become?

[instanto]

You snort soda?

Man! You get high on that?

Re:How they become?

[malkavian]

Ahhh.. Saw that one pop out of the thread on the spelling of 'Grammar'.. Yer dead right. Need more caffeine before posting.

Re:How they become?

[VanillaCoke420]

It's weird. As terrible as my English is, it's still better than what the article showed. But, if I'm not good at English, at least I have an excuse: It's merely my second language, and not even a second official language in my country.

Re:How they become?

[ThJ]

There's something annoying about that in written English. There's an "I" coming up there, and it just feels very very natural to insert a comma at that position, as if starting a new 'subsentence'. Not adding the comma makes the first "I" feel redundant. "When I eat, I..." feels much better than "When I eat I...". Don't ask me why. It just does.

Re:How they become?

[ThJ]

I have never understood other people's inability to construct reasonably correct sentences and even whole letters on the go. It's easy and it makes you feel sharper, so why not do it?

Re:How they become?

[Huge Pi Removal]

I found (apart from some punctuation stuff, which would be *very* nit-picky and more a matter of taste):

Alot
disinterested (means impartial, not uninterested)
bunch of losers *that* have nothing (should be "who")

I would have said disenfrenchfried too, but I rather like that as a construction. What were your others?

Re:How they become?

[aldousd666]

I program to automate repetative tasks. The work I do reduces the amount of other people they have to hire. If you don't hire people like me, then you can simply take the alternative and pay more people to do it. If I'm lazy in my typing, so be it. As long as I'm not a lazy programmer. We have managers and secretaries to do the heavy lifting when it comes to making pretty text documents. I make things work, and fix things when they're broken. I can also train other people to do this. Clearly my value added is not in my writing skills. If I can answer 45 emails with accurate information, and only 20 if I have to make sure that I punctuate correctly, then I'm losing money for the company.

Re:How they become?

[Pig Hogger]

This shows such a lack of business savvy and professionalism it is actually depressing. You can't even invest half a minute into reviewing your work and making sure it's presentable because in your limited view it has nothing to do with your actual job

Perhaps the limited view has been caused by a limited pay? Employers should be aware that with manpower, it is exactly like anywhere else: you get what you pay for.

Re:How they become?

[Ed_Moyse]

Can you show one example of this? I'm not even going to say in mainstream british media, because I'm so convinced that you'll fail! I am British and I have never, ever, heard or read that word.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

... along the way. particularly ...

and

... basic grammar like where to ...

and

... overuse of which are probably ...

Thank heavens for Word 2003 !!!

Re:How they become?

[TwistedSquare]

Indeed, I was thinking the same think. My only thought is that it would be a spoken slur of probably, e.g. "I prolly ought to do that now", but I've never seen it written down like that.

Re:How they become?

[matterix]

They outsource writing CVs to India!

Re:How they become?

[Jucius Maximus]

"Both of these options focus on YOU rather than the person who is reading the email. That is missing the issue. When YOU writez0r teh bad grammer, OTHER PEOPLE think YOU are a moron. But when those OTHER PEOPLE judge you based on your grammar, they are doing so primarily based on how much your grammar differed from social norms rather than how difficult it was for them to understand what you were saying. My point is that the judgement passed by the OTHER PEOPLE on YOU is unreasonable."

And when YOU talk like CAPTAIN KIRK then YOU sound like an IDIOT. ;-)

Re:How they become?

[Hikanthus]

Heh, on that note, the PR director at the college I work for actually missed the infamous "Director of Pub(l)ic Relations" mistake get passed him on the caption of his picture in a publication to our alumni announcing his own hiring.
It made it out to about half our alumni before someone spotted it in the mail services department and they reprinted to finish the mailing.

Re:How they become?

[Chelloveck]

Once they get into the workforce, there is a prevailing myth among the plebes that spelling and grammar don't matter, as long as the message is right.

This myth prevails because it's what students are taught in school.

We had a big argument about this in one of my college English classes. The professor and nearly 90% of the class took this stance. I (and possibly one other student) took the position that the way you express your message counts; that poor expression obscures the message and good expression can clarify it.

Of course, expressing yourself well can cover up a number of flaws in the message. I quickly learned that, despite what she said, that professor graded well-written bullshit papers highly. The (unintentional, but important) lesson is that you can't let yourself be blinded by a smooth presentation.

Re:How they become?

[untaken_name]

I was including the puncuation stuff. I know it's nit-picky. :) As an English major, punctuation mistakes irritate me. I've put my corrections in bold below.

Doesn't matter,(add comma) where I work (remove comma) the H.R. manager is one of the worst spellers in the company... Her problem is that she forgets to proofread, but it still looks just as bad (as what? this could have been phrased more clearly). I finally called her up about not proofreading stuff when she congratulated the wrong person for an internal promotion (not me) (the way this is structured it is hard to tell whether the poster receieved the congratulation but not the promotoion or the promotion but not the congratulation).

A lot of people are just uninterested in proofreading-- they'd realize how atrocious their emails look if they actually read what they typed before pressing "Send".(awkward sentence, needs to be rephrased)

I didn't bother with the last sentence because I believe those mistakes were intentional.
Also, I made some stylistic corrections, because as an editor that is what I'm trained to do. I don't typically include those in my "grammar nazi" posts, but you asked. :)

Re:How they become?

[edittard]

Posts? What about the articles?

Re:How they become?

[asr_man]

:-) Heh! Quite right, touché.

The writers at dictionary.com think Grammar Nazis everywhere will eventually capitulate on this one:

The use of impact as a verb meaning "to have an effect" often has a big impact on readers. Eighty-four percent of the Usage Panel disapproves of the construction to impact on, as in the phrase social pathologies, common to the inner city, that impact heavily on such a community; fully 95 percent disapproves of the use of impact as a transitive verb in the sentence Companies have used disposable techniques that have a potential for impacting our health. It is unclear why this usage provokes such a strong response, but it cannot be because of novelty. Impact has been used as a verb since 1601, when it meant "to fix or pack in," and its modern, figurative use dates from 1935. It may be that its frequent appearance in the jargon-riddled remarks of politicians, military officials, and financial analysts continues to make people suspicious. Nevertheless, the verbal use of impact has become so common in the working language of corporations and institutions that many speakers have begun to regard it as standard. It seems likely, then, that the verb will eventually become as unobjectionable as contact is now, since it will no longer betray any particular pretentiousness on the part of those who use it. See Usage Note at contact.

Re:How they become?

[edittard]

You see it a fair bit on usenet.

Re:How they become?

[Hognoxious]

If you get the point across to your coworkers, why should you waste an extra 20 seconds checking your grammar?

That's a pretty big "if", though.

Re:How they become?

[jacobcaz]

• If the boss happens to get one of my emails like that, and can't figure it out, then he's the illiterate one.

Ahh, but when you do let the boss see messages where the grammar is poor or the spelling is incorrect or words are not properly capitalized then it reflects badly on you and it can have an impact on your professional growth in the future.

For example let's assume two equally talented programmers are trying to get one promotion. One has "average" grammar, spelling and capitalization. The other is above average - bordering on excellent - grammar, spelling and capitalization. Who gets the promotion? It's a small thing, but something like this usually is taken into consideration as a "promotability" factor. When brining someone up through the ranks, I (and my company) want someone who can effectively communicate and interact with others; spelling, grammar, capitalization and punctuation all play a part.

Re:How they become?

[freqres]

Now that he understands, he can make the journey from quality grasshopper to Six Sigma Black Belt.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

overuse of which are probably the most common non-spelling error I see

Do you ever see any subject-verb agreement errors?

Re:How they become?

[brunogirin]

Let me give you another reason why spending those extra 20 seconds is important.

My company has international staff and international customers. As a consequence, the majority of email messages that are sent out are read by at least one person whose first language is not English. So the scope for misunderstanding is huge. Even between British, American and Australian people, we can potentially have misunderstanding. It is therefore imperative that email be written carefully if we don't want to lose time and effort in clarification.

Worse, if an email is badly written, it can be considered offensive by one of the parties, leading to useless tensions. It also makes people look like idiots. For instance, as a person whose first language is not English, I automatically have a negative opinion of a native speaker who sends me an email that contains glaring mistakes that show a misunderstanding of spelling and grammar. If I, as a non-native speaker, can spot the mistakes, surely a native speaker should spot them as well. Working in the software industry, my reaction is that, if this person does not understand the semantics of her mother tongue, how can I trust her to design and write software properly?

Re:How they become?

[canuck57]

How did these employees get into the company door in the first place?

The problem isn't just with writing skills, the chances are the boss and others are unable to read it even if it was perfectly written.

I only know of one manager I deal with that has good writing and reading skills. Peers often are technical, but literate and although grammar suffers the communications are generally effective. But help desk and business users in my books can't read effectively. It is amazing how they know to download spyware.

But this is the tip of the iceberg. Each morning millions of us read 40-200 mail messages in our in-box of which maybe 5 to 10 have real business value to us. It wastes a lot of time. Microsoft in it's lack of wisdom abandoned news groups with subscription capability and article threading for Outlook. (Yes, I know Exchange has news groups, but compared to threaded readers and NNTP is is a dysfunctional dinosaur and no one is encourages to use it)

One thing that would help is if a NNTP/news like system was integrated with Outlook. And if a person needed to send a message to more than 5 people then they would have to post it to a threaded news group. Let the one sender sort it and not 200 recipients.

In short there is a lot of room for improvement in today's email process. As we do need more than the Microsoft Pied Piper approach as it simply is not working.

PS: Microsoft, no - I don't need to hear them via mail. All that whining will cause serious damage to I/T support. Design the tools to be process friendly and skip the bells and whistles that hackers so much love.

Re:How they become?

[pete-classic]

This will get you started.

In fairness, none of these seem to be in actual articles.

-Peter

Re:How they become?

[nomadicGeek]

I was not paid a tremendous amount of money as an entry level employee. I performed my duties to the best of my ability and always acted professionally. I also made an effort to not only become more technically adept but socially adept as well. I now make more money. I do not think that this is a coincidence.

I am self employed so I have to present myself in such a way that people feel confident hiring me. I not only have a good educational background and excellent professional experience, I also keep myself fit, dress well, and pay attention to all of the other little details that affect how people perceive me. I charge a lot of money for my services. Customers not only need to feel confident that I can do the technical work; they also need to feel confident that I will not embarrass them for making the decision to hire me. Good communication skills, a good attitude, a fit appearance, appropriate dress, and all of the other little details all add up.

I think that they original poster shows a total lack of regard for all of these things. The pay does not just come automatically. You have to make it happen. If he is in a low paying job, then he needs to do the things that will make it possible for him to find a higher paying job. Ignoring the social aspects will not help.

Re:How they become?

[alc6379]

Probably by dipping it in ink and smearing it on paper. *ka-ching!*

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me you used a perl script to do this.

Re:How they become?

[alc6379]

My point is that the judgement passed by the OTHER PEOPLE on YOU is unreasonable.

How is this unreasonable?

Let's take it from the standpoint that I'm the one reading the email, so I'm in the position to judge whether you're a moron or not. I'm like you-- I simply look over minor spelling/grammar errors. But, the problem is when the minor spelling errors comprise teh entier emial.

If you write an email to me, and you've not taken the time to run a spell checker, I'm going to think you're a moron because you didn't take the time to ensure your words were coherent. Primarily, though, I'm going to think you're a moron for wasting my time if I have to decipher your email when I'm supposed to be reporting to you, or working for a common goal/project.

Re:How they become?

[Tassach]

why should you waste an extra 20 seconds checking your grammar

Because it makes you look like a drooling, subliterate moron.

Of course, if you want to be elected President of the United States, being seen as a drooling, subliterate moron obviously isn't a major impediment. However, if you have more realistic career goals, it does matter.

Re:How they become?

[Greedo]

I can't believe that no one has linked Eats Shoots and Leaves, the much-discussed book about mis-used punctuation and the decline of grammar in general.

Quite a good read, I must say, with many funny examples.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

The danish word for "in" is actually a single "i".

The fact that Word (the english version, which many people use) turns i into I has caused endless frustration for the less computer-savvy Word users. They don't know how to turn it off and it replaces that i with I every time. Every! Single!! Time!!! This has gone on for many years now and many people still have to delete every I and re-type an i.

You're really In big pain when one of the most common words In your language is capitalized In your letters automatically.

Re:How they become?

[schodackwm]

Eliminating wasted words (in the true statment); revising verbs for agreement with subjects; and suggesting an alternative to the previously false (second) statement:

The bottom line is having your target audience understand you -- style be dammned.
Correct spelling and grammar are useful because they help your audience to understand.

...and, oh, gosh; it's shorter too!

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you demand that I'll better be able to remember my 22-year resume by rote?

Re:How they become?

[Jason Ford]

Sorry, benna. ;)

s/reletivly/relatively

Imagine the impertinocity of besmirchifying a Slashdotter based on his post. (Thank you, Don King, for your contributions to the English language.)

Re:How they become?

[pthisis]

So now someone's going to write a program that ALWAYS capitalizes "I" and when you try to write "Hassan i Sabbah" you're going to have to turn the bloody thing off just to get the case right.

Such a "feature" is what turned me to Linux in the first place. The new version of Microsoft Word at the time (1994) had autocorrect of spelling turned on. My name is "Sumner". I literally couldn't write my name in their product without it being mangled.

Well, I guess the fact that it was impossible to open 2 network connections without crashing the machine (Trumpet winsock was kind of "beta"...) had something to do with the switch as well. But it certainly didn't help matters.

Re:How they become?

[aldousd666]

point taken, but if a lot of my job involves handling large amounts of email, and I can get more done because I don't waste my time on punctuation, then I have other qualities that would mark me as superior.

Re:How they become?

[Tassach]

[L]earning to write in a coherent and "correct" manner takes practice, and the best way to practice is to write well even where it might be unimportant to do so.

Outstanding advice, and universally applicable as well. Learning to do anything well requires practice, and the way to practice is to do it the right way every time. Furthermore, professionalism and self-pride should dictate that anything you do be done correctly and to the best of your ability, even if it isn't critical or if no one is watching.

Re:How they become?

[cduffy]

So managers are never going to be required to take the responsibility, are they? They're never going to have to explain why they fire people, are they?

If it's an at-will contract, no. Then again, you don't have to explain why you quit, either. It's a simple matter of parity -- either party can terminate the relationship at any time for any (non-proscribed) reason.

They're never going to have to explain why they are allowed to destroy people's finances and their careers and their income for no reason at all.

"For no reason at all"?! Of course there's a reason. There's always a reason. Whether it's a good reason is an entirely different matter, and I find that people are less frequently fired for bad reasons in small companies with good management than in large companies of any kind.

Being bitter and refusing to accept responsibility are reasons. In a work environment, the latter can be particularly harmful.

We have skills which managers declare worthless and we are NEVER ALLOWED TO COMPLAIN. You can read it right here in this thread. Management is blameless. They never make a mistake. It's always the employee's fault. Always.

Bloody hell, I didn't say that management doesn't make mistakes. I said that choosing to work for a company with management that makes mistakes is a mistake in and of itself. Those are entirely different statements.

So what do we do?

Damned if I know, that's your lookout. But... your skills are useful, you say? There's an actual market for them? You know people with similar skills? Perhaps you even know people in companies that need these skills? Why not take matters into your own hands and start your own company? There's no law that says you're either an employee or a temp.

But stop the complaining. It does nobody any good, least of all yourself. Once you stop putting blame on everyone else and start looking for ways to improve your lot, you might actually get somewhere.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Internal company communications can be used as evidence in a lawsuit. If this is the case, and it goes to court, and the opposing council is trying to undermine your professionalism, sloppy emails can be a goldmine.

Bear in mind that an email you flippantly sent may turn out to be important in the case.

Re:How they become?

[Skidge]

--
2: "...with this is the judgement ...".
judgment
--
Both are correct.

Re:How they become?

[graikor]

You seem to be making 2 assumptions that may not be valid:

1) That other people are responsible for figuring out what you mean. The reality is that when you send a message, it is your responsibility to ensure that the communication is clear.

and

2) That other people will find your errors (grammatical, typographical, etc.) but be able to correctly interpret the underlying message. The reality is that other people might look at your errors and make invalid "corrections" based on their own assumptions, possibly to the point of grossly misinterpreting the actual message you intended to send. Even worse, in some of these cases, the recipient may take action based on the incorrect interpretation, which could cost a company quite a bit more expense than it would have incurred for the 20 seconds you cite to proofread the message.

If the communication itself is part of your job, then it is important that you communicate clearly. Obviously, this doesn't mean that a simple "yes" to a clear question is a problem, but if the communication requires complete sentences, then why not spend the 20 seconds to check them?

Re:How they become?

[mysticgoat]

Thanks for the quote from Dictionary.com on the use of "impact" as a verb.

So while the general rule to not verb nouns is apparently weakening, at least in this one case it is holding firm. Though I doubt this will impact slashdot commentary to any appreciable degree.

Re:How they become?

[nospmiS remoH]

I, as a prospective employee, would stand up, shake your hand, and say goodbye. I sure as hell don't want to work for any company that treats me like that on my first interview. I think any self respecting, intelligent person would do the same and as a result I'm not sure what kind of employees you would get. Then again, I'm not desperate for a job. If you want to test grammar and email skills just send the person an "informal" email asking some question about details on the resume. Request a quick response and you should see what you want.

Re:How they become?

[Flower]

You must be kidding. What? You plan on using your ability to run a spellchecker as a basis for salary negotiations? So you want to say...

• "For an extra $500 per year I won't write sentence fragments."
  
• "Over the past year I feel I've improved with word choice in my emails so where's my 10 percent raise?"
  
• "I don't write like I'm texting all the time. Promote me!"
  

Thanks. You just won the award for making Flower feel old for the day. Your no-prize is in the mail. Maybe my memory is failing but when during the past two decades since I was in school did we go from "good communication skills are a basic skillset for a professional job" to "coherent use of English a plus?" I hate to repeat myself but it is a truism. Good communication skills are a basic skillset for any professional job. Come on everybody, you know the song. Sing it with me.

Back to life. Back to reality.

And yes, I fully expect there is some /. reader out in their 50s to 60s ready to let me know that the present state of affairs is my generation's fault.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

They judge you rightly. If you can't be bothered to show me the basic courtesy and respect of spending a minute proofreading your screed to ensure it is coherent and comprehensible, don't expect me to show you any courtesy or respect in return.

Re:How they become?

[superflippy]

It's also a slang term I've seen used here in the U.S. I used it myself talking to friends when I was about 8 years old. Online, I've seen it used primarily on forums. It seems to be an accepted shorthand when the poster is being glib. I haven't noticed it being frowned upon the same way that "u" and "ur" are.

Re:How they become?

[Guppy06]

Is that you, Shatner?

Re:How they become?

[nortcele]

I couldn't agree with your comment more. In the electronics industry there are many foreigners that can write better emails than the natives. On the flip side, there are foreigners that are learning english and grammar via emails. This is sad since they have such poor examples.

Re:How they become?

[TClevenger]

Maybe this will be the one time that your email gets forwarded higher in the chain. I've had my emails read by the CIO and CEO of the company. I'm glad that I took the effort to at least form coherent sentences and paragraphs. (Of course, it doesn't take me much effort; it's a learned skill. I would have to force myself to write without capitalization and punctuation.)

Look at it this way. I worked at an IT job in a warehouse. I got to know many of the people there, and I watched as people in the warehouse were promoted to supervisor or manager. One eventually became a senior manager.

What was a common thread between these minimum wage grunts that managed to move up the ladder? They all were professional in their communications with others. While this is only anecdotal, I can guarantee that you won't make VP if your emails look like an AOL chat room.

Re:How they become?

[Martin Blank]

Grammar and spelling match their speaking patterns. If someone uses "y'all" and similar patterns then I consider them to be writing with a Southern accent.

Re:How they become?

[Senzei]

Nice try, unless 1400 UNIX servers and 2000+ databases is the new definition of "swabbing toilets".

That depends, are they sco unixware servers?

Re:How they become?

[Finuvir]

Your semicolon should be a comma. The second part can't stand on its own as a sentence. ;-)

I originally had a full stop followed by a sentence fragment. I replaced it with a semi-colon because I felt it didn't need such an extreme break, but I still wanted the first part to stand alone so I didn't tone it down as far as a comma. A comma would have implied too much reliance on the second clause. I stand by my sentence structure, though I appreciate the irony.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was pointing out that you said "twenty foot length," which was missing the hyphen. Hyphenation makes the difference between "five foot soldiers" and "five-foot soldiers."

Re:How they become?

[ibennetch]

The other reply explains it pretty well except for the cultural thing...you're correct that it's not an American thing (except in a few professions, I think doctorate-type people and scientists, but I'm not sure)...most of where I've heard of it comes from the British and hopefully other posters will comment on their local preference.

A CV is generally much longer and more detailed than a resume. Resumes are generally kept to a page or two whereas a CV will be many more pages, sometimes 70 and list publications and speeches and every relevant moment of a person's life (at least the American version of a CV, remember I said they have a nitch use; and this comes from a medical editor friend of mine who has to occasionally read through a CV looking for relevant information about a doctor).

Hope that helps a bit...

Re:How they become?

[benna]

No thats ok. ;)

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait.. When did E-Mail become "professional"?

1.) E-Mail is still considered an unreliable medium for transferring data and/or communication.

2.) Spam Filters get 1-2% of real mail anyway see rule 1.

3.) Senders can't truly be verified unless using PGP or some type of encryption

4.) This is just the surface of problems with E-Mail

Re:How they become?

[mrchaotica]

Damn.

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh, isn't that what he was trying to point out in that whole grammar is important to clarity thing?

Re:How they become?

[Phroggy]

There's a reason we have an entire "English" department to teach kids to read and write. It's too bad so few students use that resource or take it seriously.

The subject is confined to that English department - in other classes, students are taught that it doesn't matter (by teachers who won't take off points for bad spelling and grammar, and who in some cases aren't good at spelling and grammar themselves).

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Impact is a verb now?

Re:How they become?

[RollingThunder]

Only two of them, thank god... and both are technically "unsupported but critical". Gotta love the schizophrenia of large companies.

Re:How they become?

[babbage]

I program to automate repetative tasks

As do thousands of other people, many of whom are not illiterate slobs.

So, if it came down to you, or a similarly talented programmer who also happened to be able to express himself as an adult, which one do you think is going to get the job?

You write code today, but you may be pushing a broom tomorrow.

Re:How they become?

[wheany]

How can you waste time on punctuation? Just put the punctuation in there while you type. It's not that hard pressing the shift key in the start of sentences and pressing the period key in the end.

Re:How they become?

[babbage]

For American professions that require them, a CV is basically a portfolio containing everything you have done with your academic and professional lives -- hence the latin term, Curriculum vitae, which roughly translates as "an overview of a lifetime".

For such people, a resume is a summary of highlights -- positions and titles held, academic background, notable achievements, etc -- while a CV will get into tangible details: writing samples for an author, printouts of sites for a web designer, big glossy prints for a photographer, published papers for an academic, samples of code for a programmer, etc. Whatever is relevant for the line of work, but done in as much detail as is reasonably possible.

In Europe, on the other hand, everyone seems to use CVs instead of Resumes, but their CVs seem to be much shorter than American ones, while also still longer than American resumes. I've heard of people saying their CVs run perhaps 4-10 pages in length, which would be unacceptably long for most American companies as a resume, but would be terse for a portfolio styled American CV.

So, as with a lot of other things, what a CV is depends in part on where the person who wants to see it is coming from, or going... :-)

Re:How they become?

[aldousd666]

I was exaggerating. I meant waste time going back through to check for it. I ususally don't do too badly with it, I just don't think it's a priority. If I type "i didnt' get to it yet" in a hurry, when "I didn't get to it yet." is what I meant, then I don't think there is a big loss in quality. That's all.

Re:How they become?

[aldousd666]

Well anyway, I personally don't screw up my writing all too often. I just don't consider it a priority unless it's going to be seen by more than one person (of course depending on who the person is.) You have to pick your battles. Sometimes time is more important than grammar, and you can't argue with that. As long as people understand what I'm saying, that's all that's necessary. If it's a publication, a mass email, or something of the like, then I do take the time to check it out. If it's a quick memo, I don't.

Re:How they become?

[tmasssey]

You're a teacher? :)

I see at least two errors in your post. Seeing as you asked for mercy, I'll leave them undetailed...

Who knew being a grammar Nazi would be so fun! :)

Re:How they become?

[cloudmaster]

I hope "their" was meant to be ironic... :)

Re:How they become?

[virg_mattes]

> Isn't it great to be a mathematician where wisdom doesn't need to impinge on logic?

I wouldn't know. Now, what logic brings you to the initial assumption that someone can't proofread one's own CV? In the original problem, it was barbers, and it's very difficult to cut one's own hair, but this doesn't logically extend to proofreading, where it's relatively easy to proofread your own work.

Virg

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet here I am in the UK with a 40 hour work week prescribed by EU law and an enconomy which has outperformed the US and most of the EU by some margin.

Go to finance.yahoo.com and plot a graph to compare the FTSE 100 (or the FTSE AS) against any major american index, over any period of time, for example here, the FTSE 100 vs the DJIA over 2 years. I'll bet nine times out of ten, the american index has beaten the UK one. Now, the stock market may not be the ultimate economy indicator, but you can't deny it's a major one.

And as to "40 hours prescribed by EU law", don't you mean 48 hours, and didn't the UK opt out of such legislaion?

I think I'll stick to working to live, not living to work. on that, we agree. Amen!

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and I never said that I disagreed. In fact, I do agree with him. I was just pointing out a minor mistake in his post, which I believe is within the scope of this topic. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear -- I'll try to be more clear next time.

Re:How they become?

[benna]

I did that intentionally on the last post.

Re:How they become?

[pfleming]

"Sloppy writing implies carelessness at best, ineptitude at worst."

What exactly are you alledging here? If the employee is inept, he/she should be fired. There are more effective means of testing ineptitude than evaluating email transcripts.
Except this is exactly what happens in business(or anywhere else for that matter) people are promoted until they are no longer competent to do their job- and thus are no longer promotable. Read The Peter Principle for more insight into this concept. Even though originally written in 1969 it still applies today.
I've read many an email, letter, and even a "corporate report" from one especially agrieving individual who not only fell under the Peter Principal, but also into the "Dumb People Are Too Dumb to Recognize Their Own Lack of Intelligence".
The "marketing" letters sent by this man were atrocious with hideously poor grammar including multiple fonts, bold on in one sentence off in the next, run on and incomplete sentences. He might as well have been writing a Nigeria scam letter.

Re:How they become?

[realityfighter]

At most accredited universities, you're required to take English department classes as well as everything else required to fulfill their degree plan. In high school, English classes are inescapable.

My objection was to the idea that students are being taught that literacy isn't important, when there is an entire required field that teaches it is. I do agree that having teachers in other fields who can't write and don't care totally sucks, but I can't reasonably agree that this constitutes an absence of literacy teaching on the whole.

Re:How they become?

[ACPosterChild]

but the only point (...) is to conform to implied social norms - an objective that has nothing to do with getting the job done.

Same with farting, chewing with your mouth open, talking with food in your mouth, using profane language, not holding the door open for people, and throwing your trash on the floor instead of in the bin. All of those are small things that take a few seconds to do, and they show that you are conscientious, responsible, and that you respect yourself and others. Some of those things you maight do when alone or in front of friends, but you hopefully have the sense to not do them at work (especially when around people you want to have a good opinion of you).

Yeah, it's all "implied social norms". And, there's a good reason for that. When in a professional relationship, have the decency to show the person you're communicating with that you actually care enough to get a clear message across. To force the reciever to work harder in understanding your message, just so you can be lazy about constructing your message and not have to actually think or care, is to strongly imply that they aren't worth your time or effort; that they are less than you.

Personally, I try to make nearly all of my writing to be of at least mediocre quality, for the reasons mentioned above as well as a sense of personal pride. Whether the effort is strictly worth it or not, *I* know I care enough to put in extra effort.

Re:How they become?

[SavoWood]

I wanted to moderate in this thread, but I had to respond to this.

I lived in a blissfully ignorant state with reference to the whole who/whom thing, until I moved back to Germany when I was 19. Then, I started learning German and in 6 months, became fluent.

At this point, I began to realize all my errors in English. This was appalling since my mother and grandmother were both English majors in college and both taught English.

Having learned German from people who actually care about the language, I had a good comprehension of the use of wer and wem. Once I started thinking in German, the English usage of who and whom became easy.

My girlfriend tries to use who and whom correctly, and gets it right about 90% of the time. At a US university, that's still an "A". I still cringe when she does it.

She gets an "F" on the "couldn't care less" thing. She consistently says, "could care less," and it drives me batty. If that's the only problem we ever have, I will consider myself lucky. We just passed our first year together and I haven't pitched her for this minor infraction. =-)

Re:How they become?

[Boronx]

The problem with "couldn't care less" is it's just too cumbersome to say, whom?

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

No thats ok.

that's

Re:How they become?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more with your comment. There are many foreigners who...

I'd be happy

[Anonymous Coward]

If people could just learn to write their replies BELOW what they're quoting. Top posting is just wrong.

Re:I'd be happy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is not.

If people could just learn to write their replies BELOW what they're quoting. Top posting is just wrong.

Re:I'd be happy

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you already know what you wrote. why should I tell you again!

Re:I'd be happy

[eln]

Talk to the geniuses at Microsoft who decided top posting would be the default behavior in Outlook. Most people are just too lazy or don't care enough to edit their emails to that extent.

Re:I'd be happy

[eobanb]

No, it is not.

Personally, I like being in the middle.

If people could just learn to write their replies BELOW what they're quoting. Top posting is just wrong.

Re:I'd be happy

[John Courtland]

I personally top-post because, during my days as a bottom-poster, many people couldn't be bothered to learn the interface and "scroll down" to where my message was. So they'd simply assume I sent them nothing. It saves both of us time if I just type the email the way I know they'll read it, even if it isn't the preferred format :)

Re:I'd be happy

[techno-vampire]

Most business people are accustomed to paper files, where everything is in reverse-chronological order, so top posting makes sense to them. Of course, most of us don't work that way, and dislike it, but they either don't know this or don't care.

Re:I'd be happy

[kfg]

Hey, I write in Ogham, you insensitive clod. Now IIII I III > off.

Top posting is just wrong.

KFG

Re:I'd be happy

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more, top posting sucks.

The problem is made worse by brain-damaged email systems that encourage this. For instance, GroupWise, when you reply to a message, includes the replied-to message in the body of your mail *without* the ">", making top-posting the only practical way to reply.

Re:I'd be happy

[boringgit]

I must say, I do disagree - to a point...

I can see the sense on newsgroups, where a threaded conversation is difficult to follow anyhow and complicated further by top posting.

I can also see the point on a busy mailing list where people often reply to messages which are not current.

In a corporate environment however mail is generally from X to Y. If A, B and C are copied in it is generally for info only. In this instance top posting is not only easier, but a far quicker method of seeing what is actually posted.

I suppose the same thing could be achieved by bottom posting, then having your mail client show the bottom of the mail rather than the top by default??

Re:I'd be happy

[cain]

If people could just learn to I prefer replying
write their replies BELOW on the SIDE of
what they're quoting. what I am quoting, myself.
Top posting is just wrong. Side posting r00ls, w00t!!

Re:I'd be happy

[DoraLives]

> I personally top-post because, during my days
> as a bottom-poster, many people couldn't be
> bothered to learn the interface and "scroll
> down" to where my message was.

Actually, you'd be better off breaking the material into sensible bits, and then addressing each bit sequentially. Of course, this involves a bit more key tapping than some people are willing to indulge in. However, the extra work is definitely worth it when it comes to clarity of presentation.

> So they'd simply assume I sent them nothing.

They'd be wrong then, wouldn't they?

> It saves both of us time if I just type the
> email the way I know they'll read it,

It might be a bit presumptious of you to say a thing like that.

> even if it isn't the preferred format

See above, re: presumption and clarity.

> :)

Knock it off with the goddamned motherfucking smiley faces!!!!!!!!

Re:I'd be happy

[Pfhreakaz0id]

Personally, I like top posting. If I need/want the context, I have no problem going down to get it.

However, that is only for short messages. For long messages, I prefer the replies interspersed, so I can see what you are referring to.

I think it's just personal preference, however.

Re:I'd be happy

[Anonymous Coward]

If people *OK THIS* could just learn to I prefer *PLEASE STOP* replying
write their *IS GETTING* replies BELOW on the side *BEATING A* of
what they're *OLD* quoting. what I am *DEAD HORSE* quoting, myself.
Top posting is just wrong. Side posting *THANKS* r00ls, w00t!

Re:I'd be happy

[snorklewacker]

> Talk to the geniuses at Microsoft who decided top posting would be the default behavior in Outlook

I know you like to blame Microsoft for everything from global warming to itchy shorts, but they didn't begin this trend, which is a good deal older than email itself. When you're dealing with paper memos, top posting makes sense. In fact, it makes sense in any circumstance where you're not dealing with an archive of long-running "threads" as you get on BBS's and Usenet.

In other words, your stylistic preferences don't make for some grand objective aesthetic truth.

Top-posting, bottom-posting, whatever. Being a reasonably intelligent human, I have the capacity to adapt to either. As long as it's not that asinine and snippy "point for point" alternating-quote-and-reply nonsense I had to grow up with, I don't get bent out of shape either way.

Re:I'd be happy

[snorklewacker]

> I personally top-post because, during my days
> as a bottom-poster, many people couldn't be
> bothered to learn the interface and "scroll
> down" to where my message was.

Actually, you'd be better off breaking the material into sensible bits, and then addressing each bit sequentially. Of course, this involves a bit more key tapping than some people are willing to indulge in. However, the extra work is definitely worth it when it comes to clarity of presentation.

Actually, it's merely annoying, and reads a lot like interruption, with every other point being something like "oh yeah?". Clarity is a result of composition, which is lost in such snippy styles. I'm just thankful that the "point for point" style really is dying off, at least in the communities I belong to ... with the sad exception of wikis, which have brought it back in force, using an even more annoying style of alternating source and reply with font style changes on the same damn line. Ugh.

And yes, smiles must die. Or at least have a big die-off to reduce their population. My mother however, bless her heart, ends every paragraph in her letters to me with multiple exclamation points and smilies. But if you ever met her, you'd understand, it really does kind of reflect her personality.

Re:I'd be happy

[Neil Blender]

>Actually, you'd be better off breaking the material into sensible bits,

Actually, it's merely annoying,

Agreed. Whenever I get a response to an email that's broken down like that, I can't help but think I am dealing with some tired old usenet hippy (or a guru wannabe) who takes no greater pleasure than ripping apart your post point by point.

Re:I'd be happy

[corsec67]

well, we could

No, it is not.

easily have

Personally, I like being in the middle.

all three,

If people could just learn to write their replies BELOW what they're quoting. Top posting is just wrong.

but that is hard to follow

Re:I'd be happy

[John Courtland]

No :)

Re:I'd be happy

[HalfFlat]

As long as it's not that asinine and snippy "point for point" alternating-quote-and-reply nonsense I had to grow up with, I don't get bent out of shape either way.

Huh? You get aggravated by people taking the time and care to make their response as clear and unambiguous as possible? There is a reason why people used that style for so long on Usenet and in email: it's practical and adds clarity!

When I get top-posted responses to emails which had multiple points, I just get the impression that the responder was being lazy. Now I, the recipient, need to dredge through the (fully-quoted) original message for the point which is most likely to correspond to the response.

This sort of practice (non-interleaved responses) also allows very sloppy replies -- which can be a useful tactic, if that is your aim -- whereby difficult aspects of the original message are glossed over or ignored, while the vagueness of specificity in the style allows for 'plausible deniability' of slackness on the part of the responder. Again, it smacks of laziness, careleness or deceitfulness, depending on context.

Nothing asinine about point-for-point, unless your aim is to be imprecise or unspecific.

Re:I'd be happy

[HermanAB]

Geez, get over it. People post at the top, since that is the part that is visible when using a mail reader. No, it is not. If people could just learn to write their replies BELOW what they're quoting. Top posting is just wrong.

Re:I'd be happy

[eamonman]

No, it is not.

If people could just learn to write their replies BELOW what they're quoting. Top posting is just wrong.

Iay ersonallypay ikelay usingay igpay atinlay orfay allay ymay ersonalpay anday usinessbay orrespondancecay.

Re:I'd be happy

[timpaton]

Geez, get over it. People post at the top, since that is the part that is visible when using a mail reader.

Each style is appropriate in its own place.

For normal "one-to-one" email, top-posting is quite appropriate. The most recent information is the most relevant, and should be at the top where it's immediately available without having to scroll down. It's sometimes useful to keep the discussion history in the email (especially if it is ever CC'ed to an extra person who hasn't seen the rest of the thread), but generally, there is no confusion as to which "branch" of the discussion you are replying.

For "many-to-many" forums, such as news groups, mail list discussions and web forums, trimming and bottom-posting (or middle-posting) is the way to go. There are usually several threads active at a time, and threads can be forked and broken and carried on for weeks and months. It is very rare that a reply will be in response to every point that the parent made. In these cases, it's essential to give some reference so the reader knows what part of the discussion your comments apply to. Thus, a terse, trimmed "reference" quote is suitable.

The two styles are the difference between:

"These are my comments. (And by the way, this is the preceeding conversation, in case you forgot what we were discussing)"

...and...

"Somebody said this; to which I would like to add the following comments".

Most people will never post to a newsgroup or discussion board. They will live safe and secure in their top-posting world. It is only when they take a step into our world that there is an issue, and they need a quick and painless heads-up that different rules apply when posting to a multi-user discussion, and that they'd better learn to trim and bottom post if they want to stay :P

Re:I'd be happy

[Darkangael]

Finally, someone who understands! lol

Re:I'd be happy

[drivinghighway61]

Each style is appropriate in its own place. For normal "one-to-one" email, top-posting is quite appropriate. The most recent information is the most relevant, and should be at the top where it's immediately available without having to scroll down. It's sometimes useful to keep the discussion history in the email (especially if it is ever CC'ed to an extra person who hasn't seen the rest of the thread), but generally, there is no confusion as to which "branch" of the discussion you are replying. For "many-to-many" forums, such as news groups, mail list discussions and web forums, trimming and bottom-posting (or middle-posting) is the way to go. There are usually several threads active at a time, and threads can be forked and broken and carried on for weeks and months. It is very rare that a reply will be in response to every point that the parent made. In these cases, it's essential to give some reference so the reader knows what part of the discussion your comments apply to. Thus, a terse, trimmed "reference" quote is suitable. The two styles are the difference between: "These are my comments. (And by the way, this is the preceeding conversation, in case you forgot what we were discussing)" ...and... "Somebody said this; to which I would like to add the following comments". Most people will never post to a newsgroup or discussion board. They will live safe and secure in their top-posting world. It is only when they take a step into our world that there is an issue, and they need a quick and painless heads-up that different rules apply when posting to a multi-user discussion, and that they'd better learn to trim and bottom post if they want to stay :P

mee too Man, good ol' Usenet...

Conspicuously...

[MoxCamel]

This wasn't posted by CmdrTaco. I'm just saying.

Mox

Re:Conspicuously...

[Anonymous Coward]

i arrs gud postar/edator #1!!111 CmdrTaco

Heh

[Neil Blender]

Funny this story being on Slashdot. If email had editors, maybe they wouldn't be so bad.

Re:Heh

[sketerpot]

Slashdot has much higher standards of spelling, grammar, and organization than the examples given in the article.

I got

[bool morpheus()]

a note from my boss once that read "Little vat no wrok. Cal Roy in moring -J"

Re:I got

[fitten]

We got a ticket like this once, but it was used to emphasize the point:

wouldyoupleasereplacethekeyboardonthismachinebec au sethespacebardoesn'tworkanymore.

All because of vatican 2

[yorkpaddy]

See what happens when you stop saying mass in Latin.

Re:All because of vatican 2

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, great. So, instead of not being able to tell whether or not the grammer and spelling is correct, now we can.

Re:All because of vatican 2

[jd]

You might be able to find a story on that, in the archives.

Re:All because of vatican 2

[nastro]

Saying Mass in Latin was just an apology for banning all the books they put on the Index. See, you can't read anything, but we'll teach you the entymology of what we're forbidding!

Re:All because of vatican 2

[realityfighter]

Etymology is the study of word origins. Entomology is the study of insects. I don't think saying Mass in Latin will teach you either.

Re:All because of vatican 2

[Anonymous Coward]

entymology of what we're forbidding!

You were just angling for a joke about the diet of Worms weren't you?

My personal favorite

[Anonymous Crowhead]

The subject line email:

Subject: COULD YOU SEND ME THAT MEMO
Body: (empty)

Re:My personal favorite

[Anonymous Coward]

The memo was about the use of "n/t" at the end of the subject to indicate no body.

Re:My personal favorite

[Zixia]

Dear god. I see messages with empty bodies all the time on the internal newsgroups at work.

It's probably worse on newsgroups, because I often tend not to read the subject lines, as they are, in NORMAL circles, simply a precis for what is contained within the body of the message, and so when the body is left blank I am left confused and dizzy for a second.

Dizzy with just how ineffective some people make electronic communications.

Re:My personal favorite

[kin_korn_karn]

What I hate are emails with no subject line or with one-word useless subjects like "hello". That helps, really. *groan*

We'd see a lot fewer grammar and spelling errors on /. if there were an edit function in the software for your own posts. I usually find at least one typo in everything I post but in order to get it in before someone else does you have to post it and not preview it.

Re:My personal favorite

[Anonymous Coward]

binary attachments blocked, eh? Makes news:alt.binaries.penthouse kinda pointless.

Re:My personal favorite

[shrikel]

Ugh. I hate that. Ironically, it's the editor-in-chief of our monthly newsletter/magazine that sends those to me.

Re:My personal favorite

[EnronHaliburton2004]

What I hate are emails with no subject line or with one-word useless subjects like "hello".

Since an email with the subject of "hello" is likely spam or a virus, I delete them without looking at them. If the person complains, tough luck.

If the person can't write a multiword or descriptive subject, I'm not sure the person should be working here.

Re:My personal favorite

[Anonymous Coward]

Subject Line Troll? Where the heck are you when we need you?

Re:My personal favorite

[Anonymous Coward]

My editor loves to turn my scentences into run-ons. They're too abreviated she says. Well. I don't. Think so.

Re:My personal favorite

[Anonymous Coward]

My supervisor loves to turn my run-on sentences into abbreviated ones. I hate that too :)

Re:My personal favorite

[Sentry21]

At my company, this is actually the policy. We use Lotus Notes, which actually wraps lines in the mailbox display, meaning that anything, say, three lines or less is expected to be sent in the subject. As a result, replying is nearly impossible, because you don't want to continue a conversation with a 2-page subject line, but you want to keep context when you reply. It's terrible, honestly.

Besides that, I don't know how many people in my office alone 'Reply to All' to e-mails that were sent to mailing lists which cover everyone in the office - as if 370 people need to know that so-and-so wants to leave early because of her son's soccer game. I mean, not that we mind, we get enough useless crap from the managers, but it's still pretty absurd.

Re:My personal favorite

[smeenz]

mine is when some idiot sends an email containing a body of "Please see attachment", and the sole attachment is a word document with 2-3 lines of plain text in it.

Re:My personal favorite

[surprise_audit]

I've seen those too. And also a number of emails where the actual message is written in Powerpoint that would have been just a legible as plain text, and a heck of a lot smaller.

Re:My personal favorite

[colinleroy]

Easy solution:

Subject: WHAT MEMO? Re: COULD YOU SEND ME THAT MEMO

The original sender will just get as confused as you, and may understand the use of the Body field. Probably not on the first time, but it works on the long term...

In case it's slashdotted:

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:In case it's slashdotted:

[interiot]

holy, how'd you get that past the slashdot filter?

Re:In case it's slashdotted:

[marvinalone]

I didn't read TFA, so I don't know ... it was really written in perl?

Re:In case it's slashdotted:

[angrist]

Holy shit, i knew this dyslexia would come in handy one day.

Re:In case it's slashdotted:

[Anonymous Coward]

replace $ for s, 4 for a, 5 for s, 3 for e, @ for a, + for t, 1 for i, 0 for o, 9 for g, 8 for b, ph for f

then reset capitalisation

Re:In case it's slashdotted:

[GWTPict]

You bastard, I've just gone blind.

Re:In case it's slashdotted:

[adric]

On the plus side, this finally provided a chance to stress-test Jesse's deleet bookmarklet. It did a pretty good job (albeit not perfect).

Re:In case it's slashdotted:

[Infinityis]

The filter automatically checks for 1337n3$$, even in anonymous cowards, and will sucessfully post if that condition is met. It looks like this in slashcode:

if (AC == 1337) post(comment);
else filter(comment);

Re:In case it's slashdotted:

[TractorBarry]

Never mind that... I want to know how they get some of the articles past the lameness filter !

Re:In case it's slashdotted:

[necrognome]

You spoiled the article, asshat. Next time, would you rot13 the text please? Some people...

Is this a professional or a kid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unprofessional writing like this reminds me of Terry and his lost frog.

"him name is hopkin green frog"

what about

[Anonymous Coward]

the ilitracy of firs posts?

Translated...

[Kjuib]

Can anyone translate this into a picture book/page, I cannot read.

the email b lurt..

[Anonymous Coward]

..is a sadd cultrual phenommenlo

later

Very Inprofesional

[Lieutenant_Dan]

I find it lidicrous how people making 100000$ or more a year, just canot spell or at least use the spelchecker.

It's a disgracement.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[EvanED]

Mary hat hay lid tell lamb
ids fleas woes wide has know

(Stolen from Foxtrot)

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

hello i woud like to point out that you speld lidircrous wrong it is speld ludicrous thank you ps please be careful how u spell things on public fourams

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

Eye donut knead spill chucker, aye kneed grandma chicken.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[porkUpine]

I wish I could mod your post +1 (Sad but True). Our CFO sends out company wide emails that make no sense at all. I often wonder how she was able to (lie/cheat/steal) her way into that position. It is embarrassing when the CFO of a 1+Billion dollar a year company cannot tell the difference between patience/patients or capitol/capital. Now, I'm not perfect... but I also don't send out company wide email very often. When I do have to send out email to others in the company I do this old fashioned thing called "Proof-reading". *sigh* (sad but true)

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

eye have a spelling chequer:
it came with my pea sea.
it plainly marques for my revue
mistakes i cannot see.

eye strike a quay and type a word,
and weight four it to say
weather eye am wrong oar write:
it shows me strait a weigh.

i've run this peom threw it,
i'm sure your plea's two no;
its letter-perfect all the whey -
my chequer tolled me sew !

Re:Very Inprofesional

[TiggertheMad]

I find it ledicrist tha peopel that live in there mothurs basement canot make their time to spelcheek befor psoting to the slasdot.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[bool morpheus()]

Oh, someone please mod this up.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

> I find it lidicrous how people making 100000$ or more a year, just canot spell or at least use the spelchecker.

What makes it 10 times worse is that those people are the ones getting those jobs. I can write perfectly, I just wish they'd hire me!

Re:Very Inprofesional

[DaoudaW]

Nope. Its a firm policy around here to knot to maude up anonymous cowards.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

I often wonder how she was able to

Cough Cough ... have you heard of sleeping your way to the top ?

Re:Very Inprofesional

[bool morpheus()]

You're right, how silly of me. I must be new here.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

have you heard of sleeping your way to the top ?

That may work if you're an UNIX admin, but she probably had to have dirty sex with all these old slimy executive guys.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Beautyon]

This is /. ;what you really mean to say is that its rediculous.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[gmhowell]

I find it lidicrous how people making 100000$ or more a year, just canot spell or at least use the spelchecker.

Hey, I'm not the one who works for a retarded shrimp company owner.

Or who voted for a retarded oil company owner.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

[joking]

The moral of the story of course is that you need to write better dictation software.

[/joking]

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

AC, of course.

I always relished communicating with one of the C*Os of my company as it was pretty easy to befuddle them with 8th grade vocabulary. I know at one point I wrote circa and he berated me for making up words; he did not think it was truly a word of common usage.

I just looked through my email. While his messages are still more concise and understandable than the ones in the articles above, I found emails where he asked me what "myriad" meant. Most of them were just run-on sentences.

What I've found is that people want to use email less because IM and a phone message doesn't have the same level of accountability. That is why I personally prefer email to anything else. It's "in writing" -- sort of.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Budha_man_99]

Or put the $ in front of the value.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

What dialect do you speak where "mod" and "maude" are homophones?

Re:Very Inprofesional

[discord5]

patience/patients or capitol/capital

Hold it right there... You're forgetting one of the most common mistakes: there/their/they're (and sadly also theyre and theire). I can't believe how many emails I've read that make my eyes bleed when I see this.

What's perhaps worst of all is that these are people who claim to be fluent in English. I don't care if you make typos or common spelling errors, and I hardly ever point them out (as it seems to annoy people instead of improving their spelling), but this is the worst kind of atrocity you can do to the english languague.

When I do have to send out email to others in the company I do this old fashioned thing called "Proof-reading"

Reading that mail one last time before frantically smashing ctrl-enter (or in most cases, clicking send) should be mandatory if you're sending corporate email. But it just doesn't end with spelling or grammar really, some people don't even bother making a cohorent text. I'm often the victim of the dreaded subject-only emails, where 3 or 4 somewhat related words are supposed to a very descriptive analysis of a problem. My favourite is perhaps the just plain stupid mail. For example:

Our internet seems to be down, could you fix it please?

The problem isn't people losing linguistic skill because of technology, but people not having a clue in the first place. The article mentions people who use exclamation marks and ALL CAPS. The only words I tend to set in capitals (surrounded by underscores no less) are "_NEVER_" and "_ALWAYS_". This way I am sure that my correspondants read this part extra carefully because there's that one word in capitals in the middle of the text surrounded by these alien characters that really don't belong in written text.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

I often wonder how she was able to (lie/cheat/steal) her way into that position.

$tmp = $quote;
$tmp =~ r|lie/cheat/steal|lie/cheat/steal/fuck/suck|;

Re:Very Inprofesional

[BoomerSooner]

I've yet to meet a CFO that isn't a penny pinching dumbfuck that would rather save 100K this year but risk 100 Million in the future. You know you have to meet this quarters numbers, fuck what's good for the company.

Mind you I used to work at Arthur Andersen.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[driftingwalrus]

There is no such word as 'disgracement'. Use either disgrace or embarassment.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[stixman]

Don't forget about those who make $400,000 per year to run our country.

That big red button of his? Yeah, that's the "nucular" button.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Deusy]

"I often wonder how she was able to (lie/cheat/steal) her way into that position."

Missed one... sleep her way...

No you silly /. reader, not the snoring type.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[corbettw]

I often wonder how she was able to (lie/cheat/steal) her way into that position.

Maybe she used some other verb? Maybe something to do with the last noun in that sentance?

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Macgrrl]

Sadly, our General Manager sent out a broadcast email yesterday afternoon chastising the division for the poor quality of a recently tender document that had gone out (we apparently lost the tender because the client's name was mis-spelt throughout), he was strongly promoting the proofreading of documents before distribution. His missive contained one obvious typo and a grammatical error.

*sigh*

Re:Very Inprofesional

[heck]

You're assuming the CFO actually wrote the email.

I've yet to see a high level executive that didn't delegate emails and memos to a lower level assistant and either:
(a) let their executive assistant into their email account in order to send the email or
(b) send the email given to them by their assistant without reading more than the first sentence

My bigger pet peeve is coworkers who do not read past the first line because they're "in a hurry" - and then ask questions which were either addressed in the email or the question does not apply. Reading comprehension is often as piss poor as their ability to formulate a coherent reply.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Shivetya]

Well one thing I have seen is that CEO/CFO/CXX do not always write the documents their names are attached to. Even some seemingly direct e-mails are actually written by an executive assistant or a pool of people whose job is just that.

Granted I would want to make sure that anything my name is attached to has proper grammar and spelling.

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Paleomacus]

The definitions of:
capital

and

capitol

Are slightly confusing -- they overlap. Unless someone uses capitol to mean something like

"capital - 2.b:Wealth in the form of money or property, used or accumulated in a business by a person, partnership, or corporation."

Then I'm not sure they should be faulted. By the way, I really hate how convenient firefox makes it to search dictionary.com.

(not to be a Nazi but...shouldn't Inprofesional be Unprofessional or am I mixing up my morphemes?)

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Anonymous Coward]

We used to have a senior management bod who did this too.

So I started replying with corrections. Needless to say I was asked to stop so the next crappy email that arrived I "accidentally" did a "reply to all" again pointing out the corrections and also and asking why I was asked not to do this as it didn't make the company look good at all.

Very suprisingly two things happened. I kept my job and the later (also now less frequent) emails seem to get spell checked before sending.

My moral of the story: If people send you shit let them know !

Re:Very Inprofesional

[DaoudaW]

Who are you calling a homophone? ;-)

Re:Very Inprofesional

[Filmwatcher888]

I used to have a boss who was English, and the VP of European Operations. He always would complain that his American version of Word was complaining too much about his "mistakes". So, I showed him how to turn off the spell-check.

The problem wasn't the Spell-checker after all. The man couldn't spell or write correctly to save his life. So, it's not just Americans. It's ALL OF THE ENGLISH SPEAKERS!!1!11

Saw a similar article on the BBC a few days ago

[boringgit]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4059077.stm

Takes a different tach - in this case it points out quite how bad emails can be in a corporate environment.

From irritating, to rude - often without meaning to be...

Sometimes I am glad to be employed in shipping - characters cost - fewer are better ;)

Re:Saw a similar article on the BBC a few days ago

[jbrandon]

Takes a different tach - in this case it points out quite how bad emails can be in a corporate environment.

ITYM "a different tack."

HTH.

HAND.

Re:Saw a similar article on the BBC a few days ago

[Atario]

Takes a different tach

What...one with a 10,000RPM scale, as opposed to the one with only 6,000RPM?

"...a different tack".

(Hey, if there were ever a better opportunity than this thread to jump on English errors, I don't know what it was.)

i m a l337 riter!

[bennomatic]

People just don't care anymore, do they? Capitalization, their-they're-there, you're-your, mixing tenses, dangling modifiers, unclear use of pronouns and run-on sentences are just a few of the most common problems. My wife has finally given me the validation I need in that she has me look over official correspondence she writes because I am, in her words, the grammar police.

My spelling's pretty good, too, but not perfect, so no flames please!

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[eikonoklastes]

It's worse than "People just don't care anymore". There's an actual mentality that email is the equivalent of the post-it note and is designed for quick and dirty messages. My mother insists (and she's a head honcho where she works) that email messages should be short and quick and not too much time is spent on punctuation or proof-reading. That would be a loss of (and I quote) productivity with the time wasted.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[syle]

Message boards and AIM are grammar death. I was sitting next to a 40 year old business man on a flight a couple weeks ago who was componsing email on a laptop. "Cindy, can u pls send this to Mark?? thx"

The signature appended to every message said his name, company, and job title: "CEO."

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[syle]

Yes, I typo'd "composing." Look mom I proved my own point!

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[sahrss]

"People just don't care anymore, do they? Capitalization, their-they're-there, you're-your, mixing tenses, dangling modifiers, unclear use of pronouns and run-on sentences are just a few of the most common problems."

I'm no expert on grammar, but do you need a comma after 'pronouns'? I remember my English teachers saying that was optional but recommended.

You asked for it by not calling off the grammar flames ;)

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[wfberg]

Another one of my pet peeves that is when people write enormously long sentences that run over the entire width of my screen and that have a lot of subclauses even though the same message, that might actually have held my interest if it were presented more succinctly, could have been split up in multiple shorter sentences that are easier to understand.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[garcia]

Does it really matter? I know that 90% of the people I work with are morons. They don't do their jobs correctly so I should somehow expect them to send a grammatically correct email without any spelling errors?

Personally I don't care if the email is spelled correctly or is grammatically correct as long as it includes the information I need to do my job effectively.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[EvanED]

After careful consideration of your writing preferences, the new /. book recommending software has concluded that you might enjoy Intruder in the Dust, by William Faulkner.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[The Angry Mick]

Seeing all the grammatical references reminded me of a joke:

A Texan shows up at Harvard University and while wandering around the campus gets a bit lost. Seeing to well-dressed young men conversing on the lawn he approaches them and asks, "Excuse me, but could either of ya'll tell me where the library is at?"

Upon hearing his question, the first young man turns haughtily, and with his nose well in the air, replies: "Sir, we here at Harvard would never end a sentence with a preposition!"

The Texan, frowns slightly, then strolls up very close to the snobbish young man.

"Well, I'm terribly sorry about that. Could you tell me where the library is at, asshole?"

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[techno-vampire]

And the best part of the joke is that the Texan didn't end the sentence with a preposition. In that construction, "at" is a particle, and quite proper at the end of the sentence.

It is an offense against English, a sentence to end, a preposition with.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Most people in my office think that I am the grammar poilce as well. Maybe it's because I am the only person in the IT department who majored in English.

If I get unintelligible emails, I'm not shy about pointing it out to the sender. Usually I respond with "I have no earthly idea what you are trying to convey here, can you try this again? Thanks!"

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[0racle]

I hope that makes you feel good, because to everyone else your an asshole. E-Mail, Slashdot and just about any other forum or personal communication is INFORMAL. It doesn't matter if its spelt correctly in every instance as long as your point comes across. Now if it was a formal correspondence, then yes spelling and grammer would count.

Are the lives of the Slashdot community so sad that you have to resort to attempting to look superior by pointing out everyones typos?

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget there is a difference in syntax & grammar rules for US and UK English.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[shrikel]

I am, in her words, the grammar police

My mother prefers the term "word purist," which she lobs at anyone willing to stay put and listen to her. She uses that term to refer to any of her exceptionally literate progeny.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't give the "CEO" title too much credit. I once did a phone interview with a 4-person company in Silly Valley. I talked to all 4 people: the receptionist, the CEO, CTO (who asked me if I used vi or emacs), and CFO. Afterwards I was very tempted to call back and ask the receptionist if she was the CAO.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[StalinJoe]

I *really* wish /. had an optional checkbox so that it would pipe previews through "spell".

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[josecanuc]

The use of what is called "serial commas" is dependent on which writing style you are following.

I think the AP style (Associated Press) calls for no serial commas, meaning that there is no comma before the "and" at the end of a list (a.k.a. a serial.) However, APA style and maybe others prescribe serial commas.

Sometimes which style you use is a personal preference, though you should be consistent through a single document. Other times, the style is assigned as policy by your editor.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Shadow Wrought]

You sure did. In this particular context the correct spelling is C-O-M-P-O-S-T-I-N-G.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[thingoutsidethebun]

Emails should pass through a compiler. They clean up stuff written in other languages, why not English?

But seriously I think the problem goes deeper:

- All the text messaging/chatting etc. means people are perpetually in a frame of mind where anything goes - no punctuations, weird short forms, spelling mistakes and other improper constructs. Some of tools (messenger) encourage people to not bother fixing typos etc. All this makes it harder for people to switch from the informal to formal (work email) mode.

- Some editors add to the problem: At work I've often see people who like to hit a new line after about 70-80 columns. But doing this in Outlook (which by default has M$ Word turned on), capitalizes the first letter on every new line.

- I also read somewhere that it's been researched and proven that reading and correcting stuff online (can't find the link) is harder. So, the only thing that can be fixed easily is spelling mistakes (if people decide to use the spellchecker).

- Many jobs don't require the employees to do a lot of writing. So if emailing in English is an acquired skill, it wanes away even before they've mastered the language.

Many technical jobs don't require a high-level of language proficiency before hire. This is bound to show up somewhere along the line.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[sakshale]

It doesn't matter if its spelt correctly in every instance as long as your point comes across.

However, the point of the article was that the writers were not getting their points across.
The bottomline is simple. "What we have here, is a failure to communicate."

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that makes you feel good, because to everyone else your an asshole.

you're

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Bullet-Dodger]

Those of us with a real operating system have one built into the text box :-) </OS_X_Troll>

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[PhoenixFlare]

Message boards and AIM are grammar death.

I think it's more that they just attract those who exhibit "grammar death".

Depends where you go and who you talk with, too - plenty of boards out there where the l33t-speakers or "i just type really fast quit flamin me u jerk!!!1" people would be ridiculed and banned for life.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Haeleth]

It doesn't matter if its spelt correctly in every instance as long as your point comes across.

Quite true. The odd typo doesn't matter. However, if you have too many typos, a lot of people will simply stop reading what you have to say, however interesting the content might be. And your point WON'T come across.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[gordo3000]

While a compiler would be a good solution, I do not believe it strikes at the heart of the problem. When writing an email I find my biggest problem to be how fast I can type. Compared to writing by hand, I am probably 2-3x as fast on a computer. This creates huge problems. When I am writing by hand, I can do a spell check and grammar check for most sentences and phrases as I am writing them. This is not possible with typing because of how fast I go. this means when I am writing something formal I usually slow down and look it over. Many businessmen/women would see this as a lack of productivity but I dislike looking like an idiot on anything important.

Of course, people not realizing how spelling and grammar checking programs work cause many problems. I don't think people have ever given a long document to MS word and seen some of the blundering errors it makes when blanketly accepting its changes. Few people realize the number of mistakes a grammar checking program makes, and this leads to ignorantly depending on them as an unequivocal source on the english language.

But proof-reading is not the answer either. Proof reading is an acquired skill that takes a great deal of practice. The best way to get this practice isn't to write random articles and look them over, but rather to read. My writing went through the roof in school when I started reading all the time. On standardized tests for grammar and reading comprehension, I used to score in the 30th percentile. Once I began reading books diligently, my scores increased to approximately the 95th percentile. Granted, this isn't a formal study, but I have found this works well for others. I have many family members(cousins) that learned to put together a coherent argument after they began reading something more than the text in a video game.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reminded of the famous quote:

Sir Humphrey: "Prime Minister, I must protest in the strongest possible terms my profound opposition to a newly instituted practice which imposes severe and intolerable restrictions upon the ingress and egress of senior members of the hierarchy and which will, in all probability, should the current deplorable innovation be perpetuated, precipitate a constriction of the channels of communication, and culminate in a condition of organisational atrophy and administrative paralysis which will render effectively impossible the coherent and co-ordinated discharge of the functions of government within Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." Jim Hacker: "You mean you've lost your key?"

If you don't recognise the show, run, don't walk, to your nearest shop and pick up a copy of "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister" on DVD. An absolute classic.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[biobogonics]

People just don't care anymore, do they?

Actually corporate crap percolates down from the top. While waiting for breakfast at the local Burger King, I was horrified to read a sign posted near the cash register. The grammar was fine, the typography was clean but the notice was cluttered with corporate buzzwords that I am sure the average customer would not understand. At least 100 words to explain what could have been said simply and concisely:

Because the hurricanes in Florida wiped out most of the tomato crop, you must ask for tomatoes until the shortage is over.

Instead of some corporate BS explaining how much BK values its customers and is doing everything possible to provide tomatoes of the utmost quality, etc......

It's not just that letters and e-mails are poorly written but also that corporate communications are often dressed up to conceal a real lack of content.

In short simple words "The Emperor has no clothes." [Suitable punishment would be to force CXOs to actually read _Strunk and White_.]

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[MoonChildCY]

In my opinion, shorter sentences are not a required component of comprehensible communications. Rather, the post above, which coincidentally is a single sentence, is probably the most comprehensible of the posts here on Slashdot.

Short sentences have their place, and that place is not argumentative writing necessarily, although they can and should be used to assist in conveying a message. I rather think of short, concise sentences as an essential component of non-literary presentations (in the fashion of a presentation using audio-visual equipement).

In summation, long sentences do belong in the English language, especially in written communications, when the reader has enough of an attention span to be able to follow that long sentence.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[ignorant_newbie]

which spell checker you inherited from Konqueror.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[KKin8or]

At work, I'm our team's spellchecker. My boss will often wander into my office to ask which spelling of a word to use (like affect/effect. Most recent was dependent/dependant, which I didn't know, and dictionary.com claimed there was no difference between them). When he emails me my progress report for me to sign off on, I correct the spelling before sending it back.

I think a big part of this kind of thing is a lack of attention to detail. I've always been a bit of a perfectionist, so I actively tried to learn the proper uses and spellings of words (I'm not so anal about grammar). I think most people don't care about details that much, so they don't learn it.

You can probably find other evidence of the lack of attention to detail in their lives-- I've often noticed a correlation in drawing ability. People who can't spell are more likely to struggle to produce realistic-looking drawings.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[joshki]

After reading this, it hit me that a large number of readers probably won't even get the joke...

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. I think that sentence is perfectly fine. Perfectly understandable, and not overly complex. Just because some slow and semi-literate readers have a problem with long sentences, doesn't mean we need to dumb things down all the time :)

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[iabervon]

As far as I know, the idea that that comma is not necessary comes from misreading Strunk & White's unclear explanation ("In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last"), where "the last" is the one after the "and", not the last one before it. The comma is omitted if there are no commas ("this and that") and in certain idioms ("Foo, Bar and Company"); proper names get whatever punctuation they want. In general, follow the principle that it is better to make a supposed grammatical error than produce something which could be misinterpreted; including the comma is much less likely to cause confusion than omitting it.

"I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Col Bat Guano]

Do you think you could get your title changed to "Spelling Checker"?

BTW Dependant (noun) is a person (e.g. one who is financially supported by another), whereas dependent is the associated adjective.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Apple didn't use anything from Konqueror other than the HTML rendering engine, KHTML. They modified KHTML to suit their needs (including bugfixes), wrapped it in some Cocoa classes, and exposed it as a system framework (WebKit) so it could be used easily in any Cocoa app. Then they wrote a Cocoa browser shell called Safari. Safari uses standard MacOS X GUI widgets and services, including the systemwide spellchecker.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Mock]

My biggest pet peeve in incorrect spellings is by far the verb "to lose".

Quick, what does this mean:

He'll loose his dog.

Will his dog be freed or will it go missing?

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[EvanED]

Former.

What about lay/lie? Who's the genious that made one of the forms of lie "lay"? I pride myself for having what I think is a very good grammar sense, but I still can never keep these apart.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[mdielmann]

Another one of my pet peeves that is when people write enormously long sentences that run over the entire width of my screen and that have a lot of subclauses even though the same message, that might actually have held my interest if it were presented more succinctly, could have been split up in multiple shorter sentences that are easier to understand.

All of which, like your post, is grammatically correct.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[vrai]

For people who weren't raised by farmyard animals there should be very little difference between formal and informal English. Your vocabulary might differ but the basic grammatical rules should remain the same.

There is a belief that writing in a grammatically correct way is somehow more difficult than writing like a brain damaged twelve year-old. This is only true if you learnt everything you know about the English language from VCR manuals. For an educated person the use of proper English should be as natural as breathing.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Lehk228]

*runs Spell Check* It seems that Windows is a Real operating system too

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

In my high school writing class we were instructed to count the number of words in a sample of our own writing. According to the instructor, 20 words made for a good average. To most people, this meant writing longer sentences. My average was 55. She thought that this was great, but after thinking about it, I realized that shorter sentences probably made for easier reading.

Unlike many people here, I do not have a problem with the grammar, punctuation, or spelling of e-mail messages. The content of some messages is lacking, but even those coworkers who speak English as a second language are easily understandable. To my shame, some of the management here, write e-mail with far more attention to grammar and style than I do, even though I am a professional writer as part of my work. I suppose I should consider myself blessed by such competence.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[cduffy]

It doesn't matter if its spelt correctly in every instance as long as your point comes across.

Writing well shows respect for your audiance (and arguably, there are a reasonable number of people here who are worth at least that minimal level of respect), and makes it obvious that you put some thought into what you wrote (making third parties more likely to take you seriously).

I often help newbies out on some technical mailing lists. Those who write sloppily are less likely to receive assistance, in much the same way that someone who sent a message filled with profanity or where the author obviously made no serious efforts to help him/herself before writing would be shunned. The same applies in goal-oriented (ie. product support) IRC channels and other forums all too frequently believed to be "informal".

You may consider sloppy use of language under the guise of informality acceptable, but those you're writing for may not.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[wfberg]

Unlike many people here, I do not have a problem with the grammar, punctuation, or spelling of e-mail messages.
You Sir, bring out the grammar Nazi in me! ;-)

To my shame, some of the management here, write e-mail with far more attention to grammar and style than I do, even though I am a professional writer as part of my work.

"Some some of the management here, to my shame,.." would have been a sentence with correct punctuation ;-)

Then again, we all, make mistakes.. (Though no-one has caught me out on the spurious "that" in my previous post yet..)

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Anonymous Coward]

"To my shame, some of the management here write e-mail" also is perfectly acceptable.

IMHO that's a better correction than moving "to my shame" because it's closer to the original sentence.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[KKin8or]

BTW Dependant (noun) is a person (e.g. one who is financially supported by another), whereas dependent is the associated adjective.

That was my first thought! But dictionary.com (which is probably not the best resource, but it's easy) listed both definitions for both spellings. They're just variants of one another.

Re:i m a l337 riter!

[Col Bat Guano]

That was my first thought! But dictionary.com (which is probably not the best resource, but it's easy) listed both definitions for both spellings. They're just variants of one another.

Must be the difference between AUS and US English. My "The Australian Pocket Oxford" Dictionary has them as separate entries which do not refer to each other...

"hI KATHY i am sending u the assignmnet again,"

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for destroying the English language AOL!

Time to ditch the English Language?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. English is one of the hardest, most bastardized language in the world. Only Japanese is worse, and I have studied Japanese so I think the linguists are right in giving it first place.

Heck, I don't even think in English. However, I think in a simplified version of English. When I type, I make many spelling and grammar errors because I am constantly going back and editing what I wrote to make sure all of the inflections are right. An awful lot of mistakes are made because I don't proof-read what I have edited after writing down my thoughs.

I'll never become a writer. It has nothing to do with my education, but rather the fact that I make money turning ideas into software not prose. I'd be better off using my time to learn how to write software better than to write better essays.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[goates]

What's the point of writing software if you can't explain to anyone what it does? The same goes for engineering and every other technical profession. And you had better hope that doctors can clearly write out a prescription too.

Proof reading isn't a waste of time. Only the lazy would argue that.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[eidechse]

Seriously. English is one of the hardest, most bastardized language in the world.

Agreed. The thing that really gets me though is that some of the bastardizations are the fault of grammarians themselves.

For example, two of the main things that get grammar folks screaming are ending sentences in prepositions and splitting infinitives... these aren't even real problems. Hell, there not even the result of English's polyglot roots. A few jerks about a century ago decided that English should conform to the Latin rules of grammar. Since the aformentioned two things can't happen in Latin it was decided that it must be wrong in English.

Having to keep track of the wacked out spelling "rules", a bunch of moods, and neat things like homophones is hard enough. No need to add artifical complexity as well.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[Dragonfly]

Quite right. Information should be transferred as properly formatted XML, with CSS used to indicate emotion.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about there/they're/their?

"Hell, there not even the result of English's polyglot roots"

Gaah!

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[NotoriousQ]

Finally someone who agress with me.

Most prepositional endings are not not even prepositions, they are compound verbs. This concept keeps eluding most people who teach English, but is obvious to anyone who knows even a little bit of German. Simple example:
Are you coming up?

Up in this case is not a preposition, but either a part of a verb, or an adverb. Stop telling people that this is wrong. It isn't.

As for the split infinitives, I am not sure where they are rooted. Probably in German as well, but I do not care. Splitting infinitives allows a more accurate placements of adverbs such that they continue to be before the verbs. English really hates having single word modifiers after the words they modified.

So the next time you watch STTNG: just imagine Picard saying "To go boldly" instead of "to boldly go". The second one feels more natural to most people.

HAND.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[eidechse]

Damn it. File that under the complaint about homophones.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[eidechse]

Are you coming up?

This is a great example. Unless you want to add superfluous words or change the wording entirely you just can't arrange it any other way and not sound bizarre.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[colinrichardday]

Isn't a German infinitive just a single word? Isn't that the same with other languages? Hence, the issue does not arise in those languages.

I find it amusing that Russian has three single-consonant prepositions. Just try ending a sentence with one of them, tovarishch.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[NotoriousQ]

let's see. K V S.

Hmm. you are right. It is hard to construct anything that ends with them. These can not be made into anything like adverbs, and are prepositions only, which means that something must follow.

However, these appear perfectly fine in the begining, and people do not find them awkward, even if it should be.

How about:

K komu ty poshel?

nice double k.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[Flatline_hun]

You wish. In fact, english is one of the most simple languages... and that is the main reason that it is used all around the world. Try learning hungarian or japanese, for example.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[colinrichardday]

That would probably be

Ko komu ty poshel.

Similarly for b/bo and c/co.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[Tiram]

Hm, I'm not so sure about that. *ML for content and CSS for presentation, right? Emotions must be considered part of the content, and so would better be expressed with elements like [EM]. CSS would be for male/female voice, extra gravel, etc.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[AJanuary]

Time to learn Lojban ;)

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[NotoriousQ]

Actually no. The o can appear, but I only have heard it in cases of V and S

Vo chto....
So vsemi

Interestingly enough...those are actually written with the o. but K komu is both written and pronounced without the o, at least in the dialect that I know. There is a pause, which does have a feeling of introduced vowel, but it does not sound like any other vowel -- to short and not defined.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[colinrichardday]

Stillman, Stillman, and Harkins (Introductory Russian Grammar, Second Edition. 1972) use KO MHE and KO BCEM, but they also have K KOMY.

Sorry, it's been 20+ years since I had Russian.

Re:Time to ditch the English Language?

[NotoriousQ]

You are right.

I did not think of that. I think the o gets added before certain consonants, or possibly consonant groups.

(notice how in many examples of ko vo so, all the words thatfollow have two consonants. I though that that may be due to lack of pronounciation for such large groups, but I have a counter example. so mnoy and ya smnu. ) BTW I am a native speaker of both English and Russian. Does not necesserily mean that I know what I am talking about though.

Linguistics...it was a great course in college. Easy and interesting. Great filler during sophomore year.

Not too suprising

[drakethegreat]

To me this doesn't come as a shocker. American's lag in education and it seems we are becoming increasingly lazy and more reliant on others. Its all about the money rather then anything else.

Re:Not too suprising

[James_Duncan8181]

Amusingly "American's" should not have a commar as it is merely plural, not indicative of ownership.

Re:Not too suprising

[boringgit]

You are too hard on yourselves.

Trust me, I am British. "Yank Bashing" is something of a national sport since the empire fell apart ;)

Bad email is not in any way an America only thing (neither are falling standards in education!). I have seen emails sent to customers which make me cringe. I know people for whom English is a 4th of 5th language who can compose better emails than some born and bred Brits.

A letter would be passed to a workmate to "have a quick look at", or typed by a secretary. Email is seen as being in some way less important. Wrongly so!

Re:Not too suprising

[calibanDNS]

More amusingly, that's an apostrophe, not a "commar"...

Re:Not too suprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusingly "American's" should not have a commar as it is merely plural, not indicative of ownership.

It didn't have a "commar", or even a comma. It had an apostrophe -- which is also incorrect. ;-)

But don't take my word for it . . . http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

Re:Not too suprising

[fafaforza]

American's lag in education and it seems

Oh man, put on your flame suit.

Re:Not too suprising

[Scarblac]

Plus, it should be "It's", and also "rather than anything else".

And then on the other hand, occasionaly I make a similar but worse mistake ("groter als mij") in my native Dutch language...

Re:Not too suprising

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

That cartoon says "VCR's" is wrong. This is debatable. Although personally I feel that multiletter acronyms should be written without an apostrophe ("VCRs"), it is acceptable to write it both ways. This is more important for single letters: Ys is a mythical city, but "Y's" means "more than one Y".

Re:Not too suprising

[zangdesign]

people for whom English is a 4th of 5th language who can compose better emails

I would venture a guess that it has something to do with actually paying attention while being trained in proper English. It's more important to them, since they don't speak the language to begin with.

I'm just sayin' ...

Re:Not too suprising

[infochuck]

I know people for whom English is a 4th of 5th language who can compose better emails than some born and bred Brits.

Yeah, but that's because they are BRITS!!! Nobody can understand:

"Blimey moot, me gibbers all a'ert the Queen! 'Uve a might dingy flat!"

Re:Not too suprising

[silicon not in the v]

More amusingly, that's an apostrophe, not a "commar"...

I especially love that several people thought he was being very informative in his instruction on the use of the "commar".

Re:Not too suprising

[Uncle Jimmy]

But you Bri'ish geezers are always droppin' off letters from words anyway Guv'nor.

Re:Not too suprising

[peebeejay]

Since everybody was so busy correcting the body of your post, I figured I'd tackle the subject line. It's "surprising"! There's also a British standard spelling. You missed them both. I'm not sure shcool can help at this point.

Re:Not too suprising

[roman_mir]

I don't know what you guys are talking about, but 'commar' or komar (the more traditional spelling of the word,) is Russian for a mosquito.

Re:Not too suprising

[Anonymous Coward]

More amusingly, that's an apostrophe, not a "commar"...

And in England, an apostrophe is a "single inverted comma." When I was over the studying, it drove me nuts -- the professors would say things like "And be sure to put the title in single inverted commas," whereupon I would cringe inwardly. I once brought myself to suggest that they could speak faster by using "apostrophe" (a single four-syllable word) or even "single quotes" (two words in three syllables) instead of "single inverted comma" (three words totalling seven syllables). The suggestion was not well received.

Or maybe that's just a Yorkshire dialect feature.

Re:Not too suprising

[Anonymous Coward]

More amusingly, that's an apostrophe, not a "commar"...

Most amusingly, that's a mark for linear measurement, not an apostrophe.

' = measurement
' = apostrophe

Sincerely
The Mothafuckin Typographer

Re:Not too suprising

[djward]

Actually, this SHOULD have an apostrophe, as it is plural possessive. However, it should be AFTER the s.

Re:Not too suprising

[djward]

Actually, never mind. After rereading, I realized it IS just plural.

But that sentence is a bit awkward...

Re:Not too suprising

[Anonymous Coward]

' = measurement

U+0027: Apostrophe

' = apostrophe

U+2019: Right Single Quotation Mark

(ok, it's actually 0x92 from Microsoft's code page 1252, but that maps to U+2019.)

If your user agent doesn't display U+0027 as an apostrophe, that's not my problem.

Re:Not too suprising

[NemesisBubu]

I'm just waiting for my printer here to finish and then I'm framing this.

Re:Not too suprising

[arevos]

An apostrophe is not normally called a "single inverted comma" in England. That said, I once had an English teacher who insisted on calling apostrophes "inverted commas".

sorry, had to do it:

[w98]

All your base are belong to us

Re:sorry, had to do it:

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

I now own all your bases.

Re:sorry, had to do it:

[welkin]

Someone...set up us the bomb!

I second that

[Anonymous Coward]

I know someone who edits company releases for a living. She has a formula for how bad the writing will be: the higher up the managment chain, the less coherent the information will be..

Re:I second that

[Anonymous Coward]

an ellipsis has three dots...

Some help needed here...

[z3021017]

Looks like they need some help from the Bad Boys of Punctuation!

Re:Some help needed here...

[Bullet-Dodger]

And, the return of Mr. Period.

Sigh

[somethinghollow]

This is sadly all-to-familiar. I do graphic design work on the side, and the guy who rounds up the business cannot type a legible message to save his life. The sad part is that some of my projects are assigned via e-mail, and I end up spending 30 minutes just trying to figure out what he means. (Mildly off-topic, but...) I know that it's super cool now-a-days to use "u" and "ur" and those types of abbreviations, but I think the English language is being butchered (which isn't saying much because the English language is butchering many other languages) by this modern lack-of-respect for spelling, grammar (or some semblance of grammar, to cover my own ass), and overly-shortened words. But, I guess it this is the only real ill the Internet does for the world, the good far out weighs the bad.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

How embarassing for someone to comment on other people's english, and completly f@ck it up themselves.

Try 'all *TOO* familiar' next time jackass. Let me guess, it's not *you're* fault, *do* to outside influence?

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I meant we should all go to familiar. Oh, and, "english" should be capitalized, troll. I guess you can be an embarrassed jackass with me. But you're worse.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really quite sad. I work in the IT department of my company, and I happened to see a proof copy of an absolutely horrendous advertisement that we were planning to run in a local magazine. The magazine is actually targetted at local CEOs and executives, and this full-page ad was full of typos, grammatical errors, and words used incorrectly. Because the writer was trying to "sound smart" by using words that they didn't know, the ad wound up saying the exact opposite of what we were trying to convery. The unbelievable part was that this ad was something that we had PAID an outside agency to create, and it had already gotten the approval of our CFO!

Fortunately it had not gone to press before I saw it, and when I pointed out how bad the ad was they assigned me to rewrite it. What a mad, mad world...

Sad but true.

[slusich]

Far too many professionals simply cannot manage to type out a readable email. People with college degrees in high paying jobs should have some degree of competency with the English language. I have to wonder if this has less to do with the format of email and more to do with the disappearance of secretaries.

Re:Sad but true.

[Incongruity]

I have to wonder if this has less to do with the format of email and more to do with the disappearance of secretaries.

That's a good point. Much like the web allows almost anyone to publish just about whatever they want, it seems that technology has also allowed every idiot to [and those of us who just play idiots in print =) ] to escape the watchful eyes of those more skilled at proper correspondence. Sometimes lowering the barriers to entry (as technology such as email and the internet do) do more than just let more people get in on it -- it also lets more crap in with all the good.

Re:Sad but true.

[StikyPad]

That's a good point. Just as the web allows almost anyone to publish just about anything, it seems that technology has also allowed every idiot, and those of us who play idiots in print, to escape the watchful eyes of those more skilled at proper correspondence. Sometimes enabling technology, such as email and the internet, does more than just lower the barriers to entry; it also lets in more crap.

Point taken.

Re:Sad but true.

[Stormwatch]

The grammar nazi strikes again...

"it seems that technology has also allowed every idiot to [and those of us who just play idiots in print =) ] to escape the watchful eyes of those more skilled at proper correspondence."

There is a redundant "to" there. Cut the first one.

Re:Sad but true.

[Nurgled]

More grammar nit-picking:

Sometimes lowering the barriers to entry (as technology such as email and the internet do) do more than just let more people get in on it [...]

If I remove the part in parenthesis, the sentence becomes:

Sometimes lowering the barriers to entry do more than just let more people get in on it [...]

The "do" here should almost certainly be "does". When you use parenthesis and similar constructions, be sure that the outlying sentence is able to stand alone. I only bring this up because it tripped me up when I was reading what you had written. Your point is a good one.

Re:Sad but true.

[Raedwald]

People with college degrees in high paying jobs should have some degree of competency with the English language.

For my degree course, in Aeronautical Engineering, there were only two books we were told were mandatory. One was The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers.

Re:Sad but true.

[Incongruity]

I'm more than willing to accept that I can be an example of the very point I was making. Irony seems to be my constant companion.

(no subject)

[eobanb]

i visit slashdot alot its a great web-site but i might get fired soon because i visit slashdot instead of doing work i have a report do later today and i should of been doing it instead of reading articels.

Re:(no subject)

[Eastree]

ur speling has inpruvd!

Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[beeplet]

It seems like there are two separate possible problems here: people are coming into a company without the writing skills they need, and/or employees are not treating email communication with the same professionalism as other company documents.

For the first problem, either a) don't hire people who can't write, or b) provide on-the job training to bring writing skills up to an acceptable level.

For the second, I think the company needs to make a clear set of standards for both internal and external communication, and enforce them. External communication - to customers, etc. - is particularly important. Anything as badly written as those examples would be deleted from my inbox before I got to the end of the first sentence.

I used to work as a technical writer for a large company, and they kept us busy. It's fine to hire engineers who are good at what they do, even if they don't have great writing skills - as log as you also hire someone to decipher and rewrite everything that comes out of the engineering dept.

PS. I respectfully submit that the headline should read either "The illegibility of email" or "The illiteracy of corporate america"... I might try to make my email literary, but not literate (and my slashdot posts are probably neither...) :)

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[Soko]

I used to work as a technical writer for a large company, and they kept us busy. It's fine to hire engineers who are good at what they do, even if they don't have great writing skills - as log as you also hire someone to decipher and rewrite everything that comes out of the engineering dept.

IMHO, if an engineer is imprecise in his language, in any medium, he will be imprecise in other more important areas. This is especially true for a software engineer/developer/code monkey since C, Java, Perl and Python are but different languages where you are trying to speak to a machine, not a human. A Technical Writer shouldn't have to do much more than parse the comments in the code, provide helpful diagrams and give a higher level view of how to use the software. Using precise, thought out language in all your communications means that precision will spill over into your code. As an example, here you are espousing that you just need someone like yourself - a communications expert - to correct the errors of others and you make a simple spelling mistake (don't have great writing skills - as log as you also hire someone to) which gives your credibility a hit. Allowing yourself the luxury of a native English speaker being able to over-look that error and still unuderstand you is what starts the downward spiral.

As far as the article goes, this is the issue - people let thier communications skills atrophy. They take it for granted others are able to correct thier 'misteaks'[1] or will reply back with a "Hunh?", and the idea can eventually be parsed out of the conversation. It's a question of discipline, of placing a real value of your communications ability and keeping that ability at its peak.

I read over every e-mail I before I click send and ask "Do I sound lucid, professional and do I actually communicate my idea well"? It takes a bit longer to do, but it also cuts down on mis-communication.

Soko
[1] Taken from that old poster that says "Know Misteaks Aloud!"

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[ShinGouki]

there is actually a third, more sinister, problem at play here. namely, the fact that the vast majority of the workforce are overpaid morons who are just barely qualified to be mexican migrant workers.

granted, i'm allergic to capitalization because it wastes keystrokes unnecessarily and my punctuation is sometimes skewed by my haste, but i'm nowhere near the drooling invertebrate that is the average american worker.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[RocketScientist]

I think you're right, it's just unprofessional.

A lot of the IM-style shortcuts are intended for people who can't type quickly, and who think they're in too much of a hurry. Being a professional is partially about never letting your coworkers or customers think that you're in too much of a hurry to provide them with a wealth of respect. It's about having the time to do it right.

Examples like 'u r' instead of 'you are' don't necessarily mean the person doesn't think about grammar or spelling, it means they think it's faster to do it the short way. It's a lack of skill in typing that's the root cause, and it conveys a disrespect to the recipient of the email. "What, you couldn't even take the time to type out 4 additional characters for me?"

Of course, the same managers that can't be bothered to spell out "you are" are the ones who say "utilize" instead of "use".

I'd rather, however, get a nearly unintelligible email than a 5-minute long voice mail strung together with "uh" while managing to leave out every pertinent detail and end with "hey just call me back" without leaving me a phone number. That might just be me, though. I hate voice mail.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[ghereheade]

Righting as a engineer: neetness Counts.

It don't matter nun iffin it's a skematic, report, nor memmo, the facts is that the apperrance can say lots about the persons thurowness and attention to detail. If things is messy thin the reeders will have a ritefully lowe opinyun of the person that done the writing. And that goes for gramer and spilling in addishun to all the report/memo content. How mini people can get a interview much les a job if there CV/resume looks like this comment?

As I try to impress on young engineers, neatness counts in all aspects of your job.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[anagama]

• 
  I'd rather, however, get a nearly unintelligible email than a 5-minute long voice mail strung together with "uh" while managing to leave out every pertinent detail and end with "hey just call me back" without leaving me a phone number. That might just be me, though. I hate voice mail.
  

Whoever invented voicemail deserves to be shot - many times at close range in the head.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[rawb]

(don't have great writing skills - as log as you also hire someone to) which gives your credibility a hit. Allowing yourself the luxury of a native English speaker being able to over-look that error and still unuderstand you is what starts the downward spiral.

Hey... I "unuderstand" him just fine :-/

/obligatory

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read over every e-mail I before I click send...

I do that too. I treat every email as a miniature essay which will be scrutinised. I even do it for my Slashdot posts. Of course, it costs me enough extra time that I pay the penalty by being modded down as redundant or just ignored because I'm the 200th poster instead of the 20th. I've taken to posting anonymously quite a lot because of this.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[Anonymous Coward]

Allowing yourself the luxury of a native English speaker being able to over-look that error and still unuderstand you is what starts the downward spiral.
Luckily, as a native English speaker, I can still "unuderstand" you.

As far as the article goes, this is the issue - people let thier communications skills atrophy.
In spite of your concern for clear communication, you have managed to avoid learning how to spell "their".

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[pipingguy]

Anything as badly written as those examples would be deleted from my inbox before I got to the end of the first sentence.

Maybe SpamAssassin should have this as an option - more than x% mispelled words of total content of message triggers auto tagging as spam.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[pipingguy]

It seems like there are two separate possible problems here: people are coming into a company without the writing skills they need, and/or employees are not treating email communication with the same professionalism as other company documents.

I have to wonder if intentional ambiguity in writing offers a possible defence in courts of law. Marketing language certainly uses alot of it since it is designed to obfuscate.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[Jason R]

It's spelled their, not "thier". But that's beating a dead horse...

As far as comprehension, I understood the parent message, simple spelling mistakes are okay in my book. But I would find the use of 'ur' or 'could u send me...' insulting.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[aquarian]

A Technical Writer shouldn't have to do much more than parse the comments in the code,

What comments? We technical writers should be so lucky to have comments to work with!

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[colinrichardday]

But that delete many porn offers!

Or is that the idea?

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[parkrrrr]

"What, you couldn't even take the time to type out 4 additional characters for me?"

Lots of style guides would recommend that you spell out the word "four" rather than using the numeral. That was true even before TXT-speak, but I'd think that it's even more important with all the idiots who think "for" is spelled "4" and "too" or "to" (but never "two") are spelled "2."

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[iabervon]

A good engineer actually does relatively little production of code; the real work is in arranging the problem such that the correct solution is intuitively obvious. Once you can explain exactly how it works, you can write good code. The real role of a technical writer is to be a novice to the code and ask about all the things that experienced people take for granted.

As for communication, there's a big difference between having errors such as "as log as", "thier", and "mis-communication" and making the text unclear. In the example:

"hI KATHY i am sending u the assignmnet again," one student wrote to her recently. "i had sent you the assignment earlier but i didnt get a respond. If u get this assgnment could u please respond . thanking u for ur cooperation."

I cringed at the writing, but the only thing that is at all ambiguous is the original punctuation of the first sentence, where the author of the article, following many style manuals[1], puts a comma inside the quotes which was (probably) not in the source. The same is true of:

"i need help," said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. "i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you".

except that the author of the article helpfully mentions that the source didn't contain that comma.

In the other examples, on the other hand, it is hard to tell what the author meant, which is really the problem. What does "(they in Barry file)" mean? This is a message that is likely to be misleading to anyone who actually needed the information from it. The issue is not so much the grammatical errors but the vagueness; "I updated the status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forwarded us via e-mail, which are in Barry's file" would not actually improve the email substantially, because we still don't know whether Barry's file contains the problematic portion of the status report or the reports of the problems, and Barry probably has more than one file. Having the language error-free just makes it harder to tell that you didn't actually understand the point.

The point is really effective communication and not grammar compliance. Most writing could be corrected, but if all recipients read it the way the author intended (I read over every e-mail I write before I click send and ask "Do I sound lucid and professional, and do I actually communicate my idea well?"), there's no need to actually do it.

[1] The latest versions of many style manuals actually support putting the surrounding sentence's punctuation outside in cases where the punctuation is important to the quoted material.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes the problem is not so much the writer as the policies of the employer.

With appoximately 1 month of professional experience I was given the task of having a 300+ page document reviewed prior to sending it to our customer. I obtained input from the relevant experienced engineers and I asked one of the technical writers to review it as well.

The engineers came back with a few comments. The technical writer came back with a few hundred. I was instructed to not invite a technical writer to a document review in the future. I was not in agreement with the decision, but I didn't control the money and I still don't now.

On a positive note, from a grammatical standpoint it was the best document I've ever delivered.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[RocketScientist]

You're right. I think the AP style guide (long time since high school journalism class, so I very well could be wrong) specified that numbers less than 20 got spelled out. I also seem to remember from my college tech writing class that it was OK either way. Who knows, just pick a way and go with it :).

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineers need to be able to write, because it's a part of their job. I've heard engineers complain when reprimanded for poor spelling and say "but that's not my job". When the boss asked him to send an email it became part of his job. Naturally, it should be done properly and with the same attention to detail that he applies to his engineering work. Using casual, colloquial or poor language indicates that the sender is unable or unwilling to communicate clearly. Unable is bad, but unwilling is worse.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[rsidd]

"The illegibility of email"

I think you mean "incomprehensibility". Something illegible is something that can't be read (smudged, bad handwriting, whatever), not something that can't be understood.

--Vocabulary nazi

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[Khelder]

...since C, Java, Perl and Python are but different languages where you are trying to speak to a machine, not a human.

Early in my formal CS education, a professor told us "Think of programming not as telling the computer what to do, but telling other people what you want the computer to do." Unless you are and will always be the sole developer of a piece of software, it's not just about writing code that can get the computer to do the desired thing, it's also about making it clear to other humans what's going on.

I know this isn't the main point of the parent (or possibly even one of the points), but I've read enough bad code that I wanted to argue for legible code.

Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional?

[Anonymous Coward]

Allowing yourself the luxury of a native English speaker being able to over-look that error and still unuderstand you is what starts the downward spiral.

people let thier communications skills atrophy

I read over every e-mail I before I click send

Spelling And Grammar Still Apply

[A Red Pikmin]

For some reason I've never understood, a lot of people seem to think that because they write electronically, they don't have to spell correctly or use proper grammar. And even if they are naturally bad at such things, it's not like most e-mail clients lack spelling and/or grammar checks. I have no idea why people do this; especially in a situation like this where the writing is more formal and precise. Although for myself, I've conformed to more or less standard writing form in electronic communications.

Re:Spelling And Grammar Still Apply

[techno-vampire]

I remember once getting a flame from my supervisor once that was completely incoherent. From what I could tell, she was chewing me out for something I'd done that wasn't wrong at all. (She had about a third of my experience at the company, and a fifth of my skill.) Instead of addressing the issue, I quoted back the worst sentence and asked her to rephrase it in standard English so that I could understand what she was saying. She never replied.

Re:Spelling And Grammar Still Apply

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the key to electronic communication is why is it being used. I often use email instead of phoning someone due to the nature of our work I would end up leaving voicemail which people dont really like. So a quickly written email with a few typos and some questionable grammer is ok. However using numeric characters and shortboard is not appropriate in a business setting at all.

The other two uses for email, a replacement for memos; and a replacement for letters are a different matter. In these cases I would agree that correct grammer and spelling are very important. As is, and even more important use of white space.

Re:Spelling And Grammar Still Apply

[Sycraft-fu]

I think part of it may be letting informal electronic communication laxes influence formal ones. I mean when using an instant messenger, it's pretty impractical to copyedit your messages. Unless you are a very fast typist and proofer, it'd just take too long. I also personally refuse to do much editing to forum postings like Slashdot. It's just not worth my time, especially since I'm very bad at it. I deal with a lot of hard to understand stuff (dealing with a large amount of foriegn students) so I kind of read over errors.

However the problem is if people let that infect the way they operate in a professional setting. If I'm sending out a departmental announcement, I'll read it over carefully and ensure that it's as correct as I can make it, sometimes even have someone else proof it.

Though I think there is a flipside as well, that some people get overly fussy about electronic communication. People will find one misspelled word in a post and cry and whine about it (particularly on /.). However you'll often find a word or two that's incorrect or grammar that's less than perfect in a book, which was written by a professional writer and edited by professional editors. In a book I read receantly I noticed they used 'had' where it should have been 'has'. Probably a typo, rather than an actual tense mistake, but somehow it survived to the finished product.

I think in general people need to make a bit more effort in a professional setting, but others need to lighten up, especally in non-professional settings.

Re:Spelling And Grammar Still Apply

[Detritus]

Most spell checkers are mediocre and I've never seen a grammar checker that was worth using.

Maybe Microsoft should spend some money on improving their spelling and grammar checking software. That would actually be a useful enhancement, and selling point, for their Office software.

Re:Spelling And Grammar Still Apply

[Idarubicin]

Instead of addressing the issue, I quoted back the worst sentence and asked her to rephrase it in standard English so that I could understand what she was saying.

Her reply was succinct: three simple words. "You're fired, smartass."

Be professional--you'll go farther, and not make so many enemies along the way. Even a bad boss is still your boss. Address the issues in the email as best you can, then express concern over whether you interpreted it correctly. Feel free to cc: her supervisor if you're concerned about the lack of professionalism your supervisor has shown. Bonus points if you talk to your boss' boss in person about the larger issue of the company being poorly reflected in sloppy email communications.

Re:Spelling And Grammar Still Apply

[techno-vampire]

Her reply was succinct: three simple words. "You're fired, smartass."

Wrong. First, she had no authority to do so, second, I was considerably senior to her in the company (I'd just never gone into maglement like she did.) and third, she never responded at all. Did I also mention that she wouldn't dare fire me because I could solve tech support problems nobody else on the team understood?

Not Problem

[trilks]

Email grammer are good enough Everyone rights good on /. to.

Mr Pot,

[Anonymous Coward]

Meet Mr Kettle.

Come on, I can see the humor in this in its own right, but this is /. 'fer christ's sake!

Just Waiting For It....

[Stephen Samuel]

Methinks the Grammar Nazis are gonna go hog-wild on this thread.

*sigh*

[Raynach]

Boss: (no subject)
j00 r fir3d!!!11 pwnz3d!!

Worker: OMGWTFBBQ
u hax!!1

Nice to see that we can still keep it professional here.

Re:*sigh*

[jaredcat]

huh?

omgwtfbbq = oh my god! What the fuck, barbeque?

Dilbert would be proud

[Jrod5000 at RPI]

Today I got an email inviting me to a meeting with the description, "We need to get together and create a plan for the plan..." YES! Planning for the plan! HOW PRODUCTIVE AND INGENIOUS! I'm pretty sure it was a typo resulting from two sentence fragments jammed together, but it maked my manager look like a fool. sadly, i get stuff like that all the time. yay for military contracting. big bucks, small brains.

Re:Dilbert would be proud

[Anonymous Coward]

maked my manager?
try made

YOUR FIRED!

Re:Dilbert would be proud

[Anonymous Coward]

YOUR FIRED? Try "you're." YOU'RE FIRED!

Learn Them Some Grammar

[Ctrl Alt De1337]

It sounds like there are a lot of people who could use some lessons from Strong Bad's Rhythm and Grammar. Though there's a helpful song near the beginning, wait until the end and click on the arm then the CD a few times.

Re:Learn Them Some Grammar

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

I've come to believe that this penny-arcade strip should be made into a full-size poster and hung in schools throughout our great nation.

Spell Czech

[Easy2RememberNick]

Eye halve a spelling chequer. It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marques four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word and weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write. It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid. It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite. Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it. I am shore your pleased two no.
Its letter perfect in it's weight. My chequer tolled me sew.

Sauce Unknown

(Reader's Digest.)

Re:Spell Czech

[iabervon]

If your math's Czech, you're probably better off...

It will only get worse.

[RobTheJedi]

As more and more people are using phones with SMS/Text messaging capability, their spelling and punctuation will only get worse. Not to mention all the cryptic acronyms. My spelling and grammar are not the greatest, but I married an English major to compensate.

Re:It will only get worse.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to disagree, I don't think SMS/Text messaging is the problem to blame. Think of it, our generation actually write more than the previous generation. Considering all the email send and posts we make on forums. It is said that practice makes perfect, but it's not the case with us, thus I can't help but feel the problem lies outside of the technology domain. If anything, I feel that writing more because of the ubiquity of computers have improved my writing. .segmond

Re:It will only get worse.

[multipartmixed]

Only their punctuation will get worse. Predictive-text systems are much faster to use than the push-push-push method, but require spelling skills in order to be useful. Unfortunately, these systems additionally complicate the entry of punctuation symbols.

(ref: Tegic T9, Motorola iTAP, etc)

Re:It will only get worse.

[eofpi]

Looking around the internet, the VAST majority of forum posts and, in particular, instant messages and irc chats have been detrimental to language skills.

Sturgeon's law falls an order of magnitude short for electronic discourse.

Re:It will only get worse.

[poot_rootbeer]

My spelling and grammar are not the greatest, but I married an English major to compensate.

And conversely, an English major married you to compensate for the miniscule earning power that English majors have...

Re:It will only get worse.

[dagbrown]

T9 is a great boon to text messages. It's way, way, way harder to write a message in txt spk with T9 than it is to write with correct spelling. Many phones even helpfully make sentences start with a capital letter for you.

Re:It will only get worse.

[Idarubicin]

Not to mention all the cryptic acronyms.

That's a sentence fragment. Rewrite it so you don't embarrass yourself on Slashdot.

Please bring home milk and eggs.

Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd language?

[updog]

"Considering how highly educated our people are, many can't write clearly in their day-to-day work."

The article doesn't once mention the possibility that the authors of some of these emails may not have learned English as their primary language. Here's a new flash for them: English is not the most widely spoken language in the world (Chinese is).

As we have more and more global influence in America's corporate workplace, we're going to see more and more people who have learned English as a 2nd language, which is probably the real reason why "corporate America can't build a sentence".

When corporate email goes bad

[Himring]

I got this email from our training supervisor one day. He's a cool guy and we joke a lot. His email was like, "how's it going?" And I wrote back, "my ovaries hurt" (I'mma guy btw), and then he writes back, "50 people in the training room just read that.... [he had his desktop pulled up on the big screen]." He was training on email that day.

Erm, I'mma not sure if that was grammatically correct r not....

Language evolves...

[k4_pacific]

Get over it. Over time, the writers of this broken English will develop a sense of what sounds right and what doesn't and it will be a recognized dialect of English.

Perhaps this is just language becoming more efficient, closer to total information entropy.

Re:Language evolves...

[centipetalforce]

Are you serious? The whole purpose of TFA is about the ability to be concise and clear.
If you had read the samples it's not just the broken english, but the lack of any ability to make a point that the reader can actually understand. I don't care if they misspell a word here and there, I only care about being able to understand them.
I deal with clients all the time and it seems like they have no concern about how unprofessional or dumb they come across. It's shocking, really, how some business men have such a poor grasp on the english language, and how willing they are to show it.

Re:Language evolves...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the heck are people taking the American "we must increase efficiency by 5.6% at all costs this quarter" mentality and applying it to a fucking language? Do you honestly think a single piece of good literature will come out of a language based on taking the most shortcuts possible? The last stop here is Newspeak.

This is why I support the France's strict language protectionism.

Re:Language evolves...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If that principle held true, our language would have splintered into hundreds of incompatible dialects by now.

It hasn't.

Language does change, yes. But very, very slowly. The language you speak every day is basically identical to a language spoken four hundred years ago.

Most often, people use the "language evolves, get over it" thing as a way of covering up the fact that they're lazy and don't want to learn the rules.

Re:Language evolves...

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't about language evolution. The purpose of language is communication. Language evolution is fine so long as all parties involved understand the message. According to the article, these incoherent messages are not being understood. Written English changing is not the problem. We could all likely do with less punctuation (written English did not always have punctuation) and spellings have changed over time. Personally, I would like to get rid of the word "well" for anything other than a hole from which water is drawn. The issue at hand is that people are not presenting the information they would like to convey in a complete and coherent manner. The language can change or the language can remain fixed, but without comprehensibility an email will still be jibberish.

Re:Language evolves...

[izomiac]

True, but a prerequisite of it being a new dialect is that it is understandable to those who speak it. Since the problem is miscommunication due to e-mails being written this way I'd call it poor writing, not an example of language evolving.

Re:Language evolves...

[demachina]

Guess that explains why Shakespeare and Chaucer are so easy for most people to read and comprehend today.

Re:Language evolves...

[PhoenixOne]

>the writers of this broken English will develop a sense of what sounds right and what doesn't and it will be a recognized dialect of English
>
Maybe but, right now, they are just driving me crazy!

Being a product of the US school system and mildly dyslexic, my language skills are mostly crap (I fully expect to make at least 3-4 errors in this post alone ;)) but I try to write in a way that makes sense.

It's one thing to make simple mistakes (like using "e.g." when you should use "i.e.") but I hate having to spend time trying to figure out what a client meant by their email rather then just reading what they wrote.

Re:Language evolves...

[DaFallus]

Does anyone else remember when it was suggested that ebonics be recognized as its own language, and that it should be taught in school? I was a freshman in high school at the time, I think it was back in 1997...

That idea was as short lived as it was stupid.

Re:Language evolves...

[MenTaLguY]

I'm not as bothered by the dialect as I am by the lack of coherent organization. The latter is the worse problem.

For example, let's say you had written this instead of your actual post:

Maybe the writers of this broken English write more efficiently, and over time it will be a recognized dialect of English. You should get over it: they will develop a sense of what sounds right and what doesn't, becoming closer to total information entropy.

I think it is safe to say that this rewriting, (while still correctly spelt and roughly grammatical), obscures or even alters your intended meaning. This is exactly what many people are doing to themselves.

The dialect issue just makes things worse. If your hypothesis regarding the entropy of the new dialect is correct, please remember that increased entropy makes reliable communication more difficult.

My feeling is that the new dialect is optimized for bandwidth, at the expense of precision and comprehensibility. I can accept that tradeoff for IM and similar bandwidth-constrained environments.

However, it's frustrating to deal with a high-entropy dialect when more bandwidth is available, particularly where (as in business) clarity and precision are more important.

Re:Language evolves...

[wwest4]

Yeah, but isn't the point that Shakespearean English is not incomprehensible to American English speakers? Middle English a la Chaucer dates back more than 400 years, so that's not really an ideal example.

That being said, the original point isn't worthless - breaking rules is a part of how languages adapt, and the speed of these changes is not linear over all time, as Twirlip seemed to be implying. Laziness, for example, injects variablity into the "gene pool" of languages. If the goal is really precision in communication, and the evolution of languages is the heuristic by which we arrive at that global optimum of effective communication, then some level of random variability (from laziness, creativity, laws, war, whatever) is essential to limiting stagnation at partial solutions. I guess it's a self-fulfilling system, on one hand, but on the other hand, that seems to be part of the nature of evolving systems, including languages.

Re:Language evolves...

[wwest4]

> ... ebonics...
> That idea was as short lived as it was stupid.

Whether or not it should be taught in schools is a separate issue from whether or not it is its own language.

Without prior exposure, "ebonics" is difficult to understand by American English speakers - the vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar are markedly different. This is the case with Bavarian dialects and Chinese dialects, for example. Some in the know even consider those differences severe enough to count those dialects as distinct languages. It really depends on what rules you use to define the boundaries - you might not count dialects that result from socioeconomic factors as opposed to those that result from geographical separation. In that case ebonics wouldn't count as a language... but the rules of classification are hardly etched in stone.

Re:Language evolves...

[demachina]

"is not incomprehensible to American English speakers?"

I really doubt its much more comprehensible to English English speakers, English English is much closer to American English than either are to Shakespeare's English. Of course he was an artist so maybe thats why no one understands him.

Not entirely sure many of us would have an easy time understanding urban American(black) english because its diverged and innovating rapidly and thats over the course of a few decades.

Don't imagine most seniors would be very comfortable trying to read the english variant most young people are using in IM today.

"Middle English a la Chaucer dates back more than 400 years, so that's not really an ideal example.
"

But Twirlip said language change "very, very slowly" and its nearly identical over 400 years and Twirp is never wrong. Whats difference does tacking on another 300 years or so make.

Re:Language evolves...

[wwest4]

Maybe it's just personal bias then. To me, Shakespeare seems to be closer to Am. English than ebonics, but you won't catch me claiming to have done any studies.

Mostly I just wanted to suggest that there is room for both sensibilities - without some level of adherence, you have Babel. With total adherence, you have stagnation at local optima. Maintaining the effectiveness of communication under changing conditions is a bland way of saying that language evolves toward global optima. Misuse is as important as consistency in the continued success of language as a communications medium; I suspect that broadly painting misuse as lazy and adherence as stubborn righteousness are both cases of misattribution of a certain degree.

Re:Language evolves...

[HalfFlat]

Just on the point of Chinese dialects:

Languages like Cantonese and Hakka and Mandarin are for the most part mutually unintelligable. They are at least as dissimilar as European Romance languages are.

The word 'dialect' is often used to describe them, but there are much greater differences between them than one might expect given that appellation. The common use of dialect in this context is probably at least partly due to the common writing system, and also to political concerns.

Re:Language evolves...

[techno-vampire]

Yes, it will become a dialect of English; a non-standard one and using it will display a lack of a proper education.

Re:Language evolves...

[vrai]

Shakespeare did not use standard seventeenth century English. Much of the language used in his plays was archaic (or at least very esoteric) for the time. Partly because his plays dealt with historical matters, and partly to allow the use of Iambic pentameter.

Re:Language evolves...

[demachina]

So what if it was archaic. Twirp said language changes "very, very slowly" so archaic English should still be "nearly identical" according to Twirp.

Re:Language evolves...

[vrai]

Archaic means "belonging to the ancient past". English has not changed much in the last few hundred years, it has changed in the last thousand. A thousand years ago people in England spoken either Anglo-Saxon, or Norman (a relative of old French and Scandinavian languages). It wasn't until Norman rule was a couple of centuries old that English emerged as a common language.

Re:Language evolves...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be the most annoying troll here. What a little man you are.

Holy crap!

[wolfemi1]

Corporate American e-mail can't read?

God help us

[kuwan]

Not everyone agrees. Kaitlin Duck Sherwood of San Francisco, author of a popular how-to manual on effective e-mail, argued in an interview that exclamation points could help convey intonation, thereby avoiding confusion in some e-mail.

"If you want to indicate stronger emphasis, use all capital letters and toss in some extra exclamation points," Sherwood advises in her guide...

Personally I like the other person's suggestion that you should be allowed only two exclamation points in [your] whole life. I've seen SO MANY DAMN CAPS and exclamation points!!! that I WANT TO SHOOT SOMEONE!!!!!

--
Sounds like a scam, but it works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo

Re:God help us

[ferreth]

Everything in moderation, I say.

Use all CAPS for emphasis:

"Please be sure to FILL IN THE DATE when you sign your form."

Use an exclamation point at the end of something important:

"Half the people didn't date the form we asked them to sign!"

The problem is over-use, not straight use.

On another note, I do not think the examples given are that ridiculous; people write some pretty crappy notes when they just let it "drool out onto the screen". I have looked at emails I've written to friends or people I work with closely and seen that I wrote crap. However, I didn't spend any time writing because I assumed I would get it close enough for them to get the meaning. Anything important or written to a general audience, gets more effort put into it. I ALWAYS preview my posts on Slashdot!

Re:God help us

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I like the other person's suggestion that you should be allowed only two exclamation points in [your] whole life.

I couldn't agree more. Kaitlin Duck Sherwood's example makes that writer come off as an unprofessional moron.

Re:God help us

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a scam, but it works.

I don't give a fuck whether it "works" or not. It's a pyramid SCAM, and a few tiers down the line a whole lot of people are not going to get free iPods.

If you're going to spam Slashdot with SCAMS, please put the details of the SCAMS you're trying to sucker people into in your sig, instead of adding spam about SCAMS at the end of your posts. People like me have disabled sig display for a reason - it's because we don't like being forced to read spam about SCAMS. You are forcing me to read about your SCAM, and I don't want to. That's rather impolite, don't you think?

Re:God help us

[ehiris]

Not to mention too many question marks. I totally hate it when people forward me e-mails and their only contribution to the e-mail thread is: ???

Re:God help us

[Piquan]

Okay, now we're going to have to limit you to two all-caps words too.

Illiteracy

[jd]

Ok, so that's all three R's the Western world is bad at, and all covered in one day on Slashdot!

Pathe News demonstrates, though, that this is not a new problem, or limited to the Americas.

I want a meeting over this!

[Dystopian Rebel]

Re: Illiteracy In The Workplace

All,

Moving forward, I think this issue runs counter to our ethos and partner-committments in the current ecosystem.

Please give the team a heads up and touch base with them over this so we can ramp everyone up on the issue and have an ideas-exchange in the short to medium time-frame.

If there's issues and anyone has any comments or concerns, have them bring their solutions-focussed recommendations.

Your Manager

Schools are Working as Planned

[jazman_777]

The government school system does not exist to make intelligent, articulate, well-read (breadth and depth) people who have coherent thought processes and write well. If you want your children to be that way, hop to it--that's your responsibility.

Re:Schools are Working as Planned

[potpie]

I don't think it's the school's responsibility to improve your email habits. I don't write essays the way I write emails, nor do I compose haiku or slashdot responses the way I write essays or emails.

If anybody ever tried to use email (or AIM) grammar in an essay, what do you suppose would be the effect?

The civil war was caused mainly for some reasons... the South LOLed @ the North and said "g2g" and blew them off... then so the North was like "I kik ur @$$, South" and it went down from there...

1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d

[Triumph The Insult C]

s0? irc rul3z. ema!l iz 4 lam3rz n3way

Re:1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d

[fiftyfly]

Sure - after all only old people use email.

Re:1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d

[Ghouki]

wtf! roflmao.....stfu!

Re:1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d

[Ghouki]

only in Korea

The Illiteracy of Corporate American E-Mail

[Anonymous Coward]

Unpossible!

Learning to type

[proteonic]

I would argue that some of this is happening because people do not necessarily bother to learn how to type properly. Consequently, it takes more effort to properly punctuate and capitalize those emails. Correct spelling is that much more of a chore as well (including making corrections). As far as grammar, one could argue that if someone's concentrating on typing, they're not necessarily focused on proper sentence structure.

None the less, it's still pretty pathetic and inexcusable. It can't hurt to read it over before pressing "send".

Obligory quote

[DragonPup]

"Me fail english? That unpossible!"

Re:Obligory quote

[Anonymous Coward]

i believe it is "me fail engwish..." i mean cmon.

Re:Obligory quote

[AtomicBomb]

In New Zealand, it was a true story. A survey for the call centre managers highlights the written communication problem.

Many front line call centre operators are high school dropouts. English is their mother tongue. Conversational English is not at all a problem for them. However, written English is another story. Many operators are scared to reply emails exactly because of this reason....

Re:Obligory quote

[realityfighter]

My grammar am perfection.

Problem is...

[Sebby]

People write emails like they speak. No, I'm not talking about 'getto' talk, or anything like that - what I mean is that they type stuff,don't look back, and just send it. They don't take the time to re-read what they wrote to make sure it's correct, clear or coherent.

Add to that the fact that most people are slow at typing, and their thoughts outrun their fingers and they forget to type some of those words. I see this every day in our online support desk requests.

People just need to take the time to read what they write in their correspondance, and most just don't.

Re:Problem is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you. Too often i've received official business letters starting with "wasup" or "hi". It really makes me want to cave their heads with my steel toe.

I Love It!

[domukun367]

I'm happy with this "functional illiteracy" of the unwashed masses of my colleagues: all my emails contain correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, form etc.

It makes me look so much more professional than my colleagues, with their "SMS grammar and spelling". People always pay more attention and give more respect to properly written emails and documents.

Can you imagine?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

From the story:

"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy," said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study.

Can you imagine if Tolstoy where around today and had to write an email style manual?

Re:Can you imagine?

[The Dark Rabbit]

"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy," said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study.

Can you imagine if Tolstoy where around today and had to write an email style manual?

Well, given that he'd probably write it in Russian, I doubt that it would have the effect that these American companies are looking for.

And why did that woman use Tolstoy as an example? As a member of the Russian nobility, it can be assumed that he spoke at least one language other than Russian (French, at the very least), but I wonder if he'd be the expert in English that companies are looking for.

It's not funny

[shrikel]

I am almost disappointed to see this story listed as "funny." It's actually tragic, in my opinion.

Granted, I am a word purist. I hate to see people slaughter the written language. That is, I don't mind it at all when it's intentional. But when so many people are incapable of writing a coherent email in a serious situation, there's a problem. I like the part in the article where he says that multiple exclamation points, smileys, etc. are fine in personal emails, but too many people just drool into their outbox.

Almost nothing I come across bugs me more than the pseudo word 'ur.' (Yes, Ur is a place. 'ur' is not a proper contraction for 'your' or 'you're.')

Re:It's not funny

[Spy der Mann]

Almost nothing I come across bugs me more than the pseudo word 'ur.' (Yes, Ur is a place. 'ur' is not a proper contraction for 'your' or 'you're.')

You're right. Ur is an ancient mesopotamian city. :)

What's so special about e-mail?

[Technically Inept]

e-mail illiteracy is just illiteracy. The rise of e-mail is just exposing how many people used to get by without writing anything down.

Re:What's so special about e-mail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which.. is pretty much exactly what the article says.

Yeah tell me about it!

[syousef]

D00d do u kn0w h0w f3w 0f th3 c0d3rz I w3rk w1th g3t l33t sp3ak? 1t Sh0uld b3 a un1 c1a33 w1th 3xamz nd a11!

you can lay down the law

[ChipMonk]

When customer requests are involved, you can tell him (in so many words), "Failure to write clearly will result in an incomplete product specification. Therefore: You will use entire words and sentences. You will break your text into reasonable paragraphs. You will explain in clear words what the customer wants. If you do not, I will send it back to you for a re-write, no matter how small the infraction. Any delay resulting from this will not be my responsibility. This is not negotiable."

I don't need e-mail!

[CrystalFalcon]

I just read these magazines for the nice pictures, I don't read the text.

It's too small to read, anyway.

The pictures come in my e-mail now, too. Isn't that nice?

Not PM's

[lateralus_1024]

Project Managers will usually do a good job of writing, and including the right people in office emails.

I'm glad that a lot of local CS programs are now requiring technical writing and/or professional writing courses as part of the undergrad requirements. At least my school is.

I also think that it wouldn't hurt for employers explicitly encourage email standards. Seriously, if you frown upon that idea, you're likely an offender. The encouraged style shouldn't mean you have to write Tolstoy-esque emails...just don't write your mysterious thought process, spell-check it and click send.

Oh, and hope that Slashdot posts haven't ruined you by now

Too bad, there is no breakdown

[mi]

Between people, for whom English is the native language, and the others... I'd be curious, how my kind are doing :-)

Ahhh, bask in the irony....

[wowbagger]

Too many people regard email, blog posts, and other forms of electronic communications are being exempt from the normal rules of writing.

It is one thing to use IM-speak when you are using a phone or other limited-input capability device, but when you have a full keyboard, use full words and complete sentences, please!

I often wonder about the future - much of what we know of the past is from the letters people exchanged and saved (back when getting a letter across the country or across the ocean took weeks such letters were treasured). Now, we dash off an email, it gets read, and it gets deleted. Gmail aside, I wonder how this will affect the future's view of this era.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Ahnteis]

Newsflash: In corporate AMERICA, English is required learning.

Newsflash 2: People who speak English as a second language are often better at correct grammar then native English-speakers.

asdfasd

[Anonymous Coward]

sadfdasf

Spelling snobs

[asliarun]

While i agree that some of the examples mentioned were a little extreme, i challenge the need to have perfect spelling, syntax, and grammar. The purpose of language, at least in the corporate realm, is to communicate. The purpose is not to create a literary masterpiece that would tickle Shakespear's bones.

Yes, communication should be unambiguous and be readable by an ordinary person. However, other requirements such as proper capitalization, placement of commas, perfect spelling, etc. are only good-to-have features of any communication, and not essential requirements.

I also think that it has become a fashion of sorts to bemoan the falling standards of grammar and correct English usage. Yes, the standard might have fallen a bit over the years. However, they haven't gone through the floor, as one would be led to believe. Furthermore, with the advent of technology and electronic communication devices, the focus is now on being brief, being up to the point, and getting the message across in as little time as possible. One simply does not have the luxury of composing verbiage at leisure and on company time, when the more pressing needs of posting on slashdot beckon.

Re:Spelling snobs

[perper]

I have to admit that you're correct. Business communication should be fast and efficient, including coherency. However, I live in a place- the Southern United States- where if you use the correct form of certain words or sentences people look at you like you're speaking an alien tongue. In a certain area, if you pronounce the word Plateau correctly, you risk bodily or emotional harm. Once I was talking to my best friend. I said something to the extent of: "I do this." She replied: "So don't I." That's not a typo. She actually said that and when I corrected her, she thought I was wrong. Whenever she emails me, I have to sit and read her messages over and over to differentiate sentences and words. The kicker is that neither of us has a job. There is no professional setting and she still does it. I love her but she's almost 18 and has severe spelling and grammar problems. I can understand what you mean but I think sometimes we need spelling snobs and grammar nazis to keep things straight. Too much uptightness is dumb. Even this message has grammar mistakes. I'm not claiming to be perfect. It's just that I've seen some of the worst cases.

I'm not really surprised...

[The Angry Mick]

When I was in college there was a continuous bickering between the different department heads over what the courses should be required for which degrees. Every year, it was the Business Administration heads that would ask that the requirements for English be severely reduced to just the basic 101 and 102 level courses and nothing more.

It's sad, really, that things don't seem to have changed all that much . . .

I'm in search of 26K+/annual job...

[Anonymous Coward]

...plus $4k if the job is located in California, New York, the Washington DC area, or any high cost-of-living blue state. My spelling and grammar border on impeccable. I can consistently type at 75+ WPM and have for the past eight years demonstrated excellent customer service skills in a number of wholesale and retail jobs. I guarantee you that if you put work in front of me it will get done, and if I don't know how to do it I'll learn quickly or find someone who can and works for the lower 25th percentile of market rate.

Any takers?

ps - I'll rock the socks off of any of these illiterate scrubs mentioned in the CNet article!

Oh no!

[mshiltonj]

Please tell me my emails are not used as bad examples!

Funny job ad and response

[A nonymous Coward]

I responded to an ad for an "imbedded" engineer, had to demangle the email address to even send in the resume, and was turned down because (a) I did not meet the quals (which had not appeared in the job ad) and (b) my resume had spelling errors. I thought for a few seconds of sending back a corrected copy of their ad, but I figured they must have a quota on spelling errors per month, they had used it up themselves, and it didn't sound like any boss I'd want anyway :-)

Re:H-1Bs: Chinese Engineers vs. American Engineers

[AndroidCat]

The problem is not American engineers. Most do know how to write in understandable English.

Really?

Best quote

[Anonymous Coward]

instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen

That's the most accurate description of the phenomenon that I have ever heard.

People confusing where/were, they're/their/there, etc is nothing new. However, I've noticed an increasing trend in people using "his" instead of "he's" or "he is". What the fuck is up with that?

his going 2 b here soon

If there's one thing that drives me nutty...

[mikael]

... it's newspaper articles or stories which catch my interest, are well balanced and cover the story in detail, but never

reminds me of this dilbert cartoon

[towaz]

Saw this ages ago on attrition, seem to fit well

http://www.attrition.org/postal/dilbert_email.jpg

Things are only going to get worse...

[anactofgod]

...when the generation raised on "text messaging" hits the work force.

Back in my day, we had to write complete sentences! In pen! On paper! Going uphill! Both ways! In the snow! And, we LIKED it!

Re:Things are only going to get worse...

[narcc]

Back in my day, we had to write complete sentences! In pen! On paper! Going uphill! Both ways! In the snow! And, we LIKED it!

Oh yeah? That's nothing! We had to write in cuneiform! On clay tablets! In a language we didn't know! And we got along just fine! Damn kids today don't know what they've got when you give it to them!

Nothing to Do with Email...

[Anonymous Coward]

E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited...

Really?
And what is instrinicly different from any other medium that uses characters to communicate, like hand writing, letters, etc?

Improve keyboarding skills, and people won't look for shortcuts because they "hen peck" when they type. Like handwriting, it only gets better with practice and instruction.

Grammar and spelling is part of English class - quit using scapegoats.

Education useful? imagine that...

[Telastyn]

I've seen some pretty dreadful writing in my time, but even with typoes and grammatical errors it still manages to get the idea across. Some of the examples in the article though don't even achieve that...

I wonder if that's another problem with employees who have English as a second language [though in my experience, those who learn formal English later in life tend to use formal English more].

It's unbearable..

[doowy]

I formerly considered myself pretty poor in spelling/grammar (you can probably pick errors out of this very sentance), but with the degradation of attention in the business world, I now consider myself an advanced writer.

I had one business encounter I'll never forget. The guy was from the UK and spoke english as a first language. This guy's emails took me forever to decode - honestly! Even then I could never figure them out.

And it wasn't in error - it was intentional. You know, stuff like:

y0 m8, dat repo B gr8 4 muh prp

which might mean "That report meets our requirements."

I couldn't believe this fool was able to keep his job. I honestly can't recall them - but some were so bad we couldn't even decipher the general topic of the email.

Very strange - and to me, unacceptable.

I have no issue with shorthand like 'btw', etc. as long as you are fairly certain your audience can catch its meaning, but talking in some gibberish code is just a waste of everyones time.

Coming soon to FOX...

[Twintop]

You've seen them in Chatrooms, on forums, and even in your school's computer lab...but now, FOX brings you an all new reality series: Script Kiddies: In the Real World. Angery employers! Irritated co-workers! Standing in the unemployment line! See it all, only on FOX.

Top-posting? How 'bout top-window posting!

[Tackhead]

> > No, it is not.
>
>Personally, I like being in the middle.
> > >
> > > If people could just learn to write their replies BELOW what they're quoting. Top posting is just wrong.

And don't even get me started on lameness filters!
> Yeah, well, bite me.
> > > can't be bothered to figure out who wrote what first anyways.
> > ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo s really hard to follow the thread of conversation.
> > oo And then there are folks oo hy do you hate top-posting so much?
> > oo who use our own standards o sting is an abomination, even in corporate email.
> > oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo , you mean even in corporate email?
> > > > > > > Top-posting and the people who do it drive me nuts.

Re:Top-posting? How 'bout top-window posting!

[Anonymous Coward]

me too!

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a new flash for them: English is not the most widely spoken language in the world (Chinese is).

Heree's a news flash for you: Chinese is not the most widely spoken language in corporate America, which is what this article was talking about.

Global Village Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess this is why the USA is known as The Global Village Idiot.

You think those are bad...

[ardustry]

...try reading any email written by devoted ebonics users.

ESL musings

[MarcoAtWork]

Most people who learn English as a second language tend to have a very good command of its written form; this is because in most schools abroad English is taught following a grammar-first/speech-later approach.

My spoken English, and especially my understanding of it, has improved by leaps and bounds since I started living in an English speaking country (Canada). I wish I could say the same about my writing: due to being constantly exposed to your/you're and similar constructs, I feel its quality has definitely decreased.

Re:ESL musings

[multipartmixed]

> due to being constantly exposed to your/you're and similar constructs,
> I feel its quality has definitely decreased.

When proof reading, mentally expand all contractions (e.g. you're becomes you are), replace there with here, and replace your with his. If the sentence still makes sense, you're good to go.

I use the same types of tricks in french, expanding "a" to "avoir" and seeing if it changes the sense of the sentence (although that particular trick DOES mean you're proofing with mentally incorrect grammar).

Re:ESL musings

[FirstTimeCaller]

Most people who learn English as a second language tend to have a very good command of its written form...

That has not been my experience. I often have to spend extra time trying to figure out exactly what my non-native English speaking colleagues are trying to say. I fear the problem will only get worse as out-sourcing increases.

Note that this is not a knock against the ESL'ers. Growing up in the wonderful US school system, I can count the number of languages that I speak fluently on my index finger. I admire anyone that can function in multiple languages (even if marginally).

Re:ESL musings

[MourningBlade]

Whew, good thing you live in Canada - we haven't spoken English here in the US in centuries!

Re:ESL musings

[Jucius Maximus]

"My spoken English, and especially my understanding of it, has improved by leaps and bounds since I started living in an English speaking country (Canada). I wish I could say the same about my writing: due to being constantly exposed to your/you're and similar constructs, I feel its quality has definitely decreased."

Regardless, you are still part of a select group of English speakers who know the correct spelling of 'definitely' . ;-)

Re:ESL musings

[julesh]

That's a good idea. Another good one along similar lines, is if you have a sentence with "who", try to replace "who" with "he". You might have to restructure it a little.

So, "who did it?" becomes "he did it" and "who's there" becomes "he is there."

Now, you might find you have a sentence that becomes completely wrong. "I should send this to who?" becomes "I should send this to he?". Obviously you want "I should send this to him?" instead. This is a dead giveaway that you should have used "whom" instead of "who".

Re:ESL musings

[multipartmixed]

> "I should send this to who?" becomes "I should send this to he?".

That's a great trick. I spotted the who/whom problem because of it faster than I normally do, and before I read your mention of it.

That said, I would normally phrase that "To whom should I send this?" -- where the whom/him falls apart; so whom/him isn't a good universal replacement, but who/he looks like it will do the trick and catch the who/whom problems anyhow.

As for restructuring "who's there" to "he is there" -- that's just one of your rules (who/he) combined with my expand-all-contractions rules.

Thanks for sharing.

One would

[Icarus1919]

One would think that as the information age continues to grind onward, illiteracy would become less and less of a problem, especially for people who WORK in IT (information technology, of course). It's pretty disheartening to see that it's still as prevalent as it was before the age of computers.

L33t corperate speek is our future?

[RedMagus77]

One of the big points we were always told when doing mock interviews -- write a letter afterwards thanking them for the interview, and make sure it's grammatically correct and the spelling errors are almost non-existant. That my friends, is one of the points to help get a job: prove you can write coherent sentences. What's sad is that in a few years corperate emails will end up with "d00d phear teh 410s!"

Applies to slashdot posters too

[geneing]

See subj

Too much L33T!

[Excen]

I think R2-D2 just crapped a rainbow in my brain!

(With apologies to any Sealab fans out there)

I'm making fun of them...

[Twintop]

...and I can't even spell "angry" correctly. Bah!

Lafter.

[narcc]

(YELLOW LIGHT. CAUTION. TAke your time with thsi next paragraph. It's full of potholes, and it's easier if you read it aloud and stay mentally loose.)

Win eye wuz uh teechur - uh ort teechur - eye rote ass-einmints 2 d stewed-ants n d class you-sink lang-which lak dis. It waz uh weigh off kip-ink uh lite-horted n luce attic-tyoud bout sear-he-us wirk. D stewed-ants thot et wuz fun-he. D Angwish tee-churs dead-knot. Dey sed eye waz may-kink stew-pid trubbull. Eye all-weighs re-furred dim 2 d holy right-ink uf d fey-moose rite-her Chames Choice, two ream-ind dim dat lang-witch s a kind off play. N Leyef s a kind of choke. Lafter n kern-ink n he-maj-he-nay-shun r ee-sin-shall 2 cree-ate-hiv-itty, witch s ee-sin-shall 2 sieve-ee-lie-za-shun. Oh, Kay?
Now, ewe no y dis chapped-her hed-ink s speld rong. C? Lafter.
10 Q fairy mush 4 yur pay-shuns, n gud luk.

--Robert Fulghum, Words I wish I wrote

Not all technology's fault

[Omniscientist]

"The more electronic and global we get, the less important the spoken word has become, and in e-mail clarity is critical," said Sean Phillips, recruitment director at another Silicon Valley corporation

Its not all due to the rise in technology, but rather the decline in writing skills and vocabulary in general among more recent generations.

Re:Not all technology's fault

[BandwidthHog]

I disagree. I'm seeing more and more typos online, regardless of the source. Sure, we expect common mistakes in slashdot posts, but how do you explain finding numerous errors on the web sites of CBS and the BBC? I'm starting to wonder if something about reading text on a CRT or LCD makes accurate proofreading fundmentally more difficult.

Or maybe it's true what they say: The sum total of all intelligence on the planet is a constant, yet the population grows.

Re:Not all technology's fault

[Cmdr TECO]

... how do you explain finding numerous errors on the web sites of CBS and the BBC?

Ideology?

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[nkh]

But english is not the only language to be modified like this. It happens in every country and the style is always the same (like you -> U): write the shortest words possible.

natural filters

[jbrelie]

"hI KATHY i am sending u the assignmnet again,"

Are you kidding me? I love this shit. I automatically know what kind of person I am dealing with (read: not worth my time) when I get this stuff.

There is no excuse for this kind of stuff. Typos are typos, but this is just laziness.

At work, TIME = MONEY

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I agree with most of this articles conclusions, the underlying factor in at least half of email responses amongst peers in the workforce is...

Within certain limits, say what you have to say and get back to work stupid. If you want proper grammar in my email responses, hire me a secretary with big tits...

A more basic problem than grammar?

[specify]

Perhaps remedial writing courses will help some, but some of the examples make me think otherwise.

Clarity of thought is a needed foundation for clarity of expression. I belive that most of this sort of poorly-formed grammar arises from poorly-formed thoughts.

Remedial informal logic might be a better place for many people to start. (Try telling that to your boss, and see how far that gets you, though.)

Typing speed is the major problem, I think.

[Anonymous Coward]

If people can't type fast enough, they take shortcuts. If you fuck up an entire paragraph, someone who types at 3 wpm isn't going to take the time to try and revise it.

Teach them to type. The rest will follow.

Re:Typing speed is the major problem, I think.

[Anonymous Coward]

>[S]omeone who types at 3 wpm...

Should realize that he or she is not qualified for any job that involves typing. Certain disabilities aside, of course. I'd accept 3 WPM from someone who types with his feet, or a mouth stick.

At 30 WPM, you're at the point where you can't be replaced with someone from a temp agency who would LOVE to have your job.

Lack of a subject

[myz24]

is what gets my goat. Then they come ask me if I got their message about widgets. Now I tell them, "I'm not sure but I have a lot of email from you that is apparently about nothing"

Business Letter anyone?

[Robber Baron]

Does anyone remember how to write a proper business letter? Well a business e-mail should be structured in much the same fashion, maybe without the addresses, but definitely with complete sentences, proper punctuation and coherently organized paragraphs.

Employers need to decide...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sympathetic to their need for clear communication. However, they all too often reward and retain people who have the patience, and often the outlook, of a gerbil. Especially in IT because they "just get things done".

I see this happen a lot with IMs...

[antdude]

I see this a lot with instant messaging. It's a lot worse there than e-mails from my experience at work and off work. It's pretty sad.

Re:I see this happen a lot with IMs...

[Hanno]

Actually, I have seen this the other way round. I (German) once had to work with an Asian developer living in England. When talking with him on the phone, his English sounded crude and I had the impression he didn't even know English.

Then we agreed to switch to instant messaging. And we went along fine. His written English was great, while his spoken English was unbearable.

Re:I see this happen a lot with IMs...

[lachlan76]

With IM you usually talk to people that you know understand exactly what it means anyway. And it lets you type faster, which makes it seem a lot more like a normal conversation.

Re:I see this happen a lot with IMs...

[surprise_audit]

At least with IM you don't have to decipher his accent... And he may well be backing up and retyping things, which is kinda tricky in a real-time speech environment.

Re:I see this happen a lot with IMs...

[mutterc]

We've done this with Korean customers as well. It eliminates the "low-level" issue (in both directions) of comprehending the accents so that we can always tell what words people are saying. (Sure, we still have "higher-level" issues of parsing the sentences for meaning, but this is easier when you can understand the words themselves).

Language devolves...

[meckardt]

This is not an example of linguistic evolution. Evolution is a continuous process that proceeds in incremental steps. This portrays an example of radical mutation. Whether any of the mutilations displayed in this article eventually survive to become part of the language remain for future scholars to determine.

IMPORTANT

[Tim Browse]

With warm heart I offer my friendship, and my greetings, and I hope this letter meets you in good time. It will be surprising to you to receive this proposal from me since you do not know me personally.However, I am sincerely seeking your confidence in this transaction, which I propose with my free mind and as a person of integrity.

As led by my instict, I decided to contact you through email, after searching for contacts via the internet, as it is the only means I can contact anybody since I am cutting off ties with Zimbabwe for security and safety reasons.

Before he was murdered, my father withdrew all of our business foreign accounts in dollars and sold up our shares in major companies. We then went to SOUTH AFRICA to deposit the sum of US$14.5 million (Fourteen million, Five Hundred thousand US dollars), in a private security company.

In order for yourself to receive 10% broker fee, you must pass the simple English test of my country. Be mindful that grammar will be considered as well as to the spelling.

Are emails vs. letters apples-to-apples?

[DocMax]

Three reasons for the difference in quality between business email and other forms of written communication immediately spring to mind.

1. In many companies (mine is one), email is a less intrusive replacement for face-to-face conversations. Rather than walk across the building to ask something that is not urgent, I will send an email and wait for the reply. In this context, email is replacing not written correspondence, but oral communication. Thus, I would expect it to mirror the latter, with the style of speech rather than writing.

2. Since a single email is a piece of something (the contents of a mailbox) rather than a standalone document (e.g., a Word document), it has less "weight" in the mind of many people and does not deserve as much time in construction. The fact that it is electronic exacerbates this. A former boss had nicely eloquent writing in Word, yet was consistently using words like "yo" and "shouldda" in email.

3. Many of the people sending email would not be preparing written documents 15 years ago (frequently for the reasons listed in my first point). Thus, comparing corporate literacy now to that in the past is far from apples-to-apples.

Of course, none of this is an excuse for the abysmal failures of grammar given in the article.

Amen

[wwest4]

I can sympathize with the sentiment of the article, in that it's annoying when you put effort into being precise for the sake of good business while your comrades are using words like "rediculous" and mixing up your & you're, its and it's, etc... to say nothing of malapropisms.

However, I've eased off on the grammar nazi thing as I've gotten older. I mean, if the goal is to get people on board with the art of literary and verbal precision, ridicule and swearing is not going to get you there in most circumstances. Of course, I got that idea from watching that ESP/electric shock scene in the original Ghostbusters, so I could be wrong.

Re:Amen

[fishbowl]

"However, I've eased off on the grammar nazi thing as I've gotten older."

I doubt I will ever be able to "ease off" on this.

For quite a few years, my job consisted of fact- and grammar- checking correspondence from the General Counsel at a large petroleum exploration company. The output from theses lawyers was high quality to begin with, and my job was to make it ready for the press, government agencies, foreign businessmen, and even Heads of State.

After being in that environment, I cannot bear to let anything cross my desk without an urgent need to edit it for quality and content.

Normally this comes out as "you know, Ben, this would be better if you said 'from the inception' instead of 'from the gitgo'", but sometimes I am considerably more aggressive with my advice.

For certain classes of errors, I assume that the writer intentionally introduced errors. I cannot bear the idea that someone might be working with me as a peer, or even a superior, who truly does not know the difference between 'there' and 'there', or who does not understand that 'presently' means 'sometime in the future'.

Re:Amen

[wwest4]

> I cannot bear the idea that someone might be working with me as a peer, or even
> a superior, who truly does not know the difference between 'there' and 'there'

I can't say that I know the difference. :) Sorry, I could't resist.

I just got sick of seeing myself in the nazis here - snarling about something while making my own mistakes. I can forgive someone for not also being a grammar pedant. Wouldn't you say that in the scheme of things, grammar isn't high on the list of life priorities for 99% of people? Most people make up for it by being brilliant or effective in some other way, and there are plenty of grammar nazis who are woefully deficient in some other area. E.g. on slashdot there is no shortage of those with impeccable grammar and no apparent grasp of logic (present company excluded!).

Re:Amen

[fishbowl]

Oh hell. I knew if I made a post that was at all pedantic, I'd fuck it up.

Is there a Law in Natural Philosophy to guarantee this?

Re:Amen

[wwest4]

Let's coin it: how about "The Avoidance Principle of Collision"

I filtered out all the crap

[Anonymous Coward]

R. crig hn, phormr univerity profeor wh hed n nlin chol fr bune wriin hr, rceved n anuished e-mil mese recently from propcve udent.

" Need help," id h mesg, which w devd oph puncuaion. " am wrng ey n wriin i wrk phr th cmpny nd my os wn me hlp imprv teh wrker writin kll cn yll hlp me wth m inphormin hnk yu".

Hundrd ph nkwires phrom mner and execuives ekng to mprve thr wnzor or heir worker' wrin pop ino hogn' xor in-bkt ech month, he ay, dscribin numbr h hs urgd -mil h rplcd he phon phor much workplac communicaton. millon ph mploys mu wrte mre frkwently n teh jb hn prviuly. nd many r mkng hh of t.

"E-ml party which englih techr hve no been nvitd," hon d. "it ha cmpnie ring hir hr ou."

Recnt survy of mercn corprtns reched imilr concluon. he tudy, by h ninl commion on wrting, pnl lihd y teh colle oard, cncludd ht thrd oph mploy n he non' lue-chp compne wro porly and h buinee were pendng much . bllion nnually on remdl trining.

He prlem hw up n only in -mal bu lso in rport nd thr txt, h commiin id.

"T's n ha cmpnes wnt hire tlty," id uan rimn, director th bune rundtbl, n ciaon of ldn cheph excuve whse crprn wr urveyd n th tudy. "but hy nd pople wh cn write clrly, nd mny mplyee and pplcnt fll hrt f tht ndrd."

Mllion of incrubl e-mil me re clon crport bxr by etin off rkwe phor clrphicn, nd mny ph he rekwet, in urn, re lo chtically writn, rultin n whol cycle f conphuson.

Hre ne frm yms nly t her upervior t hgh-ech corportion bd n pal lo, clif.: "i updtd eh tu reprt for h four dcrpncie lnnie phrward u vi e-mil (they n arry phil).. to make ure my lgc w crrc i em we prvde murry with ncrrec nphrmton ... hwevr phtr veriphyng conrls n jbl - jbl h th indicator b - wnd o mke ur with th rcen chng - i prced tody - efor murry mke the chng in n th minphrme 'c'."

He nchrnc f h mege peruded eh nlyst' emplyer ht h nded rmedil rinng.

"Th more elecronc nd globl w g, he l imprnt h spken word ha bcome, nd in e-ml clriy criticl," d sn phillip, rcrutment drctor at noher ilcn vlley corprtin, pplr, upplr f kwpment phor lph cienc rrch, whre mot

Re:I filtered out all the crap

[cephyn]

Wow, there was a Welsh version of the site?

Re:I filtered out all the crap

[madprof]

Welsh is easy - it's rot13. :)

Re:I filtered out all the crap

[Anonymous Coward]

there are not enough q's to be welsh.

Surprising

[jwdb]

This surprises me, considering the focus on writing in US High Schools.
My last few years of HS were dedicated to literature and critical writing, with a paper every week or two. Writing smoothly became a habit, and when I went abroad for College I was shocked at how weak some of my friends' writing was! One of them told me, "I've got plenty of ideas, but I just can't get them onto paper."

Was my HS just an exception here?

Re:Surprising

[lq_x_pl]

Was my HS just an exception here?
Not really, but actually retaining the ability to write well made you an exception in college. :)

Extends beyond corporate America

[lq_x_pl]

This problem extends beyond corporate America. I was hired on as an IT tech at a small school. For the last three days I've done nothing but go grammar-ape-shit on newsletters the teachers would like to send out to the students' parents. TEACHERS.

It's normally a safe assumption that a teacher will be able to put together a coherent sentence (particularly if it's a sentence the parents will be reading).

Not this year.

Some of these ladies are downright eloquent - in person.

Perhaps the radiation emitting from a monitor causes the less vital parts of some people's brains to shut down.

This IS Slashdot, no ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering what passes for English in posts and the Editors' comments on them, I can only assume that the Slashdot Editors are blind, stupid or being way too sarcastic for me to spot.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[fireduck]

While this may account for some of the problems, it certainly isn't the root of the problem. As someone who receives correspondance / reviews reports from ESL individuals on a somewhat regular basis, I can state that their messages typically are prepared properly (capitalization, punctuation, and usually spelling), just that their word choice may at times be awkward (wrong verb tense, strange idioms, convoluted sentence structure). Idiots who write "ur" instead of "your" are clearly people who have a decent enough comprehension of English that they recognize that both are phonetically similar and are chosing to use the abbreviation. They've spent far too much time text messaging than is good for them.

What ARE Americans good at?

[fafaforza]

First this, then the news about math scores. What else is America a leader in, movies?

Re:What ARE Americans good at?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eating, mostly. Have you seen the size of my fellow countrymen?

I used to..

[deadgoon42]

One of my old supervisors would send me emails and I would correct the grammar, then send it back to her without even answering whatever question she had asked me. Poor grammar and spelling is okay in an informal setting such as Slashdot or personal emails, but I expect professional correspendence to be just that.. professional.

Member of the Club

[Crash6-24]

Back when all amateur radio operators had to learn Morse Code they also learned a series of code shortcuts that carried over to speech. For example, the Q-code phrase "QTH" meant "What is your location?" This meaning carried over into speech as is "QTH here is Erehwon, VT." However, the abbreviations were listed and controlled, not free form as on the Web.
I suppose that there is a l337 dictionary out there that we should be memorizing....

Let's educate all the Chinese, then

[Anonymous Coward]

Raise your hand if you've ever seen a Chinese person say or type 'yall' in a sentence. Sorry, buddy, but that kind of ig'nance is home grown, not from Mexico/India/Beijing/wherever.

My 0.02

Re: List structure

[greed]

My technical writing professor was of the opinion that the comma was better omitted for a simple list.

If the list is complex enough that it isn't clear if the 'and' is part of an item ("Proctor and Gamble" vs. "Proctor, and Gamble") you should use it. Also, consider using a semicolon as the item-separator in the first place--and then you do want a semicolon before the conjunction in front of the terminal list item.

That same professor would hold up examples of bad punctuation and ask for diagnoses. Usually, a student would timidly offer, "Uh, that comma isn't necessary?" Which would get him ranting, "It is not that it is not necessary, it is WRONG!"

"Eats, Shoots and Leaves" sums up the problem right in the title.

Not completely bleak

[Degrees]

I'm looking for work, and a nice position is available at a local agency (almost $50K per year). My application was approved, so this morning I took a written test as the first part of selection process.

It was an essay test - big time.

It was timed: one hour, maximum. Fourteen questions, ranging from describing network security measures, to "How does Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs apply to employee motivation?"

I would have done better, were I faster on the keyboard. However, my spelling and grammar are not all that bad. I think I still have a shot at getting the job.

The ultimate point I want to make is that at least one employer is going back to essay tests for hiring.

Kids, learn that spelling and grammar. Introduction to Psychology might not hurt either.

Re:Not completely bleak

[tompaulco]

>How does Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs apply to employee motivation?"
That's nice. Do they give you time to go and research Maslow's Hierarchy of Need, or do they just enjoy severely limiting their selection pool?

Re:Not completely bleak

[Txiasaeia]

Q: "How does Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs apply to employee motivation?"

A: Maslow? I could give a fuck about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - my hierarchy of needs says that I need this job. You want motivation? I'll go whack this Maslow guy, then maybe you'll be motivated to give *me* the job.

Re:Not completely bleak

[LordNimon]

How does Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs apply to employee motivation?

I don't know what scares me more - other people's bad English, or the fact that I can answer this question!

Re:Not completely bleak

[Degrees]

They did provide internet access for research - although the one hour limit for all fourteen questions did not make that practical.

Re:Not completely bleak

[Degrees]

I could not answer the question (at that time). I expect that of the other twenty people competing for the job, less than two have the answer as readily as you. My hope is that those that know that answer are not as familiar with CSU/DSUs, T-1 lines, Client/Server architecture, and network latency.

I did remember a little of my Intro to Psych class from high school - but that was twenty five years ago. I knew who Maslow was, and remembered that he defined a pyramid of needs, but could not have told you how many layers were in the pyramid....

I would be more scared of other people's bad English. Knowing the answer helps you motivate your subordinates. But if your boss orders H.R. to raze your pay - watch out! ;-)

Re:Not completely bleak

[Pinball Wizard]

>> I could give a fuck about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - my hierarchy of needs says that I need this job.

Of course you don't care - survival is your primary concern! A stable situation, job, regular income. Once you have those things under control, then perhaps you could be interested in learning about someone's hierarchy of needs. But more likely you'll be interested in sex - getting a girlfriend, etc. So first the job, the regular income, the steady girlfriend, oh and that car you've always wanted. Then perhaps you could be interested in Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Re:Not completely bleak

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they give you time to go and research Maslow's Hierarchy of Need, or do they just enjoy severely limiting their selection pool?

No, they just prefer being smartasses apparently.

Re:Not completely bleak

[Winkhorst]

I almost have to wonder if this isn't more of a typing test than an essay test. What are they planning on doing, marking it by machine? I know they use computers to scan for particular qualifications on resumes. Is this the next step?

Re:Not completely bleak

[thenightisdark]

Hahahahaha. Funny! Delectable irony.

Re:Not completely bleak

[Degrees]

They gave us a printout of the fourteen questions, a laptop (newly imaged) pre-configured to print to a network printer in the room.

Told us we needed to have our names on all materials we turned in. Then told us we had one hour to answer all as best we could (including time to print).

I assume they will grade each response much like teachers grade term papers: content accounts for the bulk of the grade, "form" a lesser part.

Next week is the formal interview. Wonder if we'll be thrown into a surprise public speaking engagement? ;-) (I can only hope - I'm actually decent at that, and would clobber the competition. Heh).

Re:Not completely bleak

[d474]

"How does Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs apply to employee motivation?"

If I encountered this question in the job hiring process I would pretty much know I was fncked - but this would be a fun answer (considering I have NO idea of what it is):

"Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applies to employee motivation the same way it applies to motivating the Human Resources department of this distinguished company to write effective job application essay questions. If I may add, they are a splendid and challenging set of questions to boot! Maslow would be so proud you are celebrating the 65th anniversary of his ground breaking paper this coming February. Just to know your firm recognizes and practices MHoN impresses me that much more. Like Maslow would say, need is all the hierarchy hierarchy needs! What a witty fellow, we're all going to miss him. Next question..."

Re:Not completely bleak

[LordNimon]

To take this completely off-topic, the number of layers is not relevant, although there are four. I would have answered it by pointing out that an individual's needs at one level won't be of interest unless the needs of all the lower levels are first satisfied. To use this as a motivation tool, a manager could determine what level each of his employees was at, and target his compensation (whether that's money or something else) at that particular level.

Probably not the greatest answer, but I bet it'd be a whole lot more than the interviewer expected. :-)

Re:Not completely bleak

[Degrees]

Sounds like a very good answer - goes to the heart of the question. You certainly would have impressed the interview team.

It's amazing what people put in their emails

[Mr. Cancelled]

I work at a large financial company... Lots of money, lots of executives, and a lot of people who can't type a decent email to save their life!

I'm always joking about how these people are represented by their emails. In fact you could modify a bad joke and make it worse:

"You might be a corporate idiot if..."

1. You type all your emails in the MS Comic Sans font
2. You sign your emails with a custom signature in some big, illegible font
3. You don't know how to properly quote the email you're responding to
4. You type your emails in a needlessly large font
5. You type your emails in a very loud, needless color (Fucia anyone?!)
6. You never learn how to spell, and you send out all your emails with 1st grade-level spelling errors

I could go on, but you get the picture. I SO wish that part of our performance appraisals would take into consideration how you present yourself in corporate communications. We have tons of people in executive positions who actually think that combining several of those items I've listed above is the best way to get their point across.

And once you get a poorly worded email, written in Comic Sans font, colored hot pink, you have a lot less respect for the person who authored it, regardless of their role, or the content of the email. It's amazing to me that these peoples bosses don't see this the same way, but often they're equally guilty.

Glad to know we're not alone though!

Re:It's amazing what people put in their emails

[nsayer]

I can simplify this.

"You might be a corporate idiot if..."

You send other than plain text e-mail.

Re:It's amazing what people put in their emails

[geekoid]

exactly.

the ability to change fonts and colors in email should only be for the persons own systme, that shuold not be allowed to put there preferences onto others.

that said, I like MS Comic Sans; I find it easier to read.

One of my all time favourite e-mails...

[Robber Baron]

I spil;l;ed a gl;asasas of waster on the keyas asnd now thias ias whast happenas when I type./ Thias ias reasl;l;y asl;owing down my productivityl./

Thaasnkas

thias ias not as joke
(name withheld)

Yes I did actually receive this from an employee (actually an manager) of a client that I provide tech support for (Though in his defense, he really had spilled water on his keyboard).

Re:One of my all time favourite e-mails...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can;'t bele,eive yo;u t,,oald eve;r;yo,ne w,haa;t ha,,app;enned. YOU;R'RE,, F;I,R;;ED!

Re:One of my all time favourite e-mails...

[Anonymous Coward]

actual email i received:

"I tried to wasx off nmy key vboard with a gl.asxsx of water yesxterdayl. Asx you c,anm sxeec, sxonme of the keysx are nmot resx/ponmdinmg asx they sxhoul.d I donm't knmow if I fried the key vboard or whatl. ?Pl.easxe c,heck it outl

Thanm

"

woo. this is the second time for this guy. i usually take them apart and let them dry outside.
-e

Re:One of my all time favourite e-mails...

[N0decam]

Back in the early windows 95 days, when I wasn't that familiar windows, I had a faulty keyboard. Every now and then, it would act as if the windows key was being held down. Whenever I'd type any of the standard windows shortcut keys, the shortcut would fire instead, so I couldn't type certain letters.

Since it was a hardware fault, rebooting didn't solve the problem. I didn't know about windows key shortcuts at the time, so I was quite baffled by the behaviour of my machine. I sent out several emails asking for help, carefully omitting any words that had the letters e, r and s in them (I think that's all there were for default windows shortcuts back in the day.) It was frustrating as hell, until I figured it out, and turfed the keyboard.

Re:One of my all time favourite e-mails...

[TClevenger]

It wasn't you. I had that happen on a variety of HP Vectra and Kayak desktops and Toshiba laptops. If I smacked CTRL, Windows key and each SHIFT key, and then it was back to normal.

Here's One

[bleckywelcky]

Here's one a colleague of mine received. Now, the spelling, grammar, and punctuation aren't terrible - and some of their message does come across (if you know the context of the message). But, half of it sounds like complete gibberish.

If you hear any whispers about changing how mechanisms are operated, parameters, etc., please chase them down and make sure the mech specialist(s) on a particular mechanism is in the loop. (Request from _____ and ____)

These types of changes are supposed to be explicitly brought to your attention early enough for you to assess the situation with the mech specialist(s) BEFORE these changes are made. (Agreed to by _____ and ____). Please make sure _____ and ____ are aware if this does not happen.

The first paragraph is a best effort, swiss cheese, back up, just in case some of the cats escape while being herded (by _____, ____, ___, ___, ____, etc.)

You are to be on call by cell Monday through Friday. TDL's are not supposed to use this fact to ask you to do a standard report on the downlinks on Tues and Thurs. However, you should support any other inquiries.

Names have been censored, don't want to get into trouble here :)

I dont get it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of the jobs mentioned in the article are jobs paying $100,000+ a year. Don't these people at least have a job interview or as they have been promoted sat in front of a board. It really isn't that hard to write in proper English.

Or possiply is it that they don't know where the punctuation buttons are on the keyboard?

One way to fix that...

[sc0ttyb]

From the article:

"The study, by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training."

Are companies really offering remedial English training with money that could have been saved by hiring qualified personnel? I say fire them. If the job requires competency in English then why on earth are these people hired in the first place?

Resumes and CV's typically do not paint a realistic picture of an applicant's grammatical or spelling proficiency. There are a lot of companies now that will simply take your job history and skillset and write a resume for you.

I'm not the world's best at forming a perfect sentence by any means but Good Lord.

Re:One way to fix that...

[twistedcubic]

3.1 billion isn't very much if you're talking businesses nationwide. So, yes, it's much, much cheaper to pay close to minimum wage plus english class than, say, $50,000/year. A night time community college class in most states costs peanuts.

Don't get me started . . .

[Feynman]

I am, on the other hand, the king of email:

I keep the "Automatically check mail messages for misspellings before sending" box checked in Lotus Notes.

One day last week I sent a 263-word email with a Flesch Reading Ease score of 54.2 and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 9.0.

Later that day, I sent one with 522 words and scores of 41 and 10.5, respectively!

While I realize the weaknesses in these statistics, my point is: you have to read well to appreciate my emails!

None of this stuff like my mom sends, "WHEN ARE YOU COMINGG FOR CHRISTMAS."

Re:Don't get me started . . .

[vhold]

I actually went through a phase my senior year in high school of trying to write 'above' people with liberal use of 64 dollar words. My english teacher at the time would just simply tell me from time to time that I was building a wall. When I finally bit and asked him what he meant, he asked me why I liked to write things so that people wouldn't understand me. I had no answer.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Anonymous Coward]

English is not the most widely spoken language in the world (Chinese is)

Well, duh . . .

America - 250 million people
China - 1 BILLION people

It's baffling

[faust2097]

I used to work with a guy who regularly used the letter u in place of 'you' in emails and even documents he prought to meetings. This guy is a 40-year-old college graduate with 2 kids.

Depressing, really.

Re:It's baffling

[gregeth]

Oh, there's the problem. He prought the documents instead of bringing them.

I always have the worst of luck when I pring documents places.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

hey

[ucblockhead]

u guys are to hard on those guys there just trying to do there job not get a lit degree!

Perfect timing. I needed this.

[Hanno]

One of our clients is an online company and we are doing their development and administration while they are doing the business plan and business development stuff.

Their mails aren't as bad as in this article, but still, I'm surprised how many mistakes highly educated, tech-savvy business people make when dealing with e-mail. We agreed that I will give them a brief seminar on the pitfalls of e-mail:

Topquoting, fullquoting, exclamation marks, trojans (and how they work), chain letters, nigerian and order fraud, etc.

This article is perfect fodder for me. Thanks NYT.

Translator

[eieken]

Okay, we already have a English-to-AOL translator, doesn't anyone have a AOL-to-English translator?

As I well know

[zeus_tfc]

I deal with this problem all the time. My manager requires most things to be discussed in e-mail instead of a phone call, because an email keeps a record you can print out. The only problem is we are dealing with physical parts that are sometimes hard to describe without pointing specific things out, and over half the time I'm dealing with a person who doesn't have english as a first language.

My usual M.O. is to attach pictures with 'circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one telling what each one was' or something like that.

I try to be as descriptive and specific as I can, and annotate the drawings as well. The main problem now is that people never read the darned e-mail, and keep asking questions that have already been answered.

There ain't no winnin' that battle.

More a reflection of...

[Anonymous Coward]

the piss-poor state of public school education in this country. Think about it; most of the people writing the emails in this story probably graduated from public schools in the last 40 years or so. That is right after we quit teaching the fundimentals of English and started focusing more on "expression" and "feelings" and "what is the hidden meaning in Huck Finn" and all that bullshit. Mod me flamebait, I don't care. I know it's only because I speak true...

Personal issue

[RM6f9]

My personal issue is a very basic 'why' question: Why is it that klutzes with fast feet who can't catch and illiterates with expensive degrees who can't form sentences all seem to earn more than me? When it all boils down, it's the speed and the sheepskins that are important to those who value appearance over substance, and it is that mis-prioritization of values that is causing the downfall of our society.

What scares me

[mindstrm]

is that I can read that quite fluently.

Re:What scares me

[Jormundgandr]

Don't be too hard on yourself. The brain has a terrible penchant for recognizing patterns, even if you deem such patterns to be below your understanding. Give yourself a pat on the occipital lobe.

Re:What scares me

[surprise_audit]

I tried reading that page via The 80's Server and it's kinda scary how one of those poorly written examples actually comes out better:

"I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via dweeb-mail (please, like I am SO sure, we valley girls use the phone) (they in Barry file).. to make like, fer sure my logic was like, you know, TOTALLY right It seems like we provide Murray with incorrect information .. Like, however after verifying controls on JBL - JBL totally has the indicator as B ???? Like, I am so sure! - I wanted to make like, fer sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[cephyn]

Umm....well no, English still probably the most widely spoken and definitely the most widely understood language in the world.

Whereas its possible that Chinese is the primary language of the most people in the world, they are largely in China. But people all over the world speak and/or understand English to a greater degree, on average, than they do Mandarin Chinese.

Example I just received

[Feynman]

"Tomorrows meeting we will go over the action items that are complete, make sure it was what we had envisioned, and give status of the actions that are in process.
We will aslo assign someone to do the test coverage collection for the top-level functional and environmental testing."

Can you find all the errors? I count at least six.

Re:Example I just received

[kylector]

Would you kindly point out those six? I count maybe two or three. Maybe I'm missing the obvious, but I tend to be a guud spellar n genaral.

Seriously, I'd appreciate it if you pointed them out. I'm always trying to improve my spelling and grammar. Thanks.

Re:Example I just received

[Johan Veenstra]

English is not my first language, but I'll have a go at this:

"Tomorrows meeting we will go over the action items that are complete, make sure it was what we had envisioned, and give status of the actions that are in process.
We will aslo assign someone to do the test coverage collection for the top-level functional and environmental testing."

"Tomorrows meeting" : Should be something like "During tomorrows meeting,"
"make sure it was what we had envisioned" : this is so messed up that I'm not sure what it's supposed to say. A possible translation could be: "let's hope and pray that we've met the goals we envisioned, and if not, fudge the results."
"give status" : seems strange, but that could be my lack of the english language
"in process" : "in progress"
"aslo" : "also"
"for" : "of"
"testing" : "tests"

Re:Example I just received

[Spy der Mann]

"Tomorrows meeting we will go over the action items that are complete, make sure it was what we had envisioned, and give status of the actions that are in process.
We will aslo assign someone to do the test coverage collection for the top-level functional and environmental testing."

Tomorrow's (one) meeting we will go over the action items that are complete, making (two) sure [that] it [the meeting - that's three... too ambiguous] was what we had envisioned, and [finally we ] will (three) give status of the actions that are in process. We will also (four) assign someone to do the test coverage collection for the top-level functional and environmental testing."

Four errors. One spelling (typo), two grammar (one omission), and one of sentence clarity.

If my corrected sentence is _NOT_ what was supposed to be said, then it's worse than I had thought!

guud spellar n genaral

Um... you don't want me to correct THIS one, do you? ;-)

My Calculus Professor Dr. Sam B. Nadler...

[NarrMaster]

...is all about this. He even used the same term, "functionally illiterate." He blames this sad state of affairs on the lack of emphasis on writing and spelling classes in middle and high school, among other things. He has described the intra and inter department emails and emails from students as being "borderline pornographic". Personally, I agree with him 100%. Of course, I think it is funny as hell.

Re:Let's educate all the Texans, then

[Minstrel Boy]

Y'all is a perfectly legitimate contraction, serving the desperate need for a distinct second-person plural.

Y'all Yankees shut the hell up, now. Y'hear? KeS

I know this well

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work at a large movie theater chain and every one of the regional manager's emails (about 1 a day) would be in all caps, followed by a dozen or so exclamation marks.

Huh?

[Wrexen]

I'm pretty sure he meant rediculous, unless the hundreds of idiots posting on the internet every day are spelling it wrong too. This is a new spelling error, which confuses me greatly - I swear it's doubled in frequency over the past year.

Re:Huh?

[finite_automaton]

I'm pretty sure he meant rediculous, unless the hundreds of idiots posting on the internet every day are spelling it wrong too [ ... ]

Idiots? On the Internet? Impossible! http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rediculou s

Re:Huh?

[GMFTatsujin]

This should not confuse you at all. In order to be rediculous, once need only acquire the quality of diculousness twice in rapid succession.

Now, people using a word like "rediculas": that's just plain dumb.

Re:Huh?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Nope. "Ridiculous", which goes with the verb "ridicule" (to make fun of).

Man, if this were a spelling contest, you'd "loose"...

(I think there's a law that people sending information over the internet are forbidden from spelling "lose" properly, too, you see...).

Re:Huh?

[DeadVulcan]

I'm pretty sure he meant rediculous

No, it's "ridiculous."

I find this spelling mistake to be similar to the common mistake, "seperate." (It should be "separate.")

Here it may surprise some people that their English spelling can be aided by knowing a different language.

In French, for example, the two "i"s in "ridicule" are pronounced exactly the same. For sure, many English speakers pronounce them the same, too, but some don't, and this is obviously the source of the confusion.

Also, in the French word "séparer," the "a" is clearly pronounced, whereas in English, the "a" degenerates to the schwa sound, so you can't tell what the letter should be.

Re:Huh?

[driftingwalrus]

The mistake that drives me nuts the most is people confusing quiet and quite. More often than not, when they mean to say quiet, they'll type it as quite.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just ridiculous, consider:
odour->odourous
pore->porous
atrocity ->atrocious
ridicule->ridiculous

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a straight typo, more often than not.

Lose vs loose is often a misunderstanding.

Re:Huh?

[TClevenger]

My biggest pet peeve on the forums (mostly Fark, though I've seen it here, too) is when the word 'populous' is used instead of 'populace.'

Re:Huh?

[DMUTPeregrine]

It's the fault of the Harry Potter books. Ridiculus! *A random boggart dies.*

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Anonymous Coward]

People who speak English as a second language are often better at correct grammar then native English-speakers.

You must be living proof!

Other parts of the world.

[builderbob_nz]

I can't say much about the states as I live in the southern hemisphere, but anyone in who tries to run a Computer company in NZ would probably be use to it. I find I regularly recieve emails writen in pidgeon english from wholesalers for who their primary language is Manderin.

Most top wholesalers though actually hire account managers who have excellent english skills. And speaking from experience, it is a lot easier to buy from someone who understands you.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Anonymous Coward]

As a speaker of English as a second language, I have noticed that those that speak English as a second language tend to write better than natives, especially because we learn the grammar of the language. On accent and pronouciation, we might just be horrible. But in writing, we tend to do quite well. .segmond

my head...

[jjeffries]

"NO!!!! If you turn it up to eleven, you'll overheat the motors, and IT MIGHT EXPLODE!!"

Social Promotion

[Anonymous Coward]

The culprit is Social Promotion, in which kids advance through school without having to actually learn anything. Yikes.

Re:Social Promotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Make that, "...without actually having to learn anything." I sincerely apologize for the split infinitive.

An example I use...

[FrozenFrog]

I like to use the following sentence to illustrate the proper use of 3 sets of often-confused words (there/they're/their, two/too/to and your/you're).

You're taking your dog, and they're taking their two dogs to there too.

While the sentence isn't exactly grammatically correct (I wanted it to be short), it shows the proper use of the words in question.

FrozenFrog

Don't forget about typing skills...

[AGTiny]

I honesty can't stand to even deal with someone who uses shorthand such as "u" or "ur". I think that one of the causes of this is poor typing skills. If you can't type fast enough, "u" or "ur" is easier than typing "you" or "your". These people must just assume people don't mind reading that garbage.

Spend some of that $3.1B on typing skills as well as language skills!

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[NeoSkandranon]

I agree with this as well. I know several people who are in actuality rathre intelligent, but since they hunt-and-peck type they hack words to abbreviate. I did as well, until I learned to touch type, because hunt and pecking a fully worded message takes alot longer and breaks up the flow of conversation

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[mailman-zero]

"If you can't type fast enough, 'u' or 'ur' is easier than typing 'you' or 'your'. These people must just assume people don't mind reading that garbage."

I remember the first time I got a message from someone who typed like this in or around 1997. It was a rather long message and I remember it took me twice as long to read it than normal writing would and reading it required a lot of extra effort. Good readers don't read letters or even words. Most people who read a lot read three or more words at a time and recognize the words by their shape and length.

If you can't type fast enough to type complete words then you are just transferring the slowdown from yourself to the reader. I'm sure there is some physics-related law somewhere to explain this effect.

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor typing skills? Honesty?

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[ChoyLeeFut]

Totally agree with the parent. Whenever I read "u" I hear "ooo" and whenever I read "ur" I hear "oor".

...

Or, it might be the voices inside my head....

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[HaynieMatt]

I think "ur" is actually "you're" not "your".

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[damiam]

I think that 'u' or 'ur' can sometimes be justified. When you're playing an online game, for example, abbreviating can save valuable time, and the message still gets across just fine.

Now, on the other hand, anyone who uses such language in email or (worse) printed documents should be summarily shot.

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[lachlan76]

It can be used for either. I do anyway, and so do most of my friends.

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[DissidentHere]

Hurrah, hurrah! The differnce between 'u' and 'you' is two keystrokes, and for a good typist, that is nothing. I understand with text messaging, I personally hate typing on the phone. But there is no place for this shorthand in email. Especially with customers. Think, type, proof, send. That is how one should do corportate email. Obiously, that does not apply to /. :-)

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

I sometimes use "yr" for "your", but I would never use it in a professional setting.

Back in the olden days, people would abbreviate their names. Look at how many Founders signed "Wm.", "Tho.", "Geo.", or "Benj." I guess the quill pen actually made it a burden to sign yr own name.

http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/
charters_ of_freedom/declaration/images/declaration _engraving.jpg

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you realize how hard it is to type "you" on a qwerty keyboard? Or, for that matter, how hard it is to type "qwerty"?

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[Vo0k]

Ur, the ancient city near Babilon...

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[rsidd]

I honesty can't stand to even deal with someone who uses shorthand such as "u" or "ur". I think that one of the causes of this is poor typing skills.

I think the bigger cause is sms: typing on a 9 key keypad really is hard. But then these people forget how to spell the word in the first place and such spellings bleed into formal letters.

When I mentioned that to a non-geek the answer was "yes, I don't understand all these abbreviations like BTW, IMO, ...) which took me aback: I'd taken those totally for granted and they don't bother me at all (I use them a lot myself, though I still wouldn't use them in a formal context.) So I wonder whether it isn't hypocritical to accept BTW etc and not accept u or ur.

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[OnanTheBarbarian]

Very true. Unless I am in the surprising position of getting an e-mail from Prince, I don't want to see "U", "C", "4" and so on as 'words'.

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh good god, learn to touch type. :P

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[TiggsPanther]

I had a similar problem a few months back using IM to communicate with a kid from my church. She immediately launched into SMS-speak - sounding a whole lot less intelligent than she usually does. So I (understandably) asked her not to use abbreviations...

...only to get pulled up about half an hour later for using BTW and some of the other more "traditional" abbreviations. Although I think my abbreviations were less irritating I can fully see her point - I complained about abbreviations I couldn't understand and then used some that she couldn't later.
I guess we all are guilty of this at times.

I guess it just annoys me when kids that I know have a good brain and can communicate clearly with speech are all-but-incomprehensible once they're writing IM or email.

Re:Don't forget about typing skills...

[spdt]

I definitely agree with this. What's also extremely annoying to me, is when people use "wut" or even "wot" as a replacement for "what". I just want to slap those people right in the face.

When I type, I have a memory for the locations of the letters of words. I just imagine a word, and my fingers type the word. I could never do that "home row" thing. When typing a word that I do not use, I will actually have to look at the keyboard, because there isn't a strong motion associated with that word. For me, typing "ur" or "wut" or "rofl" or any other aimspeak word actually takes longer.

I believe that if people developed memory for REAL words, rather than aimspeak, we would not see such irritating misuse of language.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Anonymous Coward]

English is the most widely used language in international commerce.

AOL, IM, and the destruction of language

[msmercenary]

You can't entirely blame AOL, no matter how desirable it may be.

The practice started on usenet back when every byte of bandwidth was precious, and on IRC chat where the real-time nature led to the desire to minimize latency in order to keep up.

I don't follow usenet anymore, so I can't say whether the practice continues there. On the IRC network and channels that I manage, we have developed a culture of grammar and spelling pedants that laughs off the channel those who insist on greeting with "wassup how r u???". Sadly, we are greatly in the minority among all IRC locales.

Obviously from there, the trend continued almost immediately to IM devices, where the same constraints apply. I am disappointed (though not surprised) to hear that it has found its way into corporate e-mail, where there aren't such constraints.

I suppose it's only a matter of time before I see it at my company. The idiots and lazy users arrayed against those of us who still value the written word are powerful indeed.

Hmm... Problem caused by idiots on the internet? Well, I guess you can blame AOL, then.

spelling and grammar?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

clicky
The geniuses suceeded in publishing a report with a map on the front which just had a gap where Wales should have been.
Stuff Spelling and Grammar, 3 million people and a few billion sheep just ceased to exist!

Re:spelling and grammar?

[upside]

Serves them well. My native Finland is regularly omitted from European maps, for example weather forecasts on the international news channels. They just crop the picture south of our border.

Oh, and history books often had the iron curtain between Finland and Sweden. I got a fit every time I saw that. Had to explain to my classmates (non-Finns) Finland isn't a Soviet satellite state. They often preferred to believe the maps. :|

Re:spelling and grammar?

[Swedentom]

If it's an EU map, it could be that Norway is not there because they're not a member of the union. :-)

Re:spelling and grammar?

[Lorphos]

They're not the only ones. Check out this image from CNN...

Re:spelling and grammar?

[Psychotext]

Surprising... we get enough of their tourists here! :) Besides that I believe that at least 4 of the first 10 US presidents were of Welsh decent. The problem with the Welsh is that they have a habit of just integrating themselves into new cultures... ...as opposed to the Scots and the Irish who get drunk and shout loudly about their heritage. ;)

Oh, and I found this interesting - About half way up the Washington monument is a brick engraved with "My people, my country, my language - Wales forever" (In Welsh).

Re:spelling and grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans are probably equally unlikely to have heard of Mexico or Canada either.

Re:spelling and grammar?

[Mantorp]

Tragic, I got one of the questions in your lose loose quiz wrong.

Re:spelling and grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

We know England, and the Scots have a funny accent and invented golf, the Northern Irelanders have the religious war thing. Wales has sheep?

Naah, they all are just a bunch of silly Englishmen.

Re:spelling and grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a satellite state, no. But militarily Finland did have a treaty with the Warsaw Pact.

Don't blame the maps. Blame Kekkonen.

Re:spelling and grammar?

[Psychotext]

:)

I almost screwed one up myself, but given my opinions that would have been unforgivable!

Re:spelling and grammar?

[gfreeman]

... wouldn't know Wales if it hit them in the ass ...

Obviously not a Welsh sheep then.

Re:spelling and grammar?

[zobier]

If you can get to a PC running Windows, take a look at the `Time Zone' tab of the `Date and Time Properties' dialogue (accessed by clicking on the Taskbar clock). Seems Microsoft forgot Poland.

Re:spelling and grammar?

[Some_Llama]

"As this is a US site the majority of people wouldn't know Wales if it hit them in the ass"

I took a look at the picture but I don't see anything wrong with the map? I see GB and the land thingy above it (Ireland?) where does whales go? aren't they in the ocean anyway?

Hmm I dunno, also.. why does my butt hurt?

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[poot_rootbeer]

I will acknowledge that attempts to write in secondary languages can result in more spelling mistakes, odd phrasings and sentence structures, erroneous pluralization and verb conjugation, and so forth. But given the examples in the article, I doubt that there's a language in the world that eschews grammatical structure so wantonly. Sometimes incomprehensibility transcends language.

Speaking of the article, what's with page breaks occurring in the middles of sentences? That's extremely bad style.

get all your tips for writing...

[Striker770S]

with mr. period http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-11 -03 . Many people could get some good pointers from it!

whats the big deal??????????

[Theolojin]

whats the big deal....as long as you can read it does it matter how i write??????? does it really matter how concisely i frame my thoughts or if i mispell a word...the whole point of business is simply communicating with one another!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! how much does proper punctuation and grammar really affect my job performance....get a grip!!!!!!!!

sorry for the rant...i have to get back to work....i am going to email my manager about that raise....

Did you notice......

[pranay]

........most comments posted for this story come polished with rich grammar and spellcheck. A slashdot first!

corporate emails

[achacha]

Life is so rosey in the academia...

I work in a corporation and have to read/write/replyto 30-100 emails. If I had all the time in the world I would format my sentences, use approriate punctuations and avoid abbreviations. However, we do not operate on the academia timescale and I really don't have time to worry about punctuations when I need to get an urgent point across.

Using terms which some english professor finds cryptic is my way of life, I work in the tech sector and using terms approriate to the environment is the norm. I really do not care if some english professor finds my writing deplorable, I find some of their teaching deplorable and having taken English 101, 102, 201 and 202 (about 20 years ago), I can say that I got no joy from that class. I was studying to be a programmer not sales person with an english degree. Call me biased. :)

Re:corporate emails

[tez_h]

I can totally understand the pressures you may be facing in a large corporation.

If your ungrammatical, abbreviated, unpuctuated messages are fully decipherable by your recipients, then I won't raise an eyebrow. But it seems to me that you are merely tranferring the effort of communication on to your readers, which is inconsiderate (though probably only slightly).

-Tez

Re:corporate emails

[achacha]

I think most people in these situations use a language and acronyms which their audience can understand, if they are not then they are deceiving the recepient and I agree with your point.

Many of my emails would be completely incoherent outside of the recepient (unless an outside source is aware of the environment and acronyms used within the company, and every company has a huge set of their own).

All your jobs are belong to India.

[Goalie_Ca]

look like india speek better english y us have job again????

Exactly.

[FreeLinux]

Time is money. The problem is that much more time is wasted trying to decipher poorly written emails than, if the writer had taken the time to write it properly in the first place. The problem is even worse when the writing is so poorly done that it conveys a different message than was intended. In fact, just such an example was given in the article.

Indeed, your own post is another example of time wasted due to poor writing skills. It was necessary for me to read your message two or three times in order to determine your meaning. A properly written post would not have required rereading. My time was further wasted by replying to your post with this chastizing comment. You now owe me $2.00

Re:Exactly.

[pipingguy]

It was necessary for me to read your message two or three times in order to determine your meaning.

But you did read it for times, right?

See, marketing tricks and subconscious manipulation do work!

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

than,if

so poorly done -> so poor

In fact, indeed, you should offer a significant discount.

Re:Exactly.

[Deusy]

"The problem is that much more time is wasted trying to decipher poorly written emails than, if the writer had taken the time to write it properly in the first place."

This just in, "Grammar police arrest unary comma in the above sentence."

"You now owe me $2.00"

And you now owe me $5 for correcting your mistake.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the most important reason to write well for business is that you don't know who your audience is going to be. Your intended audience may be only those working closest with you, but it is possible that your manager or other big wig may read it. Your writing could get forwarded to outside vendors or clients.

And if you write something imprecise or vague and the plaintiffs' lawyers get ahold of it during discovery, good night and have fun working at Taco Bell. That was a nice car you had.

You're only going to write it once, but it may be read dozens of times. Why not do it right?

Two jobs ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I worked for a large multistate corporation. We produced a data entry client for our customers, and also a user's manual. I was asked to verify the user manual for technical accuracy.

Interestingly, there were no spelling errors, and MS-Word did not indicate any grammar errors either. As far as MS-Word was concerned, the document was perfect.

However it was *riddled* with grammar errors. Improper comma usage, misplaced prepositions, improper capitalization, and several other types were scattered all over it. Not a single page had fewer than three distinct errors. I showed it to one of my co-workers (a known grammar-nazi) and her eyes just about popped out of her head.

Perhaps too much reliance on Word's (obviously insufficient) grammar checker is part of the problem?

Incidentally, when I submitted a list of grammar corrections (I was as political as I could be...) there was a distinctly silent response. I never got to see the final release of the manual, so I don't know if the corrections were applied.

Re:Two jobs ago...

[bluGill]

My experience is grammar checkers make things worse. To shut the stupid thing up you put commas where a comma isn't needed, change words that are clear enough. Spelling checkers help. Grammar checkers are a sign that you need help from someone better.

Re:Two jobs ago...

[1u3hr]

Perhaps too much reliance on Word's (obviously insufficient) grammar checker is part of the problem?

Most of the "suggestions" from the grammar checker would change the meaning to something completely different than intended. I've foound maybe 1/4 of Word's green squiggles make any sense. So rather than waste the time going through them it's often better just to print it out and proof it the old fashioned way (i.e., eyeball it).

Word's spell checker is also riddled with errors, particularly if you're using non-American English. Some really bizarre spellings are suggested if you have "Australian" as your language; I've given up that and use "UK", though that has its share of bogus entries.

Not just English speakers

[chillmost]

I live in Germany and one of my business contacts is very articulate and can explain anything when you talk to him in person. The emails I get from him are a different story. There is often no capitalization or commas and there are many spelling errors (Spellcheck bitte!).

In German all nouns are capitalized and, depending on where the verb is, a misplaced or absent comma can make a big difference in the meaning of a sentence. Some verbs are used as nouns and therefore should be capitalized as well. This can easily confuse a non-native German speaker like myself.

Sometimes I have to call him up and get a verbal translation.

Re:Not just English speakers

[mjkjedi]

>> This can easily confuse a non-native German speaker like myself.

In the spirit of grammar-nazism, which seems almost on-topic here: Why on earth must people (I'm not picking on you, specifically) use "myself" all the time instead of "me"? "Myself" as a pronoun is reflexive.

It's gotten worse in the last few years. At this rate, "me" won't even be used in another 50 years.

Most people could afford to do:
:%s/myself/me/g

Typo alert!

[gordgekko]

Doesn't Michael mean "Some of the samples are just rediculous."

Illiteracy of the creator of the story title...

[Anonymous Coward]

is more like it. Email, unless it has changed recently, cannot be illiterate.

Job requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why it's so important to put "Excellent oral and written communication skills" in every job requirement. If the job description had this requirement, these people would never apply for it.

All the way to "corporate america?"

[nsayer]

You hardly need to go that far to find functional illiteracy.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[VirtuaKnight]

>"Newsflash 2: People who speak English as a second language are often better at correct grammar then native English-speakers."

that's Because they Ain't be teachin' No slang in da ESL classes @ tuh skool Plus dey haves those grammur lessens that they don't got in the normal inglish classes.

But seriously--that's common sense, if you consider the curriculum for most English classes. My school could have fit the grammar/spelling/vocabulary/etc. lessons I've had in nearly three years of English in high school so far into two or three weeks. It was the same in middle school. Also, outside of some kind of phonics section in the third grade, I can't remember any english lessons there, either. You want to know what we have been doing? We've been reading literature and making inferences. The only problem is that the kids are confused by most of it and bored by all of it, and they gain nothing from it. The end result is that I usually end up being robbed of an hour and forty-five minutes of my time each school day. It's lovely to see your tax dollars at work, isn't it?

And it does not get any better...

[irikar]

...in french. But hey, we are taught in North American universities that language is not important, as long as you are good in your specialization; but tell me? How can you articulate your thoughts if you cannot write a sentence correctly? Some of my colleagues can't even spell two consecutive words correctly.

Combine this situation with the fact that so many corporations rely on a bunch of dumb ass corporate culture gurus that once in a while come up with gibberish buzzwordesque inepties like employés chevronnés, meilleure expérience-client qui soit, timely perseverance (can't remember how they translated this in french), département de la qualité totale, and so many other corporate buzzwords that change every 5 years or so and, one realizes we work in a very funny place...

A recent email here at work...

[necro2607]

Okay, I'm about to quote an email my boss received from a client, the owner of a local youth sports association. We're a digital sports photography business.

"Hi _ and _...

A couple of things for you

1. When _ was up here taking photos one of the teams talked to him
about
getting a new
sponsor. We now have teh sponsor in place so I'm wondering about
having
the sponsor name
imposed on the photo. The team was a midget tesm (ages 15-17) in
red
jerseys. Marty
[lastname] is the coach.

The new sponsor is [COMPANY NAME]

2. Any idea when our photos will arrive??

Thanks - [Person]"

(Underscores and so on inserted in place of names on purpose. I also properly recreated the arbitrarily placed carriage returns)...

Don't even get me started on reading peoples' pathetic writing and "typos". We get kids who are supposedly four inches tall, or born in 1887, or weigh 80kg (that's 176 pounds, pretty hefty for a 6 year old kid). Needless to say we leave a lot of fields blank on our "trader cards".

Even worse, the boss is pretty bad himself. He once left a pretty unfriendly note to one of us for making some kind of error. The very first thing it said was "JUST A F _ _ _ _ ING QUESTION.", italicized and everything. Notice how he put four underscores after the F, as though you're supposed to put four letters between "F" and "ING". So what is it, "FFUCKING" or "FUUCKING", or what? We may never know...

Re:A recent email here at work...

[surprise_audit]

I also properly recreated the arbitrarily placed carriage returns)...

I've seen that kind of thing introduced by the email client. The originator writes the message in a big box and hits return in all the right places, but on the reader's side, the box is smaller, so the client wraps the lines. It won't take out the newlines, though, so the sender looks a lot stupider than he really is.

Not saying that's what happened in your particular example, just that I've seen it happen.

the haughty Ivy Leaguer opinion

[poot_rootbeer]

Of course, in proper English one does not ask "at where" something is located. That construction is a Texan colloquialism, possibly with etymological roots in Spanish grammar.

"Where is the library" is sufficient.

havening

[nuggetman]

so these people are havening problems with grammar?

Mr. Period

[bynary]

I'm sure the viewer overlap is quite large between /. and PA, but the Mr. Period cartoons seem appropriate (WARNING: Explicit material. Funny, but explicit).

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-07 -07&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-11 -03

Presently

[vhold]

Wow, I never knew presently meant that. Can you explain how that makes sense at all? That's one of the most annoying irregularities in english I've ever encountered. The obvious adverb form of a word meaning something that is often functionally opposite? I'll never be able to use that word again because of it's potential for misuse and confusion! Ugh!

Re:Presently

[fishbowl]

In The Queen's English, "presently" means "soon" or "in a little while", and it has never meant "currently." It is a more modern synonym for "anon."

In American English, perhaps as a result of misuse, it means "now." But to say "presently" when you mean "now" is a bit pompous, in my opinion.

I am not sure about the etymology, but I believe the understanding of "present" to refer to the present tense, is a later artifact than what gave us the word "presently."

Strunk and White says the word may be used either way, "in a while", or "currently", but that is a concession to modern American usage (and indicated as such in S&W).

But if we can have the 15th Century usage of "presently" to mean "now" (which it seems to have meant, then), we should be able to say "gay" for pretty or happy, "nice" for "silly", and we ought to be allowed to say "niggardly" when we mean "frugal" without causing a riot.

"Presently" is an obnoxiously polite way of saying "when I get around to it", and an overly pretentious way of saying "now".

Re:Presently

[Anonymous Coward]

Presently, when not being used as (as you put it) a pretentious way of saying "now" actually most closely means 'next'.

The time between having completed the last task, and having not quite started the next.

It has a tendency to slip forward, or backwards in time.

People sometimes discuss how languages other than English support multiple concepts of something where English only supports a single concept. (Future, Past, Present, without shades of gray). It isn't always true.

Re:Presently

[fishbowl]

>Presently, when not being used as (as you put it) a
> pretentious way of saying "now" actually most
>closely means 'next'.

I'll buy that. Thanks.

>It isn't always true.

And that, thanks again. You just pinpointed the reason why we have a duty to preserve the language.

specialization is for insects

[mulescent]

This article highlights one of the (many) costs of having highly focused, vocationally oriented education systems. From high school onward, the US education system emphasizes skills that will allow students to land high paying jobs. Unfortunately, we have forgotten that being a productive member of society (or of a corporation for that matter) requires more than just technical knowledge. Communication, ability to deal with others, and social awareness are all necessary traits for success.

Specialization and technical training are great things, but without a foundation of learning that enables their implementation, they're useless.

Re: But ...

[Ralconte]

Darn it, this is the opposite of the very basics of style I learned. Two or three exclamation points don't make your writing any more powerful, its the words you chose that add urgency or importance. Likewise for the online wierdness of ALL CAPS.

So many people think everything they say has to be beaten over the head of the reader. My last company's Safety Director would send us a Email from tome to time, usually on a work related topic, but sometimes he'd be repeating an urban legend (example: car phone igniting gasoline vapors). He's use all caps, larger font, red color -- to me, it looked like he was trying too hard to be more important than he realy was.

Re:H-1Bs: Chinese Engineer vs. American Engineer

[renehollan]

I almost failed the INS inspection interview for my most recent TN-1 visa because I could not underestand the inspector's English. (He was of foreign decent, but not Chinese.)

For example, he'd ask, "How long live you United States?".

Did he want to know how long I had lived in the U.S. in total (5-1/2 years mostly on an H1-B with LC and GC pending)?

Did he want to know how long how long I had been currently in the U.S. (Not at all since I'd returned to Canada following the telcom bust).

If I misinterpreted his question, my answer could be construed as a lie, and a commitment of a felony (lying to an immigration officer).

Frustrated, I answered, "I do not now live in the United States. I returned to Canada from the U.S. in January 2002, as required by the terms of my visa. I have lived in the United States, legally, from 1999 to 2002."

I was worried that my longish (but accurate) answer would have been misinterpreted as misleading.

Another person was yelled at: "You pay... that man... $110!" He acted confused. I could imagine that he didn't want to pay "that man" $110 (perhaps thinking it a bribe) because he needed the $110 to pay his processing fee to the cashier.

As for me, I was admitted, and approved for a new H1-B (which will require a border trip soon).

Me Fail English?

[That's Unpossible!]

No comment.

The CEO is always right?

[mailman-zero]

"Even CEOs need writing help..."

No one dares to point out mistakes the Boss makes. Well, not in front of him, at least. Every message that I've seen from the CEO (excepting those written by their secretaries) usually has been worded very strangely. The grammar is usually good, but they tend to use and overuse uncommon words. They also tend to use words incorrectly, especially when they are trying to excite and encourage employees and others.

Re:The CEO is always right?

[Anonymous Coward]

>No one dares to point out mistakes the Boss makes.

It depends! I've never worked directly for a CXO, but I have considerable experience with people of just below that level. Believe me, with some people, if you know they are making a mistake and you kept your mouth shut, it can be regarded as much worse than speaking up!

There are people in executive positions that are not only human, but also, humble and who sincerely desire to improve themselves. My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss is really uncommon in the real world.

SHUT OFF !!!

[gagol]

This is like O'Reilly telling people to shut off instead of using... ... appropriate words.

Drooling thoughts

[ZeroExistenZ]

"E-mail has just erupted like a weed, and instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen," Hogan said. "It has companies at their wits' end.

Well I for one think this is cause it's just too easy to do so; as many slashdotters at one point or the other claimed they could "type faster then they can think", or certainly "type faster then writing a letter" (which requires some thought to compose, certainly if you're going to handwrite; it's a bit nono to scratch out your errors in formal mailing.)

If you're able to just open up a browser, your email-client, type your first thoughts out at 300chars/min, and hit send in a matter of seconds you don't have this process of thinking out what you want to say, or which message you want to bring across. (or make sure it's understandable what you're trying to bring over)

I catch myself as well at alot of 'stupid errors', while checkreading the next day what I wrote earlier. While I was pretty confident it was properly written.

There should be a 2minute rule before hitting "send", to cure people having elliptic seizures on their keyboards while sending formal communication.

Email makes you stupid

[jburroug]

Well, writing one seems to have that effect on a number of otherwise intelligent people. For example, I was recently doing phone support for an image-capture workstation I had put together about six months ago. The people my client had sold it to, as part of a larger bundle, were having problems getting it to work. I spent several hours on the phone with the lady doing their IT work. Over the phone she was a very bright, articulate and intelligent woman. We had no problems understanding one another and there were very few miscommunications.

Once I'd talked her through the most critical issues we switched to using email and IM to stay in touch while getting the final solution worked out. At that point she ceased to be an educated, IT professional and became a 14 year old girl typing on a cell phone. Every email or IM was rife with spelling or grammatical errors - ones that she didn't commit while speaking - and those ridiculous and irritating one letter word subsitutions. Not to mention a total lack of punctuation and capitalization. It was so frustrating trying to read and parse her messages that I really had a hard time responding in a timely fashion or staying engaged in the conversation. Pick up the phone and call her and suddendly she ages 20 years and communicates like someone with a Masters degree again.

While I know I'm not perfect and leave my share of mistakes in emails or /. posts, I like to think that most of the people reading my messages understand what the hell I'm talking about. I do proofread, if I don't catch all of the errors in my spelling or grammar, I do catch most of the sentances that don't make any goddamn sense. Am I alone in this?

The nature of the medium....

[Vaystrem]

I think that part of the problem surrounding e-mail communication is its instant nature.

In the past if you received a communication from a superior it would be either verbal or written. Written correspondence would take time and likely involve a proofreading by an administrative assistant.

Your response would also take time and go through a similar process.

E-mail allows instantaneous communication. I'm not sure how everyone else on Slashdot feels, but when I receive an e-mail I feel as if it requires my immediate attention. This is a radically different mental process than if I receive physically written correspondence. The extra time and reduction of immediacy ensures that my written correspondence is of a much higher quality than my e-mails.

The immediate nature of e-mail means that our superiors may be expecting an immediate response to their communication. You may simply not feel that you have the time to compose a well written response, and that a timely response is more important than a coherent one.

The audience certainly matters as well. If you are writing a report that will be physically distributed to many people you are more likely to take the necessary time to write a coherent response. Your response, especially if it is going to customers, reflects upon: you, your company, your division within that company, etc.

I do not see the same consideration when mass e-mails are sent out, be they within a specific organization or between various organizations.

These people, probably, know how to write. They just do not feel that they have the time to write properly. If they do not know how to write then the 'remedial' training suggested in the article may be appropriate. If the real issue is time and the culture surrounding e-mail communication, that sort of training is not only inappropriate but demeaning to those individuals.

Another issue: Netiquette

[stwrtpj]

The problem I run into at my job is not so much spelling and grammar. I fortunately run into very few problems with that. What sets my teeth on edge is lack of basic netiquette skills.

For instance, I cringe when I see someone reply to a long email outlining multiple points in a discussion, only to see the person head the message with "My comments below IN CAPS". This person then proceeds to do just that, namely give all her comments in all uppercase. Ugh. There is no need for this. It is very clear what is quoted text and what is not quoted text.

Another one that is rampant at my company is top-posting. Everyone insists on quoting a message in a reply and proceeding to post their comments at the top. When I try to lead by example and properly bottom-post, people complain my emails are not clear. Argh.

At least I no longer have a boss like I did on my last job. She wrote her emails in all lowercase and used HTML blink tags.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[ShawnDoc]

When I first came to my current job, I was forced to use Outlook which automatically top posts. I got outlook quote fix, which makes makes it easier to quote in accepted "net" style. A few days later I was called in by our VP and told that I needed to start top posting like everyone else. I printed out several pages on the web where people discuss netiquette, and talk about how you should bottom post and only quote what you need to. Let's just say, I'm lucky I still have my job. I now top post on all business communications.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[The Patient]

It's also lovely when you send a long, graphics-intensive e-mail to someone, and they send you a two-word reply, followed by the entire original e-mail -- and you need to reply again.

Three-province shooting spree, anyone?

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[DunbarTheInept]

Man, that one is such a big pet peeve of mine. I wish people would remember that English is read from top to bottom, and therefore top-posting leads to an ugly middle-endian order post.

(By the way, the rationale behind Outlook putting the cursor above the quoted text was supposed to be that you can then scroll-down and read as you decide at what point to break in with a comment, but people don't generally use it that way.)

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[Freultwah]

I usually do not use quotations and even when I do, I never top-post. The ancient FidoNet netiquette, enforced by GoldEd, stated that one's message should never contain any more than 30% of quotations. Now it's ingrained or almost.

However, I do think in some places excessive quoting and even top-posting is useful. Why? In an office situation where information about, say, an upcoming WAN upgrade is sent between many people, it can become an arduous task to keep up with every piece of it, were it all written according to the proper netiquette. It is remarkably easier to just scroll down in a message to find both the context and the part you need. Sometimes you may even find something that wasn't initially sent to you at all, but should've been. Et caetera.

So, I opposed top-posting and excessive quoting as much as anybody, perhaps even more than many since I am a language freak and perhaps even a language jerk sometimes, but I came to accept that practice in an office situation where it makes perfect sense to me (and I do feel bad for saying it).

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[sjames]

Sometimes, bottom posting is not the right thing. For example, if the entire thread is included for reference (perhaps because someone has just been included in the CC list) PLEASE do not make me scroll down 23 pages over a crappy lagged modem connection just to read 'I agree'!

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[LetterJ]

On the topposting, I've kind of suspected that this is a battle between journalistic writing and chronological writing. Most geeks tend to favor the chronological approach.

However, for many people, they want the most important information first (meaning the most recent) and the rest in order of decreasing importance. This mirrors how newspaper articles are written, such that the article can be trimmed after any given paragraph and still be intelligible.

Because I almost always know the context of a given message, it's actually more irritating to me to have to scroll to the bottom, past lots of information I already know to get to the important bit. (yes, I've read ALL of the articles pounding the idea that top posting is bad and I don't care) I prefer to read the important bit first, then look deeper if I need more context.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[cduffy]

That's a separate issue -- namely, trimming quoted material -- and is relevant whether top or bottom posting is in effect.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[Mikesch]

I've given in and just follow the conventions of the intended audience. For technical people I follow all the old rules of netiquette, bottom posting, 4 line signature, etc. When I'm writing to business people I top reply and have the full 63 line company signature complete with the attached jpeg and vcard.

There are quite a few things that I can argue against and try to go against the grain on, but this would be a losing battle. Business email has its own conventions and When in Rome...

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[maw]

Top posting bothers me as well, but I'm mostly used to it by now. And really, if you're using a mail reader that can display messages by thread (and you don't delete old mail right away) there's really not much of a problem with top-posted mail.

Unless, of course, it's incoherent for other reasons.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[1u3hr]

Man, that one is such a big pet peeve of mine. I wish people would remember that English is read from top to bottom, and therefore top- posting leads to an ugly middle-endian order post.

My boss always top posted. He never cut or interleaved text with the message he was replying to, just let messages grow a huge tail, becoming less and less legible with layers of quote markers and weird wrapping, and dozens of sig blocks. Sometimes he would forward a message to me, one paragraph he intended, followed by 20k of previous emails with someone else; quite illuminating, especially when he was talking about what a jerk I was and how he wanted to get rid of me. (I eventually quit and went through a long court case to get my salary paid up.)

Most people I'm dealing with now always top post replies, and sometimes they send me back large attachments that I sent them; I choke back my impulse to flame them as they really have no idea what they're doing and I only deal with each for a few weeks.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[netsharc]

I wish people would remember that English is read from top to bottom
<aol>Me too!</aol>, another annoyance of mine is that blogs do this as well, so reading a "back(b)log" of a blog I've found usually means scrolling down to the bottom, go up a bit, read 2 paragraphs down, scroll up and find the next entry, read down, scroll up again.. argh. And blogger.com doesn't even have the feature to put posts in a chronological order!

But luckily some JS and DHTML knowledge makes it possible to swap the order of paragraphs.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[ragnar]

Another one that is rampant at my company is top-posting. Everyone insists on quoting a message in a reply and proceeding to post their comments at the top. When I try to lead by example and properly bottom-post, people complain my emails are not clear. Argh.

I used to fight this issue, but I confess that I've joined the dark side. Many email clients discourage it or make it unnecessarily difficult. I'm not 100% certain, but I think the style emerged from Usenet etiquette, where context is important if everyone doesn't have a threaded newsreader. While I'm grounded in this tradition, others don't get it.

I email with my geek and old-timer friends in threaded mode and top-post at my workplace.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[NutscrapeSucks]

It's not really a seperate issue. Executive-types generally don't want to hold every email discussion in their head and very often want the reply history included. This is especially important when you are trying to get someone to agree to something, and it helps to have it all out in black-n-white so they can write "I agree" at the top and go on with life.

Usenet style quoting works very well for Usenet or listservs. Corporate mail is a different ball of wax.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[vivekb]

I think another problem is that people refuse to change when they are accused of sending unclear e-mail. Insisting that people should be able to understand you won't help them actually understand you.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[Braf]

Even worse is Novell GroupWise, which doesn't even quote properly. All it gives is this at the top of the quoted portion:
>>> Bradley 12/07/04 11:05PM >>>
This, of course, makes top-posting nearly required as there would otherwise be no clear indication of where the quoted portion ended and the reply began.

GroupWise is a damned lousy email client.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[cduffy]

It's not really a seperate issue. Executive-types generally don't want to hold every email discussion in their head

But they also don't want to have to browse through a huge amount of crap to find out what the topic is. That's why judicious quoting makes as much sense in a business environment as anywhere else.

If they need the full and complete context -- that's what threaded mailers are for.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[flink]

Another one that is rampant at my company is top-posting. Everyone insists on quoting a message in a reply and proceeding to post their comments at the top. When I try to lead by example and properly bottom-post, people complain my emails are not clear. Argh.

Does anyone know how to fix that abortion of an email client that is Lotus Notes? I'm looking for something that will stop it from forcing me to top post, wrap lines at 72 characters, quote replies properly with "> ", and insert the appropriate headers when replying.

You know, basically turn it into mutt :-P

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[Eskarel]

Personally I disagree with this for the most part. Generally test quoted in a reply is either as a reminder to you of what you said or as ancilliary information. The most importat part of an e-mail is the part which was most recently written.

I want to see what the new text first so I can then judge what to do with the rest of it. If it's something I wrote myself then I may just skim it to remind myself what I told the person before. If it's a request for action then I want to know that's what it is. I only care about what's quoted if it's useful to the job at hand.

As for long "tails" well I usually don't get e-mail which has passed through more than 3 replys at most, and I find it takes a bloody lot of text to make any serious dent in my bandwidth, but it is nice to have a record of what you have or have not said simply because otherwise it can be hard to remember.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[Papermaker]

What is the logic behind the so-called bottom posting and why is it so "proper"? I find top posting more efficient in an executive summary sort of way. Why should I have to cut through a bunch of email history just to find the fresh meat? If I want to refer to the quoted material, I will do so when I feel like it by scrolling down.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[klui]

I used to do 'net style quoting, too. But I gave up when I got too many messages in Outlook (had to use it initially because of calendaring/meeting scheduling). The other thing is quoting everything helps because it allows me to see the entire thread unsanitized. It takes more effort, but it is better to not have to rely on others to quote incorrectly what they thought was the correct context. If they quoted too little you have to ask for clarification.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

No, its the discussion, especially the flow and context of information, as I'm attempting to prove in this post in fact. You'll find that my comments make far more sense if they are placed within the sections of your post currently being addressed (I'm being nice and splitting it according to the pragraphs in your post). The only alternative way to provide the context that inline posting provides is to replicate parts of the original message in your response: a waste of time and effort, as well as another source of errors.

And a remotely decent emailer will let you do this by providing distinct colouration of the various levels of quoting. Some probably don't. I don't use them.

That's what archive folders and clients capable of following threads are for. There should be no need for excessive duplication of information across messages simply because you should already have the thing - if you're deleting message when you've read them then you have bigger problems on the horizon, if you're not then you should be able to just select the prvious message in the thread. And while it might not make a dent in yours, I guess you don't run a corporate network handling thousands or millions of mails per day - if 60% of those mails are just wasted quote tails, persuading staff to quote only what is needed for context could massively reduce traffic and associated costs.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[gnu-generation-one]

"I got outlook quote fix, which makes makes it easier to quote in accepted "net" style. A few days later I was called in by our VP and told that I needed to start top posting like everyone else"

Because it disrupts the normal flow of conversation.
Why is top-posting bad?

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[ChristTrekker]

At least I know I'm not the only one. I'd been manually fixing my replies for some time and no one had said anything. Then one very senior coworker complained and within 30 minutes I had a note from my supervisor. The "funny" thing is, the coworker is known around our division for having the most incomprehensible emails that anyone has had to deal with.

I'm fairly convinced that Outlook is single-handedly responsible for destroying email netiquette. I tried explaining the problem to a couple coworkers at my last job (where I at least had the freedom to use Thunderbird instead of Outlook or OE) and people looked at me like I'd grown a third eye. (At least nobody complained to the boss about my "unconventional" quoting style.) Everybody uses Outlook, has always used Outlook, and thinks that top-posting is just how email is done!

BTW, what is Outlook quote fix?

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[Dr. Evil]

CC lists change on memos. When in an environment where people are deluged with communications, it's good practice to strip people out of CC if you think they'll no longer be involved. Sometimes they get put back in, so you wind up sending the whole thread back and forth. It sucks, but as long as people don't assume everyone has carefully read the thread, it's o.k.

On that note... I've been cc'd action items before. I hate that. If I carefully scanned every memo I was cc'd for an action item, I'd spend half my day reading email.

Another horrible practice is to assume your new recipients will read your over-quoted thread when they cc you. You know what I mean, those 20-page long memos with senior management forwarded with comments like "yeah", "for your action", "I approve"... then after reading through the most recent replies, you realize that you'll have to start from the very beginning of the thread in order to mentally diff for a final action item... then ask all parties involved for confirmation of your action item... A wonderful waste of time when the last person involved could just summarize "hey, put the config change on the widget servers"

Must run though... email to read.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[JPelorat]

Three-province shooting spree, anyone?

Yeah, I hate it when people send me long, graphics-intensive emails. It's entirely possible that they're copy/forwarding that junk back to you on purpose. I certainly would.

Save that shit for websites. Email is for text.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[mbbac]

By the way, the rationale behind Outlook putting the cursor above the quoted text was supposed to be that you can then scroll-down and read as you decide at what point to break in with a comment, but people don't generally use it that way.

If this were true, there wouldn't be whitespace above the quote for people to begin typing in.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[fastfinge]

If you're going to bottom post, at least, DO IT THE RIGHT WAY!!! I can't tell you how many people I know who have a message that starts with a long header containing the user who sent the original message, the to: line, the date, and the subject before getting to the quoted bits and then the comments. If you insist on posting at the bottom, your header should take up no more than one line like:
A. User said:

Oh, and I hate the people who get original with the header line and use something like:
A. User cast the following comments in my general direction:

It's too long and distracts from the point. I also don't understand why the date is at all included in these one line efforts. Oh, and don't leavve your bloody signature at the *top* of the message! If your email program (outlook express) puts it there, either top post or move it!

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[N0decam]

If you have designer access to your mail database, you can add an action that lets you "Reply Quoted" - The Notes FAQ has details.

Once you get past the poorly designed default template, you can do some really cool stuff with Notes/Domino, and almost make it behave properly.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[Democratus]

I disagree with the bottom-posting convention that you support.

I recieve scores of email each day. When I get a message I want to scan the top few lines to get the gist of the email.

Having to scroll down to the bottom of a message (somewhere in between the last quote and the signature of the sender) is simply a frustrating waste of time.

I believe top-posting to be a sign of courtesy, showing the recipient that you want to save them time and effort.

If, after reading a top-post, I need to find more follow-up information; I can scroll down to find it.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[MacGod]

I don't think there's anything wrong with top-posting. I know that it doesn't follow the English top-to-bottom method of reading in terms of the order in which the emails were written, but it makes it easier to find the newest information. If I've been taking part in a long email-based discussion, I know what the scoop is on the previous emails. All I need is the new info, which (conveniently) is at the top of the email. If I need to reference something older, I can scroll down to find it. But otherwise, I have to scroll down every message, as opposed to having the information right in front of me when I open the email.

I understand that etiquette is important, even (especially) in emails. However, there has to be a valid reason for that etiquette to exist. It seems to me that the attempt to force bottom-posting is an arbitrary decision to adhere to the initial chronology of the emails, rather than presenting the newest (and there, typically the most valid) information first.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[ibennetch]

BTW, what is Outlook quote fix?

I think this is the relevant link. Outlook Quote Fix is a add-on program someone wrote to un-mangle the way Outlook handles quotes...the web site has an example of how it fixes things up. I tried it maybe 6 or 12 months ago and liked it but I don't use Outlook anymore so I can't comment on the current state of the code.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[NutscrapeSucks]

> that's what threaded mailers are for

Unfortunately, the threading support in Outlook and Notes is pretty bad. Not to mention that I've got better things to fight about than how my boss uses has his Inbox configured.

Generally, I trim off the irrelvant information on the bottom of the reply chain. However, recently I was emailing this CYA-Asshole who would actually paste the entire reply history back in to the email, including the parts that made him look like an idiot.

Crusading for Usenet netiquette in corporate mail is a lost cause, but /. is the home of lost technological causes, so I'm behind you here.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[dpj]

I have to use GroupWise at work and can't stand this. What's infuriating is that they nearly got it right too - >>> Bradley 12/07/04 11:05PM >>> could have been > Bradley 12/07/04 11:05PM > > and all would have been well. Looking at any email exchange between GroupWise and Outlook can get pretty funny though... I also dislike how the email address is hidden in the client itself. On the other hand, at least GroupWise doesn't choke on OpenPGP signatures and even recognises them as signatures even if it can't verify them.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[dpj]

That *just* works until someone asks two and especially three or more questions that require substantive answers (I've seen this happen). From that point on top-posting becomes a major encumbrance to effective communication - I have even seen people copy the questions into a wordprocessor, bold or italicise or somehow distinguish the original and proceed to answer them 'net style before attaching the resulting file to their email. Talk about insane.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[babbage]

You're right that proper quoting should have succinct quoting and no extraneous text, but I think you're cutting a bit too much out. A format like this is typical in well formed mail:

On Wed, Dec 08, 2004 at 04:07:37PM -0500, Chris Devers wrote:
> [stuff being quoted, trimmed appropriately]

[response]

> [more quoting]

[more response]

[succinct signature]

You only get one extra header line, and the material in it -- the date, time, and author -- is all relevant if you want to go back and look up the original message for fuller context.

The goal in all of this is to be courteous to the recipient of the mail, to not let extraneous material get in the way of your message, and to make it easy for the reader to both understand your message as well as be able to place it in a larger context if necessary. Or to put it another way, it's all just being polite to the reader.

Top-quoting, or Jeopardy quoting as it is more colorfully termed [think it through], is a profound insult to the reader and an arrogant demand on their time & patience. Sometimes it's just impossible to avoid -- Outlook makes proper quoting challenging, and Lotus Notes makes it outright impossible, so if work forces such malware on you then you're damned to begin with -- but reasonable people with any choice at all about the software they're running should never impose themselves on the reader that way.

You can split hairs about points of style (e.g. I think leaving the date in is important while you don't), but the general line of thinking in favor of proper bottom-quoting is on pretty sound territory in terms of both logic and courtesy.

Jeopardy quoting -- don't do it!

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[fastfinge]

If it's manners we're talking about, the most polite thing to do is write a self contained reply without any quoting at all. Then again, this will never happen. It's hard enough to get people to quote properly. :-)

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[ChaosDiscord]

A few days later I was called in by our VP and told that I needed to start top posting like everyone else.

While you were burning your bridges by pointing out that he was wrong, did you also point out that perhaps as Vice-President he should have something better to do than meet with individual employs about the format of their email messages? (A good pair of stories on the matter from Joel Spolsky)

I sympathize; we all have to deal with irrational behavior from superiors. Anyone who claims that capitalism naturally leads to highly efficient behavior clearly hasn't actually worked in a large company.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[DunbarTheInept]

If I only got about 5 e-mails a day so I could easily remember all of them, then sure. But once I have more than that, I want the few lines of reminder context.

I do consider it rude, however, when over 50% of the lines in the body of the message are the quoted lines. That isn't needed.

Re:Another issue: Netiquette

[The Patient]

Yes, I'd agree with that if the e-mail I was sending was unsolicited.
In this case, though, it's an internal industry e-mail which is sent to subscribers, who have indicated that they wish to receive it.
I also have a web-based version of it, with a link to the site in every e-mail, and a link which will allow them to cancel the e-mail and move to the web distribution list. I've even sent e-mails advising everyone of the existence of the site, and asking if they'd prefer to receive it that way. Response rate so far is minimal.
Despite my best efforts, the vast majority seem to prefer graphics-intensive e-mail. Go figure.

Are they foreigners?

[EvilStein]

Not to pick on the H1-B types, but I've run across a lot of incomprehensible emails written by foreign employees. Are we just letting them slide by because English isn't their native tongue?

Even worse is seeing people *at work* typing emails like they're typing a text message. The shorthand like "U R l8r" is just awful to see in a corporate email.

Re:Are they foreigners?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a man in my company from Bombay who speaks English more correctly and coherently than any professor I have ever met. He thinks in paragraphs. He uses vocabulary words that few others would think to use. It really is amazing to listen to him.

But then, the language spoken in Bombay isn't exactly "foreign" -- it is English, a dialect of British English that has been frozen in the late 18th Century.

MOD PARENT UP

[amarodeeps]

Man, talk about sticking your foot in your mouth.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Wrexen]

Are you people all inbred? It was a joke, a form of sarcasm in fact. I was referring to the people spelling it the wrong way (with an e) in the second sentence. In fact, I know how to spell other words like "asterisk" and also correctly use "its" instead of "it's" in the proper cases. If the rediculousness (see, there's sarcasm again) of the situation is beyond you, maybe you're not ready for Slashdot.

This is the worst they can come up with?

[Mazem]

As evidence the article cites the following quote:
"I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."

The reason why that message seems so "incomprehensible" is not because of the poor writing but rather because we, the not-intended readers, do not have knowledge of the systems discussed in the email.

Actually the quote looks like it would be quite understandable if I knew
(1) what the status reports were,
(2) what the Barry file is
(3) who Murray is
(4) what "information" they provided
(5) the details of the technobable at the end of the email.
Clearly all of these are things the intended recipient would already know.

I could write an email about an advanced physics topic using perfect grammar and spelling and it would be no more comprehensible to the average reader than this email.

If that is the worst they can come up with than corporate America is in good shape.

Re:This is the worst they can come up with?

[man_ls]

Good point, I think you've hit upon one of the flaws in using a quote out of context.

Just like people claim Al Gore "invented the Internet", this quote isn't particularely useful. It's poorly structured (a few missing punctuation marks) but other than that, it's perfectly intelligible, given 1-5 above.

Re:This is the worst they can come up with?

[svallarian]

or
c.

Telling them how to use the "read receipt" function of almost all modern mail clients.

Re:This is the worst they can come up with?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that is the worst they can come up with than corporate America is in good shape.

You have got to be kidding. It's gargbage, and professionals shouldn't have to put up with it. The idiot who wrote that message should be on the street begging for loose change.

Re:This is the worst they can come up with?

[Sentry21]

to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information

I don't know, this could read as 'if I'm understanding things logically, our policy is to provide Murray with incorrect information.'

This probably isn't the case, but I like to see cloak-and-dagger whenever possible. :D

However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'.

This part gets me. When I read text interjected with hyphens - like this - I expect it to be just that - an interjection - and for the sentence to flow properly without it. This, however, I have difficulty making any sense out of; because she is using punctuation incorrectly, when I try to parse it, I have to stop, go back, and re-try, until I realize that I should stop assuming standard rules and fall back to 'word soup' mode.

For the same reason code should be syntactically correct, complete, and clear, so should the english language. Misparsing code, or more particularly, code that parses in an unintended manner, can be dangerous, distructive, and confusing, and cause no end of problems.

English, likewise, has rules, and those rules are there for a reason. If you follow those rules carefully, which is not hard if you try, then you can create a sentence, paragraph, or a ten-page essay that effortlessly flows from the very first word to the final punctuation, and the reading of which is effortless. Even with proper grammar but poor writing, the flow can be so jarring that I have to re-read some things in order to make sure I have everything, but with a good flow, communication can be improved astronomically.

No one wants a panda that eats, shoots, and leaves, and no one wants to have to re-read a sentence or a whole e-mail ten times before being able to figure it out. Anyone who says proper communication isn't important doesn't know how to properly relate to people - otherwise they would understand that the short-forms they understand will not be perceptable to everyone. People need to learn.

Re:This is the worst they can come up with?

[willpall]

Actually, we don't need to know these things at all. The grammer above is clearly bad. Let me change it...

"I updated the status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forwarded to us via e-mail (they['re] in ["the" may or may not go here depending on the exact meaning of "Barry file"] Barry file) to make sure my logic was correct[.] It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information. However, after verifying controls on JBL--JBL has the indicator as B??--I wanted to make sure with the recent changes [blah] [blah] before Murray make[s] the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'"

Yeah, I know, I've probably made a couple of mistakes myself. The point is that no matter what the subject matter, when English words are being used to describe it, the casual reader should be able to understand the structure of the sentence, regardless of wether its meaning is comprehensible

Re:This is the worst they can come up with?

[Shardis]

Are you cracked? If I wrote something like this in a corporate (or division) wide email I'd be summarily shot or drug tested. :P

Maybe the person who writes the email just has to know exactly what you're talking about in that specific context... riiiight.

Chinese??

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no such thing as a Chinese language. There are Mandarin and Cantonese, the most common languages used in Chinese countries, but no single "Chinese" language.

BTW, if "Chinese" is so common, how come you're writing your comment in English?

Re:Chinese??

[updog]

Yes you are correct, I said "Chinese", meaning the most common dialects/languages spoken in China. I do believe however that Mandarin alone is more widely spoken than English.

I'm just trying to make the point that the article doesn't address the fact that there are many non-native English speakers in "corporate America" - which I believe is a shortcoming of the article.

To her, it probably was correct...

[EvilStein]

After all, Outlook automatically corrects your spelling for you as you type.

"patience" is spelled correctly. In context, it's probably the wrong word, but it's still spelled correctly.

I've seen that happen quite a few times - people relying on the Outlook/Word spellchecked and it corrects their email by inserting correctly spelled, but irrelevant words.
The CxO drones don't even notice it.

Re:To her, it probably was correct...

[Frohboy]

"patience" is spelled correctly. In context, it's probably the wrong word, but it's still spelled correctly.

In the case of an email from the CFO of a corporation (as presented earlier), I would imagine that "patience" is the correct word. If one works in a hospital, however, I would expect the word "patients" to come up (unless one is looking for "patience with the patients", or perhaps "patients with patience").

Re:To her, it probably was correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

"patience" is spelled correctly. In context, it's probably the wrong word, but it's still spelled correctly.

I've seen that happen quite a few times - people relying on the Outlook/Word spellchecked and it corrects their email by inserting correctly spelled, but irrelevant words.

"spellchecked" is spelled correctly. In context, it's probably the wrong word, but it's still spelled correctly.

Re:To her, it probably was correct...

[Noah Adler]

I've seen that happen quite a few times - people relying on the Outlook/Word spellchecked and it corrects their email by inserting correctly spelled, but irrelevant words.

The most entertaining case I've seen of this was a coworker of mine at our college computer support department. He suffers from diagnosed severe dyslexia, so he decided to put a spell checker which automatically 'corrects' all his outgoing emails. He was replying to a professor's request one day, and somehow this spell checker managed to replace the professor's last name with the closest word it could find, which happened to be 'ovary.'

Oddly enough, the professor never brought it up.

Re:To her, it probably was correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is from India. When Outlook tries to correct the spelling of her first name it always suggests 'Armpit'.
She used to get lots of email from her fellow workers like, "Hey Armpit, can you review this for me?" or "Hi Armpit, we're having a meeting and need your input."
Sometimes I call her that as a joke. She really hates it. I think it's funny as hell, personally.

Re:To her, it probably was correct...

[Mercuria]

Funniest case of this I've ever run into of this: my father (a community college English teacher) was grading papers at the end of the Fall 2001 semester. He felt he had to share the statement by one student that recent events had been a "terrible act of tourism."

Re:To her, it probably was correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, Outlook automatically corrects your spelling for you as you type.

For a while I was willing to attribute out of context words to spellchecker gliches, however that explanation fails to account for the ammount of mangled idiomatic expressions that I come across.

These expressions are often composed of simple, unambiguous words that should be spellcheck proof and yet a simple expression like 'off the top of my head' becomes 'off the top of my bread'. My explanation for this phenomenon is that these expressions are acquired during conversation and, like song lyrics, are often misheard.

It would seem to me that anyone who did even a minimal ammount of reading would soon realise that they had misheard an expression and correct themselves, and I think that this where the problem lies; people just don't read books anymore. (This point was brought home to me when two lifelong friends, who unfortunately are both CX0 drones, admitted to me that due to the pressures of work they couldn't remember the last time they read a book.)

In my opinion, courses in corporate writing (as mentioned in the article) are a waste of time unless they are accompanied by a reading habit. Constant exposure to 'well written' language is the only way to improve writing skills - hell, even a Louis L'Amour or Catherine Cookson potboiler novel uses idiom correctly.

My advice to Coroprate America - go read a book!

BLAH BLAH BLAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If this woman's "how-to manual on effective e-mail" is so popular, no wonder so many idiots WRITE LIKE THIS!!!! Any old moron can write a book, it seems.

Me fail english?

[Anonymous Coward]

Me fail english? That's unpossible! --Ralph Wiggum

Re: But ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What was the Mark Twain quote?
Something about whenever you want to use the word "very" in your writing, use the word "damn" instead. Your editor will remove the word, and your writing will be as it should be.

Blame the dirty hippies

[TitanBL]

Deconstructionism, Relativism, and Postmodernism have serverly damaged our education system. Damn those dirty commie hippies.

Still a "predilection?"

[mailman-zero]

"[Don] Morrison, [a CEO,] said, 'I liked long, convoluted passages rather than simple four-word sentences. And I had a predilection for underlining words and throwing in multiple exclamation points.'"

I know this is probably a quote from his speech, so this isn't the Mr. Morrison's fault, but shouldn't that just be one sencence? Beginning a sentence with "and" is awkward at best and completely unnecessary in this instance.

Also, predilection is a word that most people would hear and either think: "Wow! He's smart!" or, "Wasn't that the Word of the Day a while back?"

What Americans ARE good at

[ProgressiveCynic]

Duh, propaganda of course. We call it Public Relations or Marketing, but we are really just the Masters of Mind Control. The frightening part is that even those who make the advertising machine work are completely under its control (at least all the marketing drones I know are.) Which begs the question, "Who is driving?"

This whole culture of official lies is how we can simultaneously have among the worst education and medical systems in the industrialized world and yet have a consistent majority of our population believe we are among the best.

For those who believe that there is a trade imbalance in the globalization movement, think again. The real jobs in America have migrated from manufacturing and IT to Propaganda. There are far fewer jobs in this category, but only those fluent in Newspeak are allowed on television, so they are all that exists anyway. Join, or become irrelavent!

Re:What Americans ARE good at

[servognome]

This whole culture of official lies is how we can simultaneously have among the worst education and medical systems in the industrialized world and yet have a consistent majority of our population believe we are among the best.
I would say we are among the best in capability, but last in effective distribution. If you are rich you can get one of the best educations and medical services in the world, if you are poor, well good luck.

A horrible example

[skulcap]

I work for an internet based payment transfer service. this is an email we received from one of our customers:

Form Message

customer subject: Protections/Privacy/Security; User Agreement; paltalk
is hacking computers we found out a lot

customer message: Additional Information: 'on of you sellers paltalk is
being used by its man company as a hacking tool and spys on togems and
also viruses found from there services bewar for other users safty we
have call the fbi to remove them this information has started and is
being passed to the government who handle this if you are not in with it
fine, but as you know all paltalk named files need to be off our system
asap. we will not help a service who hacks

all files will be gone saturday sept 4th any time 5 pm to 12 mid night

if you have any questions let me know by the email you got this message
from

i will be the one you want to choke not crystal if i hear of husrasment
to crystal from paltalk or any one who is a member of the so called none
hacking stytem of paltalk i will be making a visit to all workers and
summing them for a court hearings and will be pro longed till i see fit,

because this bull shit is the advertisers has come to a stop right now I
have what i need for my team to handle from here and peopel of paltalk
sick of the lies they make you all tell in the support room i was a
support i know how the lies work and run i been there 2 straight years
why do you think i left i found other files that don't belong in users
systems then and im dam sure not letting this hapen to people who are
blind to the lies that get told

we want a refund on a new nick name we had created due to the finding's
of hackable files in our system provided by paltalk.com, we are now on
the first level of hi security for a fraud by paltalk. source codes from
speak freely was indeed stolen, the souce file also used in the paltalk
program are not of the owner, they are of fire talk and speek freely
they also have stolen the other plans from other users and companys we
also have a screen shot photo of the infeted files paltalk uses in the
adds, not only me but a bout 50 users has become anti paltalk users and
is going to enforce any company who uses the paltalk name on there
system it is advisable you drop there services due to hacks of routers
modems users computer systems they will indeed, state this is not
happening and that we are just mad, no we are more then mad now its
hammer time to close the frauded services down asap. and all usa govern
services is getting calls by not only me but also users now in paltalk
finding more reasons, there is also audio recorded conversaion of the
paltalk staff miss using the the system for quick sex on line, and
providing the users of the paltalk system blue name with out pay at all,
the paltalk staff have been miss using the law and we tend to take any
one who is in use of paltalk and provideing some of there services for
them. they have slandered our name one last time tring to dicourage my
partner who dose linux stuff for us and offers the linux support to our
users, they have repetedly tried to steal the linux script that the
partner has made for linux users tring to claim copy rights to them.
well they will not be getting this due to the slander of us. and the
findings of what we found along side government workers who deal with
this kind of thing.

and this is my statment to all who have messed with my sister in a bad
way if you also are not in with it dont worrie about it we will now cover it from here

ok boys and girls one by one you messed

with my sister crystal. now the games will start.

you have trogen in system 32 file a file called drop,

ha well now if you want, we can play all night

i have indeed contacted the fbi on paltalk

and all co admins for exploiting and
forceable sex to provide blue names,

Even worse...

[EvilStein]

When you actually have to do a deskside visit to carefully explain to an executive that the big "X" in her email is because her 14 line signature line was actually hotlinking to a remote image on a web server in flippin' Switzerland that no longer had the image.

WHY Outlook lets you do stupid shit like that is beyond me.
God, I hate that program...

FINALLY!

[Spy der Mann]

.. I have the chance to complain against american typists.

I'm sick tired of people saying "I read you're email yesterday, i'm sorry I should of been more carefull".

First, in "you're", the ' is used for contract sentences, like "YOU ARE". The posessive is "your".

Second: "of" sounds the same that "have", but is NOT the same. "of" denotes posession... "have" is an auxiliary verb.

Third, the commas "," and periods "." are for something, to separate sentences and phrases. They're _NOT_ decorative images, so why do you treat them as if they were?

The problem with America, is that kids (and later adults) type as they talk, and they cannot understand that written and spoken sentences are (or should be) COMPLETELY different. They do NOT study grammar. They consider it USELESS. I try to correct them, but all I get is flames.

And until somebody corrects them, they won't learn. But who will correct them? Someone their age? Come on. Someone older? No way! "Your not my teacher, so shut up", they say.

This is what I get by studying english by the book, and memorizing grammar rules. :-/

Re:FINALLY!

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Second: "of" sounds the same that "have", but is NOT the same.

Oh, good, I'm not the only grammar "nazi" that hates that one. That and the "loose/lose" confusion (which everyone on the internet seems to have developed over the last few years) have got to be the top two irritations I have with bad language on the internet and elsewhere.

Though the word "orientated" substituted for "oriented" comes close...

MOD PARENT UP!

[Spy der Mann]

Insightful.

He is COMPLETELY right in stating: "People write as they speak". I've seen it a million times.

As far as technically inclined people go....

[Anonymous Coward]

...is this REALLY that surprising? I can only speak for myself here, but in high-school, I already knew I wanted to go into the Sciences as an adult, therefore I let my English classes sort of fall by the way-side. Same in college, I'm only required to take Eng 101,102, and 201 (Scientific and Tech. writing). While I'm all for clear speaking and such, why do we have to learn the language of our bosses? They should have to learn OUR language! ;)

I for one welcome our knew grammatically incorrect overlords.

All Your Base Belong To Us

[lukateake]

Somebody set us up the bomb.

Solution: Outsourcing

[born_to_live_forever]

Newsflash: In corporate AMERICA, English is required learning.

Newsflash 2: People who speak English as a second language are often better at correct grammar then native English-speakers.

The solution is obvious: outsource spelling and grammar. Millions of Indians are waiting to conjugate your verbs for pennies.

Re:Solution: Outsourcing

[Fapestniegd]

We have several Indian consultants at our organization doing an oracle setup. I get several emails each day containing gem's like:

server broke? It fail me for many times.

I started replying to them in haiku to save my sanity.

Re:Solution: Outsourcing

[born_to_live_forever]

When mail receiving
and grammar, spelling poorly
seek oneness with Tao.

Re:Solution: Outsourcing

[10101001 10101001]

Exactly. Why aren't more shareholders voting to outsource entire companies to other countries? It'd mean a higher profit margin, right? Oh, that's right. Majority share holders are normally the management, so they can ensure they're not outsourced or fired.

Americans are good at the business buzzword

[spoco2]

Oh yes, Americans are kings and queens of the business terms that sound impressive but are almost impossible to decrypt.

Take some examples from presentations I've just been going through for work:
* "automate operational business processes to meet the needs of service-driven organizations"
* "Fit and Agility" - For business software?
* "establish the corporate value proposition"

The dilbert mission statement creator does it brilliantly as well.

America does THAT better than anyone!

writing takes regular practice

[peter303]

Writing is a skill that becomes rusty if you dont practice it often enough. People may have done alright in school, but lose capabilities if they dont write essays or papers a few times a year. I I know myself there have been some years where I havent written a several-page document nor made a powerpoint presentation. I start forgeting some word spellings and clear sentence and paragraph structure.

Re:writing takes regular practice

[GWTPict]

Don't worry about the Powerpoint presentations, from personal experience literacy is not a requirement.

It has to do with

[TitanBL]

Deconstructionism and this fucking commie bastard

I think for informal personal comms..

[Polarism]

that would be acceptable.

Especially if it's only seen by a few people. It's when that mentality starts bleeding into other things like semi-formal or official correspondence that we start to have problems.

I'm mostly a grammar nazi, even when i'm talking in IM's to people I use the same english I would use anywhere else. Don't really see a point in sounding like a 10 year old.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

what the title says

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering how low the literacy rate is in China, English may be the most widely *written* language. Seeing as how the article is only about writing, it is completely irrelevant what language is actually spoken.

Re:H-1Bs: Chinese Engineer vs. American Engineer

[Oliver Defacszio]

Oh, give me a break. I know that it's hard for you to admit that North Americans are becoming lazy illiterates at an alarming rate, but you're talking out of your ass.

As an English major, I tend to notice a person's grammar and spelling before almost anything else. For every ten people I meet who can't write above a sixth-grade level, eight of them are born and raised on this continent.

The bigger deal, in my opinion, is that these eight people will probably never improve, while the other two (who were born elsewhere) seem to have ambition to get better. At my part-time job during school, we employ a Japanese kid who is just travelling and working for a year or two. He knew two sentences of English upon arriving ("How are you?" and "I am [his name]"), but has adopted better spoken grammar than most of the other guys at work after only a year. More than once, I've been compelled to 'un-teach' him the brutal pidgin English that he has learned from everyone else. One time, and I am not exaggerating, one of the local boys said to him: "You've got to learn to speak English good, or you'll never get laid." I can only hope that it's true.

The examples in the linked article are, without a shadow of doubt, pure laziness from a bunch of slack-jawed cretins who would rather watch Reality TV than read a book. If you actually listen to the people you walk past in the streets, many of whom wear suits that are worth more than my car, you'll see that it's depressingly common.

Geekdom's Illiterates Display Their Talents...

[reallocate]

...every day on Slashdot. Just take a look around.

There's more than a touch of sad irony in /. gleefully pointing to a piece criticizing corporate types who can't write.

What's sad is...

[epod]

That I can read this perfectly. My god, I obviously spent *way* too much time on IRC...

Re:H-1Bs: Chinese Engineer vs. American Engineer

[kalieaire]

Yes, most Chinese engineers cannot write and speak intelligible English. Just like the millions of white boys in the United States that use "then" to compare two things instead of "than". Likewise, the use of "alot" versus "a lot" and the pairs of "noone" and "no one".

But afterall, white is right, isn't it?

This attitude of thinking is purely unproductive at actually solving the core problem of helping people with English language deficiencies, or at least, the difficulties of Americans learning how to speak other languages to communicate with international business partners.

I agree that many Asian American immigrants in the United States may have many challenges from learning English as a second language, but I would be reluctant at saying that "Most do not know how to write in understandable English."

Plenty of American born Chinese as those born in other countries, and educated in Universities abroad, or at international schools, have had a chance to learn and utilize English better than large majority of the United States' own diverse population of "pure white folk".

Notwithstanding the root of animosity against Asian Americans by fellow commentators of this Slashdot post, there are others that have English language difficulties.

If anyone knows, there are plenty of European engineers that similarly have difficulties utilizing English in a 100% correct manner as well.

I find that the criticalness of the female engineer's email in the linked article stems not only from American's lack of patience at understanding, but also arrogance in the correctness of oneself in the English language.

I should know, from the same mindset and at the age of nine, I used berate my own mother's attempts at English before I learned to respect my mother for the effort she put forth to even come to America and the tragedies she had to withstand.

"He's a fountain of misplaced rage. Name your cliche; Mother held him too much or not enough, last picked at kickball, late night sneaky uncle, whatever. Now he's so angry that moments of levity actually cause him pain; give him headaches. Happiness, for that gentleman, hurts."

If this still isn't enough at convincing you that just simply stating in an ambiguous manner that Asians, in general, are inept. You ought to ask yourself one question, "How did they get these jobs and how are they keeping them?"

The answer is simple, Asian Americans even H-1B engineers are willing to work for less pay, work harder and do the job better as well as more efficiently. Why? because the world economy is cold, despite data saying that we're working our way out of a recession, that movement is quite slow and people still need to feed their kids. And it's not just the need for subsistence, it's the innate desire to change oneself and grasp what he, or she, believes is better for them and to move from a country where political and religious expressions is met with oppression and violence.

Face it, most Americans are lazy. Kids these day are lazy. Most teens, students, and college graduates aren't working too hard during their part time jobs. They all head straight home and leave work after their contractual job is over.

This work ethic translates to lazy workers that don't do what it takes to complete a project by a certain deadline.

Apparently, those who keep their jobs, do.

Hard working isn't defined by being there from 9-5 and doing as much work in the time allotted. But instead, it is about working past your goals into a new set of goals you never knew existed.

American Le Mans pit crews don't dillydally with cars that come in on a pitstop, they strive for excellence and shuffle them out as quickly as they came in. For that, they're a cut above the rest, can you truthfully say that you are? I know I can't.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[myowntrueself]

"Newsflash 2: People who speak English as a second language are often better at correct grammar then native English-speakers."

Actually, that might be because native speakers of a language actually understand their *spoken* language at an intuitive level, whereas grammar and punctuation are, IMO, artifacts of education and written language; spoken language has *no* punctuation and (I believe) no grammar.

Therefore, people who receive a formal education in a language pick up the formalised rules intended to make it possible to write down what is, after all, primarily a verbal phenomenon.

ESL students are likely to do better at this than native speakers because by the time you get to school you will have picked up the intuitive and non-rule-bound understanding that makes spoken language possible and flexible.

(I've studied linguistics at university, only to stage 2 so I am not 100% ignorant. I just happen to disagree with such luminaries as Chomsky).

my worst example

[kavau]

Here's an example of a truly dysfunctional email message I received one of my students while working as a teaching assistant:

I have the question with the homework can u please help me. Thanks.

(The whole text of the homework assignment followed. Since the assignments were only given out in printed form, the student must have typed it in.)

That was the whole message. I simply replied "and your question is...?, but I got no response from the student.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Eye really do knot sea whats sew funny about this.

Internet to blame?

[l0b0]

The Internet has become a melting pot of more or less English literate persons. Today, everyone knows a bit of English, at least enough to read and fill in the forms to access forums and chat rooms. These persons file bug reports, express their feelings, advertise their country of origin, and generally want to communicate with the rest of the world. People with English as their mother language or secondary language want to (or have to) answer these persons, and they generally have to do it on the receivers' premises. I also believe that answering a really messy message in perfect English can seem a bit snobby, especially if it's to a colleague or PHB. People get used to using simple, and sometimes plain wrong, English to avoid discussions with the less literate.

It's just a combination of "garbage in - garbage out" and doing what you're used to.

Excellent Point!

[beaststwo]

We all tend to write e-mails using the same wording and tone as if we were speaking to someone with whom we are familiar. We generally take a more formal and respectful aproach we normally take when writing for an unfamiliar audience.

If we took the more formal and respectful approach with our familiars, they'd either be insulted or think we were upset with them. So why should we expect to use a less stringent style for relatively unfamiliar audiences that don't have the benefit of seeing our facial expressions and body language?

I think it's simply a lack of respect for those we work with, cloaked in a false sense of productivity.

On the other hand, sounding intellegent seems seriously out of fashion these days...

Re:Excellent Point!

[GWTPict]

Ah, writing to a familiar audience, yes?

In Short

[geekoid]

Corporate spalling is apelling.

AOLers advising corporate America?

[mailman-zero]

"If you want to indicate stronger emphasis, use all capital letters and toss in some extra exclamation points."

It's incredible that seemingly anyone can just write a book and by virtue of that alone be considered worthy of quoting on such topics. The example she gives is an even better indicator that she doesn't know what she's talking about:

"Should I boost the power on the thrombo?
"NO!!!! If you turn it up to eleven, you'll overheat the motors, and IT MIGHT EXPLODE!!"

When I read this I imagine Doc Brown freaking out about the "1.21 Gigawatts" needed to power the flux capacitor. Besides, would anyone use email for something that time critical that it's acceptable in society to yell "NO!!!!" in their face and effectively slap their hands away from the controls? She only got two paragraphs in the story, but I think that was two more than she deserved.

Again, Dijkstra said it best.

[devphil]

IMHO, if an engineer is imprecise in his language, in any medium, he will be imprecise in other more important areas.

Just a couple weeks ago this comment made sense, and hey, now it makes sense even more.

Re:Again, Dijkstra said it best.

[Anonymous Coward]

Technical science and language skills use seperate parts of the brain. Very often the best communication style for one is hopeless at the other.
Einstein was not a useless scientist by virtue of being pathetic at math. And he was Pathetic at math.

Likewise very few engineers are gifted with amazing conversational skills. When you spend your life developing one side of your brain it really is too much to be held to the standards of the other side of your brain by a bunch of nits with excelent grammar.

Re:Again, Dijkstra said it best.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try not to confuse programming w/ engineering.

The trains hate that.

Re:Again, Dijkstra said it best.

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think that Einstein was pathetic at math?

I HATE CAPS LOCK

[glsunder]

I HATE THE GODDAMNED PEOPLE WHO WRITE GIANT FREAKING EMAILS THAT ARE IN ALL CAPS...

Damned lameness filter.

Dear dumb ass user: catch a clue. If it's in all caps, there's no help for you!

Grammer?

[Cybertect]

Perhaps it's just another Americanism, but over here in England we spell it 'grammar' :)

Re:Grammer?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's spelled "grammar" on both sides of the pond. ;-)

Re:Grammer?

[johansalk]

The txtin' culture in the UK is even worse and unfortunately becoming increasingly fashionable.

Re:Grammer?

[Winkhorst]

A grammer is someone who grinds flour. The word survives as a surname but does not appear in most dictionaries.

Re:Grammer?

[kraut]

So Grammer is a synonym for Miller?

Re:Grammer?

[Znutar]

pls criticize the grammer, not the spelling thx

Re:Grammer?

[RealAlaskan]

Well, I spell it `grammar', too. I misspell it `grammer'. Consistantly, in that post. If you RTFA, you're probably not surprised.

Re:Grammer?

[Winkhorst]

I have this from someone who is named Grammer, so I'm no expert, but I would suspect that grammer is a bit more specific, referring to someone who specifically grinds wheat flour, whereas a miller would grind various grains and even salt. Of course all grammers are millers, but all millers aren't necessarily grammers.

This reminds me of the various terms Eskimos have for snow. I imagine in a couple of hundred years people will be amazed at the number of words we have for a computer program.

Re:Grammer?

[kyle_b_gorman]

> This reminds me of the various terms Eskimos have for snow.

This is an urban legend. Completely BS. We have half a dozen words for snow (try sleet, etc), and there is no language called Eskimo (there are hundreds of Inuit languages).

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which this rumor sprang from, is also BS and should be ignored considering both men's limited knowledge of Linguistics and poor research work. Language only has an ancillary, secondary effect on thought. However, thought has near complete control of language.

For more information, read the wikipedia article which should give you some more background. And please stop spreading the rumor.

Not just Steven Pinker, but every linguist I've ever talked to (I'm a student of Linguistics) will tell you to stop spreading this myth. At least half will tell you to also stop teaching the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I reserve the right to flame anyone on slashdot who mentions the Great Eskimo Hoax.
[/rant]

Re:Grammer?

[ulrikp]

That's not Informative, that's Funny. The original poster probably meant to be clever - or funny - by intentionaly making a speling mistake.

Re:Grammer?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually the pc term is "gramperson", which incorporates both grammar and grampa.

Re:Grammer?

[sharkdba]

Well, I spell it `grammar', too. I misspell it `grammer'. Consistantly, in that post. If you RTFA, you're probably not surprised.

OK, so you misspell "grammar" to prove a point.
Did you misspell "consistently" too, to prove a point about proving a point?

Re:Grammer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Finn but I have allways wondered why you english speakers need a spell checker, but you seem to need it.

Ability vs. Disablity

[hhawk]

Every failure isn't a disability but email is something that cuts across all of society. Everyone has to use it. That includes many who are dyslextic (like myself) or have other disabilities as well as those for whom English isn't a native Lang, all lend itself to lots of Fuzzy English...

Ok, the English teachers would object.. but as long as you can understand what is being said...

Then of course there is "new English" like CU L8ter and IMHO, TTYL and so forth..

Laziness, Incentives and Writing that Works

[daigu]

There are people that are functionally illiterate. However, the main culprits in most of the places I have worked at are laziness and few obvious incentives to communicate well.

Writing clearly and well takes time and effort. If you read standard reference books on the topic like Writing That Works, the bulk of the suggestions are about thinking clearly, considering the needs of your audience and spending time to get it right. Examples:

• Put down first what you want the reader to do, the 3 most important things a reader needs to understand to take action and then, start to write.
• First, what you want. Second, who you are and why you want it. Third, appreciation.
• Take out 50% of what you have written.
• Do not send email unless the email:
  • Imparts new information to someone that needs it
  • Agrees to a request
  • Responds to a question
  • Asks a question or makes a request

Unfortunately, most workplaces do not evaluate employees based on how well they communicate. Unless communication is viewed as part of your "real job" that carries incentives to do it well, people will not spend the additional time to clarify their ideas, requests and responses so that they are communicated clearly. Why bother when you have tons of "real work" waiting for you on your desk?

Re:Laziness, Incentives and Writing that Works

[fishbowl]

> First, what you want. Second, who you are and why
> you want it. Third, appreciation.
> Take out 50% of what you have written.

After taking out the Appreciation part, should I also take out a bit of "why I want it?"

I must admit...

[musicman2059]

Some of those e-mails made even the people who made the grammatically incorrect translation of Zero Wing ("All your base are belong to us") look like kings of the English language.

hypothesis regarding secretaries

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to propose a theory. My theory is this: there have ALWAYS been illiterate morons in almost every possible position within companies. In the past, however, we didn't see as much evidence of it because companies used to employ huge number of secretaries. It was their job to take the burden of operating office machinery like typewriters or copy machines. They were trained to do this so that more important people (like executives) didn't have to waste their time doing it.

But secretaries were also trained to know proper grammar and spelling. It was a part of their job just as much as knowing how many sheets of carbon paper can practicably be used in a given model of typewriter before the last copy becomes too hard to read. They were required to have good grammar and spelling skills in order to complete their training (at business college or wherever), and they were required to have these skills in order get hired.

But don't think for a moment that secretaries transliterated handwritten or dictated letters exactly as the boss wrote (or said) them. They corrected things right and left, and they rephrased things to make them clearer or less awkward. They were the gatekeepers of corporate correspondence, and they were the mechanism that kept it sane. It wasn't their job to alter the overall structure or tone of the correspondence, but anything at a surface level was definitely subject to editing.

These days, corporations don't employ nearly as many secretaries. It genuinely is easier to use computers to communicate, so the notion of a private secretary is virtually gone except in the case of really big executives. But, the computers only make the mechanical aspects easier, and they don't have the brainpower to improve bad writing.

I always embed at least one typo/grammar error

[Anonymous Coward]

This way people can tell that a human being typed the memo, rather than a machine. Presumably, when the machines start typing emails on their own, they will use perfect spelling/grammar.

Hey Business!

[cubicledrone]

This is what happens when you allow your HR department to show nothing but contempt for education. Once again, short term thinking and money grab office politics is a FAILURE and it is YOUR FAULT Mr. Middle Manager. YOU are to blame. YOU were WRONG.

That needs to be emphasized because middle managers aren't often told they were WRONG.

Once again we're reminded of the timeless wisdom of the Breakfast Club:

"Without trigonometry there'd be no engineering."

"Without lamps, there would be no light."

And so it is with our current obsessive contempt for education in any form except buzzwords and MBAs. Reading and Writing is sort of important. JUST as important as Arithmetic. In fact, MORE important because without reading and writing it would be impossible to even explain mathematics, or anything else for that matter.

The written word is the basis for the entirety of civilization. Without the written word we would still be wandering around looking for food for a living. Being able to write well and comprehend what is read is a very important job skill. In fact, it is the most important job skill. All of the bullshit you shovel so you can stuff your pockets faster has to be WRITTEN by someone who can SPELL and form SENTENCES and PARAGRAPHS. In other words, you need to hire WRITERS in addition to team players.

So, Mr. functionally illiterate middle manager, the next time you're interviewing an English or Literature major for WHATEVER JOB, please be reminded that an English or Literature major was probably responsible for your ability to sort-of read the resume you're about to throw in the trash.

Have a nice day.

Re:Hey Business!

[dutky]

While I agree, wholeheartedly, with the majority of your post, I have to take issue with one part:

cubicledrone wrote:

The written word is the basis for the entirety of civilization. Without the written word we would still be wandering around looking for food for a living.

This is, most likely, untrue: Written language is only known to date back about 5,500 years while agriculture is thought to date back 10,000 years or more. The written word can hardly be the basis of agriculture if it post dates it.

Re:Hey Business!

[Detritus]

Please take your finger off the caps-lock key and step away from the keyboard.

Re:Hey Business!

[PitaBred]

Hear hear! That was the worst part about this post. I loved the content. It was impossible to actually read easily though. One or two words capitalized per communique maximum, please... it hurts the brain to try and parse it. HEAR HEAR! THAT WAS THE WORST PART ABOUT THIS POST. I LOVED THE CONTENT. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACTUALLY READ EASILY THOUGH. ONE OR TWO WORDS CAPITALIZED PER COMMUNIQUE MAXIMUM, PLEASE... IT HURTS THE BRAIN TO TRY AND PARSE IT. Now, after you've read each of the above paragraphs, please reflect on which one was easier for you to comprehend and why. I leave the results as an exercise to the reader.

Man oh man...

[The-Bus]

The irony is that a good 60% of the posts in this thread have some bad grammar and/or spelling mistakes. At first I thought it was intentional but then they kept popping up a little too often. I'm not any better. Most of the time I don't make any major spelling or grammar errors, but I forget to close some HTML tag so the whole post is a link.

What I would personally recommend is for everyone to follow spelling and grammar rules in all their written communications, especially IM and IRC (if applicable). When you're on #favchannel (or whatever) and you start capitalizing, punctuating, and generally following the rules of English, you'll see it's a lot easier to do so in other important emails.

If you think you hate grammar and spelling Nazis, imagine one of them being your boss and never telling you your mistakes. That could cost a lot.

Re:Man oh man...

[TiggsPanther]

The irony is that a good 60% of the posts in this thread have some bad grammar and/or spelling mistakes. At first I thought it was intentional but then they kept popping up a little too often.

I think that's one of the drawbacks with the way that the Slashdot comment system works. It basically works like a forum, where you're giving largely informal comments and trying to do so in a fairly quick manner. Mistakes can, will and often do happen.
However, unlike some web forums there isn't the ability to go back and edit posts. And there will invariably be mistakes that won't be obvious until after hitting send.

I think a major part of the greater issue is knowing when you have problems. I know that I have a high typo rate. So with proper letters or internal memos at work I make sure that I run them past a colleague first. (English teachers are useful for this)
With Slashdot posts there is rarely that opportunity. I doubt many people get someone else to proofread their comments. I do try to check my posts as carefully as I can, but there's always one mroe that slips through.

literacy of e-mail

[BCMcI]

If anyone reading this post sees his or her writing style I have a suggestion. Re-read and edit. Because e-mail is so quick and easy we tend to just dash it off and click send. If you read over what you have just read and think how it will sound to your recipient you will often be able to make changes to clarify what you are trying to get across.

Re:literacy of e-mail

[aXis100]

Spot on, that's what I do.

clients vs. stroke victim

[LuxFX]

My mother had a fairly bad stroke several years ago. It didn't have a very serious effect on her motor skills, but it nearly wiped out her ability to communicate. Step by step she's regained her ability to read, write, speak, and listen. She's made great improvements over the past few years, but she's still having to work on it every day.

And she writes emails much better than the majority of my clients, and is about even with the rest.

(My client emails are mostly from the business owners or their project managers.)

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/errors.html

[Spy der Mann]

Common errors in english.

'Nuff said :)

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Noehre]

Newsflash, Chinese isn't a language.

Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Wu, and Min are, however.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

[Anonymous Coward]

hth

Tolstoy?!?

[grcumb]

From TFA: "It's not like we're trying to hire Tolstoy."

It's a damn good thing, too. The last thing corporate America needs is a 2000 page corporate org chart in which Alexei Sergeyevich has dotted line responsibility for Sergey Alexeyevich, and both of them are in love with Anya Lamentova (who is referred to half the time as Anyushka, making it look like these two are chasing different women so what's the problem?), and by the time Napoleon finally retreats from Moscow and Sergey Alexeyevich has recovered from the duel with Alexei (Sasha) Sergeyevich we haven't even come close to our quarterly projections and don't give a shit about any of it any more and spend our entire day checking the want ads.

Re:Tolstoy?!?

[lahvak]

Well, if you can not comprehend that Anyushka is the same name as Anya and Sasha is the same as Alexey, than you have got a problem :)

Re:Tolstoy?!?

[Aetrix]

Thank you for one of the best laughs I've had in a long time.

Re:Tolstoy?!?

[grcumb]

It's worse than that, I spent the first hundred pages wondering 'what the heck is a patronymic?!?'

Let's just be glad the quote didn't mention Dostoyevski or Checkov. 8^)

It's nothing new

[M. Silver]

I worked as a secretarial temp in college, and let me tell you: executives have *never* been terribly literate (well, at least since the 80's; I assume it wasn't much different before that). It's only that they used to have secretaries type their correspondence, so nobody knew.

And don't try to correct them.

[supabeast!]

As if it isn't bad enough that people are expected to try and comprehend messages written by people with no grasp of spelling or grammar the problem is compounded by the fact that most companies don't want anyone correcting other people! I have been yelled at, chewed out, and disciplined at previous work for replies to poorly-written emails that explained the problems and the correct use of language. The general opinion of managers on this topic is that as long as someone can get the point across anything short of prurient obscenity is acceptable, and correcting people is bad because it makes people feel bad.

subject lines

[bersl2]

For a few of my Slashdot posts (and emails, etc...), I spend as much time thinking about an appropriate subject as I do writing the body.

Most of the time, the concept of a subject line works, but sometimes it only detracts from the message. This is especially true for short (as in, shorter than this one) messages.

College Degrees

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it just goes to show what the value of all of today's college degrees is. Nothing.

I would hire a person that was literate and could do the job, rather than just hiring someone with a piece of paper in his hand. The two aren't necessarily the one and the same.

Ode to a Spell Checker

[pipingguy]

Someone other than me originally wrote this. My apologies to non-native English-speakers, as this is bound to do some brane damage to those that do their best to try to comprehend:

I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed to bee a joule.
The checker poured ore every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Be fore a vailing checkers
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if were lacks o'er have a laps,
We wood bee maid to wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know faults with in my cite,
Of nun aye am a wear.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped words fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud.
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.

Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft ware for pea seas,
And why I brake in two averse
When righting what aye pleas.

Re:Ode to a Spell Checker

[rawb]

Clearly, one of the problems with the English language is that its rules are all over the place.

Mark Twain had a great idea on how to fix it, and rather than elaborate for you, I'll just paste his work here. Remember, it's for the good of the language.

A plan for the improvement of spelling in the English language
By Mark Twain

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same
konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and
Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with
Iear 5 doing awai iwth useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so
modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai
Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant
letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould
doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a
lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Re:Ode to a Spell Checker

[NemesisBubu]

Funny. I did not experience any "brane" damage.

Re:Ode to a Spell Checker

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting: My spell checker did not recognize "vailing", but it turns out it is a valid, though archaic word.

Re:Ode to a Spell Checker

[Gamasta]

I didn't fully read this, but laughed a lot with just the first 10 lines. I'm non-native English-speaker, but think I could point out most of the mistakes. I think there could be some native speakers that would miss a lot of them. It's just a question of knowing 'proper' orthography, I think it has to do with a lot of reading. It's not about being native, though it helps.

My 'Ode to a Spell Checker' would be the following: I recently bought and read a nice book about human performance (in Portuguese). The content was pretty good, but there were a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes. I normally forgive two or three misprints, but there were already three in the 'Thanks' page (the rest of the book wasn't that bad). Most of them were errors a spelling checker wouldn't get.

So I wrote the editor an e-mail, saying their revision of the text was shitty. He answered maybe an hour later (which I liked a lot) saying it had been done by a professional outside the company and they couldn't make sure about the content being scientifically correct. So it looks like the revisor did the shitty job. Ran a spelling checker and just gave back the work. They didn't do a second revision (with someone else), they just published it.

The sad part was that the publishers reply contained a lot of grammar errors too. It takes away my confidence that this publisher can do serious work, though it was clearly someone else's fault.

I'll probably tell him that in a couple of days.

The damage goes even farther than that...

[deblau]

It's not just poor grammar -- many high school graduates aren't as smart as 8th graders were 100 years ago. I guess kids these days aren't spending enough time looking at history books. Then again, who can blame them? Most of them would rather be catching up on public interest stories.

Regarding Your Sig

[ZeroPost]

Shouldn't the word 'French' be capitalized since it is a proper noun?

Re:Regarding Your Sig

[driftingwalrus]

I do beleive it could also work as an adjective.

Re:H-1Bs: Chinese Engineer vs. American Engineer

[DrSkwid]

Perhaps he wanted to know your anticipated lifespan.

Part of the problem...

[Gamefreak99]

Part of the problem is that most people that spell baddly *could* spell rightly. I'm willing to be that if you took 10 of them and taught them all to type at least 8 would start writing with more clarity, spelling, etc.

I still think the origional text is whacked...

[Akardam]

There's a difference between not comprehending a technical detail, or something in context, and not comprehending the flow of the text.

Original:

"I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."

It's almost like a run on sentance with more open brackets than closed. Let's see what a rewrite can do:

"I updated the Status report with the four discrepancies Lennie forwarded to us via e-mail (they are in the Barry file). To confirm my understanding of his message, it seems we provided Murray with incorrect information. However, after verifying the controls on JBL, JBL has the indicator as 'B'. I wanted to make sure that with the recent changes I made today did not have an impact, before Murray changed the setting on the mainframe to 'C' again."

It may not be technically correct, but I'll wager that for most people it reads a lot more smoothly.

Re:I still think the origional text is whacked...

[Mazem]

The fact that you, someone with no knowledge of the situation, were able to do that rewrite suggests that the email was indeed "readable" despite its poor gramatical construction.

Re:I still think the origional text is whacked...

[Merk]

Still not good enough for me. I'd write it as:

I updated the status report with the four discrepancies Lennie forwarded to us via email, they can be found in the Barry file.

If I understand the situation correctly, we provided Murray with incorrect information. He had set the controls on JBL to 'C' when they should have been set to 'B'. I've verified they're now set to 'B', and want to confirm that this is correct before informing Murray of the change.

I'm not really sure I have the logic of the situation right, but I think that wording is much more clear.

Re:I still think the origional text is whacked...

[eclectechie]

The fact that you, someone with no knowledge of the situation, were able to do that rewrite suggests that the email was indeed "readable" despite its poor gramatical construction.

Yes, but it is "readable" in the same sense that the assembler output of a compiler is readable. It can be read, but why torture yourself if you can avoid it?

Merk's version below is instantly parsable by anyone, without any special insider knowledge. The original message takes much longer to understand, probably even by those with intimate knowledge.

Re:I still think the origional text is whacked...

[cduffy]

The fact that you, someone with no knowledge of the situation, were able to do that rewrite suggests that the email was indeed "readable" despite its poor gramatical construction.

For some minimal value of "readable".

Folks who know how to speed read are more effective when reading content which is clearly written. Forcing your reader to expend effort to interpret something that should come naturally to them (presuming that they're a sufficiently proficient reader) is severely unkind.

Further, folks who fail to expend that effort or who have insufficient context may interpret the intended message incorrectly -- potentially far worse than no communication at all.

Re:American school system...

[wk633]

Stupidity knows no politics. I get stupid shit from Republicans and Democrats alike.

Don't quote

[Confused]

There's an easy solution to your quoting problem: Don't quote.

Think about ehat you want to say and write a self-contained reply without the ugly point for point nit-picking style promoted by quoting.

This has the added benefit, that your receipients either take your interpretation of what was said before or have to work and dig through their own archive.

I had the experience, that this leads to calmer mail exchanges.

Re:Don't quote

[Mr. Bubbles712]

Think about ehat you want to say and write a self-contained reply without the ugly point for point nit-picking style promoted by quoting.

Yep, I'm not going to point out that...

Hear that noise, here comes the flames.

Re:Don't quote

[klui]

Often, long threads with multiple thoughts require quoting. I see this problem on web forums. What the heck is this person replying to when the message is "Yes, you can do that, but be extra careful!!!!! I wiped my drive once." and there are 5 different procedures already posted.

Re:Don't quote

[Confused]

The whole point of avoiding quotes is to avoid writing tripe answers like 'Yes, I agree' or 'wtg'. It offers the chance to resume what one is agreeing to exactly.

Yes, it takes more time to write and yes, you need to think about what you agree to first, but in the long run covers your behind better. It's sad, but in the end what counts is only what you wrote, not what you meant.

And specially in corporate mails, people being the lazy slobs they are, it gives you a big advantage if your spin of the facts gets quoted by the rest and the original is buried in the archive. Don't make it so easy on them to remember what it all was really about.

Re:Don't quote

[Pfhorrest]

When a conversation I've been following, for example on a mailing list, starts getting too out of hand with mixed top-quotes, bottom-quotes, interspersed bottom quotes, etc, and I want to reply to a series of points in the conversation, I'll usually trim out the quotes just for my own ease, so I don't have to try to untangle the mess. I'll then sum up each earlier point before my response to it. It's easier to retype other people's points than to try to untangle their horrible mess of quotes, especially if they haven't been snipping the irrelevant parts.

But if I've been having a nice back-and-forth with someone who's got good nettiquite and is bottom posting properly, I see no problem with responding point-by-point with quotes. "Me, too" responses are still rather silly, but if I agree with one point in an argument that I'm responding to, I'll put [snip] after a fragment of the first sentance, and then respond "I agree here". Or if I only disagree with a few points, I'll say at the top that I agree for the most part, but there are a few points I want to address. Then I will quote and respond as appropriate.

Proper quoting actually supports clear conversation skills, not hinders thenm, but it's more than just where you put your quotes; snipping for relevancy is just as important.

Re:Don't quote

[millwall]

Think about ehat you want to say and write a self-contained reply

Like you clearly did? :)

Re:H-1Bs: Chinese Engineer vs. American Engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

For every ten people I meet who can't write above a sixth-grade level, eight of them are born and raised on this continent.

That figure is meaningless without the accompanying data - for every ten people you meet, period, how many of THOSE were born and raised on your continent?

BTW, English is spoken as a national language on every continent (if you count the Falklands/Malvinas as part of South America). So the continental origin of a person is not sufficient information to determine whether he or she is a non-native speaker (which appears to be your criterion for "having ambition to get better").

Tolstoy?

[roman_mir]

"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy," said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study. - oh, man, Shakespeare, not that companies want to hire Shakespeare, you crazy corporate robogirl! In Soviet Russia they wouldn't want to hire Tolstoy, here we don't want to hire Shakespeare!

Re:Obligory Simpsons quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pffft, English. Who needs that? I'm never going to England."

Re:H-1Bs: Chinese Engineer vs. American Engineer

[Moofie]

Er, if you're on the continent of North America, I think it's a pretty safe bet that 8/10 of the people of any stripe you meet were born on this continent. Your anecdote does not address the disparity in percieved idiocy between North Americans and other people.

In other words, you might want to stick to English, because your understanding of statistics is, well, creative.

Consider that people who emigrate into developed nations are self-selected as more intrepid, braver, and quite possibly more intelligent than the average for their native land.

Or don't, because it's more fun to think "Americans are dumb!"

Obviously!

[roman_mir]

Message: I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."

Reply: You update the Status report at B???? JBL is belong to mainframe before Murray verify controls. Make your time!

the only possible response

[No Such Agency]

... "Oh. Tell them my ovaries say hi". Just be glad you didn't brag about how many Korean chicks CHUNG was going to sleep with.
/obscure?

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution. Learn and use Spanish. It will be the first language in Jesusland by 2007. Get a head start now.

Vocative!

[pjt33]

You missed the comma before the vocative.

For all the talk about markets being efficient...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't many of those that can spell get jobs?

Re:http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/errors.h

[ChrisN79]

They should retitle that page "Common errors in web design" -- I think I am dizzy after just trying to read that.

Not just corporate America but everywhere.

[SluttyButt]

I worked for a Japanese MNC, and email messages just do not measure up to a reader who is used to book prose. With a typical Japanese correspondent, I often get hillarious statements where verbs, nouns, and all got tangled up but they are ignored. It's the 'point data' that got picked. If they tried to be polite through more persuasive requests, they won't get it as we can't tell what was the intention until repeated confirmations.

With local correspondence (and that's university grads with masters degree), it's not so much as hillarity but shame - and it left one with a bad taste in the mouth. These are the one who will eventually lead the organization. Bad news.

The general state of affairs is colluded towards the slow death of life itself.

High school

[iswm]

Something I find really sad is that my sophomore English teacher had to go on a five minute rant on more than one occasion about how you can't write like that in academic papers. I hate people my age. I'm terribly scared for the future.

The better they think they are...

[Pengunea]

The worse they tend to actually be at effectively using English to communicate. I've had many bad/hilarious experiences attempting to dechiper what some clients and team members were trying to say in e-mails.

The most recent example I can think of was a reply after I fixed a site bug; "I works great now!". At least that one made me grin.

The worst example I have is when I was in college doing my final project. I got stuck under a team "lead" who fancied themselves an English major (they weren't, but they figured they were as good as one). This supposed team "lead" ended up dragging our documentation through hell, high water, and no less than six other non-team members to "proofread" it. The resulting edited documentation was unclear and the phrasing was almost unreadable with all the "necessary" edits. On top of that this persons' e-mails were improperly capitalized and lead to constant conflicts. They were regularly abrupt and snotty in their e-mails and simply refused to explain their lack of ettiquette later.

No one uses English perfectly, especially as there are many variations on the form. But I just can't stand people who get a big head over their language "skills". How can you possibly spot areas that need improvement if you think you're perfect anyways?

Okay that was enough sarcastic quotation marks for today.

I attribute this to a couple of causes.

[rindeee]

1. Virtually everyone has a college degree. I assure you that this is NOT due to greater emphasis being placed on quality education. Rather, our higher education system (in the US at least) has bastardized itself and become a paper mill. For Pete's sake, anyone can get a degree. While this may sound like a good thing at first, in fact it is terrible. Like it or not folks, a degree is SUPPOSED to set the holder apart from the masses. Next it will be post-graduate degrees, and so on. Somehow, businesses forgot to verify that their job candidates actually learned something in the process of obtaining their beautiful degree (suitable for framing). Certainly there are many great schools still out there, but there is little to set graduates from these programs apart from the "University of Phoenix" types when it comes to peddling their paper. We have HR types to thank for that, and the colleges and universities are happy to keep on pimping.

2. Facts are facts, and there are a LOT of people out there (especially in the tech arena) who speak English as a second language. What the heck do you expect from them? It's hard enough to carry on a verbal conversation with of them, much less one by e-mail.

Re:I attribute this to a couple of causes.

[cubicledrone]

Virtually everyone has a college degree.

In 2003, the states with the highest percentages of college graduates were at only 29%. That's 71% of the population having not graduated college.

Which also means that having a Bachelor's Degree makes a person better educated than almost THREE-FOURTHS of the rest of the population.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but in Soviet RUSSIA, learning is required English by old Koreans and Natalie Portman with hot grits down her pants!

Good software engineers...

[theblacksun]

...have a whole shitload of documentation down before a single line is coded. That documentation better be good, otherwise you are going to run into all sorts of problems along the way, especially in integration. Clear, concise, descriptive documentation is the key to good software development. Funny how little writing they make you do in engineering school.

Re:Good software engineers...

[GileadGreene]

I suspect that it depends on the engineering school. My undergrad program required a large number of written reports. Those reports were graded on both technical content, and writing quality. After a few years of that, looking back at my earliest reports caused me to physically cringe in response to the awful writing I had actually had the gall to submit. I'm still by no means a great writer, but I'm certainly far better than I was before I went through engineering school.

Re:Obligory Penny Arcade quote

[Sarcastic Assassin]

Bad Boys of Punctuation And the infamous... Mr. Period Returns

How did you sink so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

i donn agreee, I nevar use that speller check thing, it to much ephort to fine teh thing, most times teh point gets cross. Txting better, cos its fast. PErson ally I thinck my writting get's teh point across finely. Donne use big words, that for loosers and bibble readers.

A funny example

[Aidtopia]

When Maxtor bought Quantum, there was a goof in converting employee stock options. The responsible department sent a mass email to the affected employees explaining the problem and the solution. It ended with the following line:

We apologize for any incontinence this may have caused.

Love that spell checker!

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

In Corporate Russia, email reads YOU!

Glass houses...

[Anonymous Coward]

Inevitable slashdot nastiness, but I shudder to think how poor the students must have been for you to have graded them down. To wit, a very minor rewrite to correct only the grammar (no e), punctuation and syntax:

When I was teaching econ, on several occassions I made the mistake of giving an essay test (bizarre premise, but ok). The results showed that American students couldn't write. When I gave them lower grades/marks due to poor writing, they were shocked! "You should grade the econ, not the grammar," they said. However the grammar and organization of their essays was so poor that there wasn't even enough coherent content to grade.
Some of them did know the material, but it doesn't matter what you know if you can't communicate it clearly to others. If you can't communicate clearly, you may as well know nothing as that is what others will assume.
By contrast, there were some students who knew English as a second language and had grammar problems, and yet their writing was still coherent enough that I could figure out what they meant.

I'm guessing parent is probably an ESL student him/herself, and I agree with his sentiment, however his glass house is mightily shattered.

It's not just email--it's everywhere

[slashdotard]

Oh! Where to begin?

I have received solicitations from a number of businesses including huge corporations who hire advertising agencies to send stuff out.

So many of these little missives contain not only spelling and grammar errors but seem as if they have been transliterated from some completely alien language and sometimes say things that have nothing at all to do with the product or offer.

Additionally, during job hunts, I run across an advert that really requires deciphering and retranslation, if possible.

I find help wanted ads that, for example require prospects be "illiterit in English", requires a "doxtorate" or "dogtorate", a "MA degree" in chemistry and physics or other science (Yes, that's a Masters of Arts degree!), gives "verterines" hiring preference, give the wrong address to apply to, et cetera, ad nauseum.

It's not limited to corporate people--Lawyers, teachers, professors, even editors demonstrate poor literacy.

Illiteracy is pandemic in society and it seems to be intentional, given that it's source is public education--or educators have merely shoved their heads deeper up their--i mean, into their fantasy world and want us all to come along.

People are becoming more of a by-product of public education.

Consistantly?

[bkocik]

Nah...it's just too easy. ;)

Re:Consistantly?

[tomhudson]

Progris repert 1

My naam is charly gordon. i am playing. with a mouse. named Aljernun. He is kute. The dockters say that after i have my operashun: i will b as smart as Aljernun. Maybe evun smartur.

That wood be fun. Right now; Aljernun can run the maize faster. than me.

Aljernun is a funny naam. His naam shud be miky. Ever body knows! that mouses ar naamd miky. I seed it on the tv.

Scary thought when corporate emails sound like they're written by Charlie Gordon with an IQ of 68, or, in some cases, Algernon running across a keyboard stepping on keys at random.

Re:Consistantly?

[NitroWolf]

I believe that's what they coined the term "pwned" for.

Re:Consistantly?

[AJYeary]

^_^ It's been forever since I've read that book. +10 points for the reference!

~aj~

Re:Consistantly?

[Shardis]

The really wierd thing is that "creative spelling" has been actually taught in some schools in the US as a method of getting students to actually be able to write their ideas down on paper.

The SAD thing is, is that some idiotic teachers actually think it's acceptable to use... No shit, I've actually been told this by a Minnesota board certified teacher who is supposedly able to teach the English language to the college level. :P

Re:Consistantly?

[ikkonoishi]

Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse"

Actually you are missing some commas there also.

Should be...

"Helping your uncle, Jack, off a horse"

Re:Consistantly?

[dfj225]

"in some cases, Algernon running across a keyboard stepping on keys at random." Ah ha! So thats why my boss can't type too well and always requests that we bring cheese to his office!

Re:Consistantly?

[tomhudson]

It's been forever since I've read that book.

Me too. I wanted to quote from the book, but a quick google only got me some "cheat sheets", no quotes or texts.

So, had to do it from memory ... and some improvisation. It's **damn**hard** to write like you're a "graduate" of a certain online "university" http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/08/033 7235&tid=111&tid=123&tid=133&tid=1 7

Re:Consistantly?

[I_M_Noman]

"Helping your uncle, Jack, off a horse"

This implies that you're talking to someone named Jack about helping his uncle off a horse. Better to re-word the sentence into something like "Help your uncle Jack to dismount his horse."

Re:Consistantly?

[Anonymous Coward]

God, what a depressing book!

Language laxatives needed

[Linux_ho]

My wife used to be an editor at a technical consulting company. She copyedited most of the documents that were presented to customers. Every night I would get an earful about how frustrated she was. Management didn't appreciate her contribution to their sales figures. They didn't realize how crappy most of the consultants writing was, mostly because management's writing wasn't so hot either. I looked at some of the AWFUL proposals she had to take home at night (because their genius work couldn't possibly need a lot of proofreading, so they can wait 'till the last minute to submit it to the editors, right?).

She did get a lot of joy out of using Deloitte's Bullfighter though. It's basically a Word plug-in that detects BS like "synergy" and "paradigm". I sent her a link a while back and she had her buddy in MIS secretly install it on all the consultants computers. Unfortunately Deloitte isn't distributing it anymore. BullFighter

Re:Language laxatives needed

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

She did get a lot of joy out of using Deloitte's Bullfighter though. . . . Unfortunately Deloitte isn't distributing it anymore.

archive.org is your buddy. (The ZIP is apparently something nonstandard maybe PKware proprietary?) but the EXE works.) Get it before they pull it.

Optional Literacy

[cookiepus]

If Slashdot had a built in spell check, I'd use it. But since it does not, do try to resist responding to my comment on the importance of writing well by pointing out typos. Thanks ;-)

There is a big distinction between someone who knows how to write well, but writes at a lower level because of time issues, and someone who is incapable of writing well at all.

I'll give you an example:

"Would u pls let me know re: the proj status?"

I would not hold this line against someone. Someone who'd write this can form correct sentences, employs punctuation and capitalisation properly. So I think it's fine for this person to replace "you" with "u" and abbreviate "please" and "project".

Bottom line, the line is written intelligently and does not lose meaning due to the shortcuts.

For some reason people find appostrophes very difficult. "You're" to mean "your" and suffixing 's to indicate plurality are improper use - and cause one to type more rather than less. I get a little annoyed by these because it's so easy to do it correctly.

Then there are people who just can't write. One of my managers is a great guy, but all of his e-mails are really scarry. If he asks me about something in person it's totally pleasant. But somehow his e-mails always end up looking like "What's going on with this client????????"

Actually if I hate one thing, it's the multiple questionmarks, especially when the e-mail message is solely composed of "??????" The sentiment these convey to me is of offensive interrogation kind of like "this shit makes no sense to me and it's your fault"

Totally turns me off, and my usual response if "read what I wrote again." Somehow that either makes them go back and comprehend, or else it just sounds stern enough that they do not want to deal with me.

Bye!

2 much IM & SMS

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame some of this on Instant Messaging (IM) and Short Messaging Service (SMS) for the lack of spelling and grammar in electronic writing. If you only had 150 characters to explain something you need to get "creative" in sentence writing in SM. Also in IM you want to write something quickly and you encounter more spelling and grammar errors in this manner. Remember the current keyboard was inteneded to slow down typing to prevent the mechanical key from being stuck... if your that old. Maybe to prevent these typing errors we can re-introduce the Dvorak keyboard and teach this to the next generation.

The many lives of the Slashdot community

[guet]

*If* English is your first language, and I read something written by you (in a public forum/email) with the same mix of innatention to detail and offensive personal attacks as the parent, I'd be less inclined to take anything you said seriously.
I hope you introduced all the grammatical errors in your post deliberately, but I doubt it. You could at least have managed you're an asshole ; in a discussion of grammar your an asshole is more likely to produce sniggers than the intended effect. These are not 'typos' they are gaps in understanding.

I'd say that's a problem for you if you ever want to communicate with others and be taken seriously.

My mother...

[ChoyLeeFut]

... will put an entire (albeit brief) message in the Subject of an e-mail, leaving the body blank.

Oddly, she doesn't quite get how IM works, either; she'll type until she hits the Yahoo Messenger buffer limit, at which point she'll hit return and keep on typing.

inattention

[guet]

hee hee : ) That was a typo, honest

inattention

Usage of the word 'Fuck'..

[aero2600-5]

Before I start this post, let me explain this post has absolutely nothing to do with George Carlin.

Has anyone besides myself noticed that the word 'fuck' has become an almost accepted word by the general public? I believe at least half of the people I talk to on a regular basis use it and the rest aren't offended by it. As long as it's not used to describe actual intercourse, no one seems to mind. So why is it still considerered 'cussing'? I went through the drive-thru of a national fast-food chain the other day and, as usual, they got my order wrong. So I parked my vehicle and went inside to speak to the manager. I said to him, "I'm sorry, but you fucked up my order." He was more concerned with me apologizing for cussing than he was about getting my order correct. He's one of the few exceptions, but is anybody still offended by the word 'fuck'? I mean, really, is it that big of a deal? Even the Vice President of the US uses it regularly. What's the big deal? Words that are considered 'cuss words' change over time. A century ago, no one would ever say 'chicken breast' because breast was considered to be a 'bad word'. Is it possible that anyone is still offended by the word 'fuck' is just behind the times? A lot of people say that 'cussing' shows your lack of vocabulary. I consider myself to have a fairly large vocabulary, and to be a fairly decent speaker, but I still use 'fuck' all the time. Sometimes there are no other words to convey your point with the same emphasis as with the word 'fuck'. For example, "What the fuck is that!?". I could use 'hell' there, but it doesn't quite carry the same emphasis.

Should 'fuck' be removed from the list of seven words you're not supposed to say?

I say, "Hell, yes!", and to those that disagree, "Fuck 'em."

Aero

Re:Usage of the word 'Fuck'..

[mjkjedi]

I agree with your sentiment, but I have to point out one thing:

The fact that "hell" doesn't properly convey the emphasis you want is probably a result of its becoming more accepted. Since "hell" is used regularly, we have to resort to a stronger word to have the same impact.

I don't think any word should really be considered "obscene" (if you bleep out "fuck", everyone still knows it was was "fuck" that was bleeped out, so what does that accomplish? It's a superstitious holdover), but people should still try to use discretion, if only to avoid diluting the heavy hitters, so they're there when we really want them...

I didn't sea wat wash wong with toe emails?

[Timmy D Programmer]

Eye think yall r imaguning things!

3 page article!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not reading that!

"New York Times" is guilty too

[peter hoffman]

It's not just corporate email. The "New York Times" now routinely spells "NASCAR" as "Nascar" as well as mangling other acronyms. I have written to them several times to find out what is going on but they haven't replied. I think it's the result of using MS Word which has a nasty tendency to downcase things.

Since we're on the subject, I'll bring up a related complaint: I think the program which checks your spelling is a "spelling checker" and not a "spell checker" (unless you're some sort of warlock or witch). I know, I need to relax and get used to it but it does bother me.

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[TrashGod]

The "New York Times" now routinely spells "NASCAR" as "Nascar"...

Many words that began as acronyms come to be used as ordinary words. "Scuba", "Basic" and "laser" come to mind.

Of course, that shouldn't diminish the pleasure of finding the occasional copy error in the Times:-)

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[Anonymous Coward]

Acronyms are often misused by companies. Trademarks like YAHOO! or iMac are specifically used to make them stand out in a newspaper article. Good newspapers nowadays have a rule to remove punctuation marks and uppercases in "words". I like it.

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[payndz]

Something that bugs me far more than it should is the tendency for major news outlets to use 'Nasa' rather than 'NASA'.

On the other hand, technically it should be 'RADAR' and 'LASER' rather than 'radar' and 'laser', but I'm not complaining about those. When does an acronym become a word in its own right, and who decides?

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[Anonymous Coward]

It's either N.A.S.C.A.R. or Nascar. When it becomes an acronym, and I'm not about to get into an argument about what constitutes an acronym, you have to treat it as a regular word, lower case and all. Hence laser, radar, scuba et al.

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the UK, I have always used the following rule of thumb for capitalisation of acronyms: if the acronym cannot be pronounced as a word, it is written in upper case. Hence UN, BBC, USA, but Nato, Nascar, laser.

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[call -151]

Either the quality of the copy-editing at the NYT has gone down significantly over the last 20 years (much more likely) or I have become much more eagle-eyed over that period- I routinely find 10 or 20 errors in a typical day's paper. It used to be that I was particularly pleased with myself when I found an error in such an esteemed publication- now it is quite routine. I suppose that it is a question of "high quality" product not being cost-effective since most people do not care or cannot distinguish the difference, as with other consumer goods. Sigh.

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[peter hoffman]

That's a good point! However, I would counter that the authority on the spelling hasn't acknowledged any change and, since it's no doubt protected intellectual property, legally it's still "NASCAR" and not "Nascar". To eliminate the final possibility that the NYT is trying to refer to all related forms of car racing as "Nascar", I have only seen them use the term in an actual NASCAR context.

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[peter hoffman]

I am certain "NASCAR" is legally protected which makes the NYT just plain factually incorrect. Good papers make an effort to be correct.

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[peter hoffman]

That's another good example! "Nasa" irritates me as well. I think the spelling can change when the word is no longer legally protected (trade or servicemark) for whatever reason. Even then, dropping the case on all but the first letter makes no sense. "NASCAR" should become "nascar".

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[peter hoffman]

Actually, the periods are not necessary in an acronym "unless an organization's style calls for them". Anway, I can counter by claiming it is a trademark that started out as an acronym, therefore any spelling but "NASCAR" is incorrect. Finally, if "NASCAR" were just a word like "laser" and "radar" it would be "nascar" not "Nascar".

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[AlinuxNCSU]

Actually, a lot of news organizations have taken to lowercasing acronyms which can be pronounced as words. This leads to words like Nascar, Aids, Nasa, etc. The idea is that this style makes such words much easier to read and also allows news media to fix words from organizations that use crazy capitalization (or punctuation a la Yahoo!) to get more attention in print.

Personally, I haven't decided yet if I like this. Sometimes I do, and then there are other examples that are crazy.

-Alex

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[Overzeetop]

Except Nascar could be onsidered capitalized, as it is the commonization of an acronym which could reasonably considered a proper noun. "nascar" would be a generic term, where as Nascar refers to the organization which operates a specific car racing organization. Nasa falls into the same space (though it bugs me more).

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[coreymichaelbarr]

The New York Times utilizes their own style manual with rather specific rules. It's most likely not an issue with a Microsoft product, but instead the paper following their own grammar rules. The manual is available here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0812 963881/002-3543086-2126403?v=glance

Re:"New York Times" is guilty too

[peter hoffman]

I wish I could moderate your post up, it was very informative! I don't agree with them but at least it's a case of "broken as designed" (IMHO) rather than carelessness or laziness.

This is common in online games

[Anonymous Coward]

Online games develop their own vocabulary, and shortcuts like 'lol', 'brb', 'afk', 'brt' and 'wtf' are quite common. In online games they play an important role because you often have to communicate quickly and briefly with members of your group--you can't stop and type a lengthy grammatically-correct message, nor concentrate on reading one, while some purple-con mobs are beating you senseless. In this context, a special-purpose vocabulary leads to highly efficient communication between cooperating group members. But even when efficiency is not required, the custom vocabulary differentiates the skilled players from the "stoopid newbs". Before online games, text MUDs had similar vocabularies. And before those, door games on BBSes.

These typing shortcuts have carried over to instand messaging, and if you work for a tech company, chances are a lot of the employees there either play online games or use instant messaging.

In fact, where I work, we use an internal instant messaging system and we often use abbreviations such as 'lol' or 'rofl' in it. I have to catch myself and make sure not to use those for any e-mails to people outside of my hallway, lest they wonder wut I haf been smoking.

Isn't it funny...

[MutantHamster]

...how certain terminology sounds really odd outside of the proper context?
"Split infinitives"
"Dangling Participles"

Politics and the English Language

[gidds]

While I heartily agree with all the posters deploring the current state of English as she is typed, I think the problems are deeper than just spelling and grammar. While they are the most obvious problems -- the easiest to spot, criticise, and correct -- if people aren't thinking clearly, then no amount of elegant grammar and immaculate spelling will convert their muddled ideas into clear and direct text.

The author George Orwell wrote an article about this in 1945; I find it a very interesting read, and probably even more relevant today. (It seems remarkably prescient in many respects.) It's called Politics and the English Language, but don't let the title put you off: it's not about politics per se, just about how writers (mis)use English in various types of writing, political and otherwise.

It's online in many places, for example here and here. Well worth a read.

Re:Politics and the English Language

[Sentry21]

While they are the most obvious problems -- the easiest to spot, criticise, and correct -- if people aren't thinking clearly, then no amount of elegant grammar and immaculate spelling will convert their muddled ideas into clear and direct text.

Well said. Another aspect of the problem is that people aren't communicating well because what they type makes perfect sense to them, but only because they are thinking that way. For that matter, their own messages could become unintelligable after only a short period of time, much as my PHP code does when I'm working with SQL.

Languages exist for a reason - a standard way to communicate between people - and properly achieving the goal that languages solve requires one to adhere to the rules set down by the language. However it is that other people form ideas in their heads, they need to understand that others may not understand it. If they take the time to learn the proper way to use the language, they can write middling-good to perfect grammar with as little effort as today they spew word soup onto the screen, and their ability to communicate will increase greatly.

Languages are not a way to express our thoughts to ourselves, they are a way to convey our thoughts to others; with that goal in mind, we can use the language to its fullest.

Re:Politics and the English Language

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its only natural for language to drift, and the only thing that keeps it steady these days would be our ability to record it (both audibly and written)

I think maybe Arthur C. Clark mentioned the phenomenon in his 3001 Space Odyssey as the reason why English was still spoken pretty comprehensibly a millenium later

Wasn't Orwell obsessive and depressive? He might well have also been among the (dare I say it?) grammar-nazis

Re:Politics and the English Language

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd read numerous citations to Orwell's article over the years. Finally, I downloaded a copy and read through it about three years ago. It has a Baroque, mid-20th Century intellectual tone. Warranted, almost 60 years later, language has moved on. But that's not what really got me going.

I was bothered mainly by one thing. Most references to the article focus on Orwell's formulation that the passive voice is the source of Fascism. (Basically, by obscuring the subject of an action, a writer or speaker creates plausible deniability -- "eliminating" responsibility for nefarious actions.) I couldn't agree more with him on the heinousness of passive writing. But, and here's the rub, Orwell's very article is riddled with passive voice!

Esse non videri.

quote of the article

[gijoel]

"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy,"

Unless they want their emails written in Russian.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[qwertyatwork]

... better at correct grammar then native English-speakers

So, you speak English natively then?

"supposably"

[ChoyLeeFut]

While working at my last gig, I noticed that a few co-workers were saying "supposably" instead of "supposedly". Then one day one of them let me in on his joke: He was deliberately saying "supposably" for the prior few months around the other two until they developed the habit of saying "supposably".

The prankster went back to saying "supposedly" and despite doing so, the others continued using the new and improved version. ;-)

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[thisgooroo]

there are people who simply cannot express themselves coherently in their native language. this completely unrelated to spelling errors and (simple) grammatical errors. look at some of the articles. they are incoherent and don't make any sense. i have seen similar by native speakers in several languages

I smell a...

[Crash McBang]

...business opportunity!

How about a Plug-in for Outlook that combines Grammatik with a spellchecker?

Then fix Outlook so it won't send until you get a passing grade from both...

I work for schools

[phorm]

One would think that teachers would have decent spelling/grammar skills. English teachers do, but if the emails and/or memos I get from staff members are any indication, many others don't.

language barriers

[Anonymous Coward]

This can become even more of a barrier when dealing with ESL people. Admittedly, they have more of an excuse, as they are still learning the language.
I believe this goes beyond just mere language barriers, and more into how people think about the messages they are typing.
Here is an example of an email that I have recieved from a co-worker (subject has been changed to protect the writer):

Subject: Software
Body: What do you think of this?

That was it. No attachment, nothing. It might as well have been spam.

On a side note, people need to learn how to forward messages and memos properly.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[bluGill]

Only some do. Typically those who learned English in northern Europe have no problem speaking and writing English better than natives. However those who learned in Asia, rarely get father than a level where it requires all my concentration to make a guess at what they mean. They have a habit of leaving out words that are critical to understanding English.

By northern Europe, I mean everyone I've talked to from Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Latvia, and the Netherlands. (in most cases the sample size is too small to be statistical significant, but others I've talked to seem to agree) The some of the French do just fine, but many others do not try. Some Spanish do, but only a few, and it seems to take them more effort to reach that point. (this is sampling Mexico, Porto Rico, and Spain, with reasonably large samples)

Getting it with messages from my Telco

[Airconditioning]

My mobile carrier sends you a message when someone leaves a voicemail. It says: "Pls call 321, you have 1 new message waiting." It's funny because after all this time it hadn't registered with me that a Telco is sending a tacky abbreviation in an auto-generated message until I saw this article. I guess after seeing so much of it you just learn to filter most of it out.

AOL Users Worst for Netiquette

[TFGeditor]

"What sets my teeth on edge is lack of basic netiquette skills."

Along these same lines, I loathe communicating with AOL users. The AOL email client--by default, apparently--*omits* the original message when replying. So, send someone a rather long email, especially one with a quetion (or several), and you get back a reply that says "Yes"--and nothing else! You see the problem...you send/receive several dozen emails a day, forget what you wrote to who, and so on.

The other eye-poker is when an AOL user sends a forward of a forward of a forward, yadda-yadda to a non-AOL user. The actual (original) forwarded message is nested n-layers deep in attachments. (Each forward generates another attachment).

"A better Internet," indeed!

Re:AOL Users Worst for Netiquette

[mbbac]

It seems like you should be complaining about a deficiency in your mail tool instead of AOL users that don't quote.

Re:AOL Users Worst for Netiquette

[TFGeditor]

Bull cookies. The only email that has this problem is AOL sourced. The rest of the world functions normally. No, AOL is clearly deficient here.

Re:AOL Users Worst for Netiquette

[mbbac]

Your e-mail client is deficient because it won't let you easily see the e-mail that one is in reply to.

Re:AOL Users Worst for Netiquette

[TFGeditor]

If you are implying I should configure my client to thread email messages, again that is a crock. That I like my emails displayed chronologically is sufficient reason to not do this just to accommodate AOL users. Add that the nature of my work makes chronolgical display mandatory, and AOL is even farther out on its ear.

Mandatory BTAF link.

[slappyjack]

Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots.

I mean, really.

I had to hang this up on the wall at my workplace, not that it did a lick of good.

Email vs. IM

[mwfunk]

I think the issue isn't that all of these supposedly highly educated people can't write...I've worked with many people who were very articulate in print but always sent out emails that looked like they were written by a hyperactive 12-year-old. I think the issue is that it just doesn't register with a lot of people that their emails SHOULD be grammatically correct and have a good flow to them.

I totally disagree and always try and write decent email, but unfortunately a lot of people take the same attitude towards email that they take towards IM...as long as its just barely good enough to kinda sorta communicate whatever they were trying to communicate, then it's OK. They don't think about the impression it makes on other people.

We (technical types) tend to think email should be written with the same care as papers and snail mail, whereas to a lot of other people it's just a less responsive form of IMing. It's a peeve of mine, but there's not really anything anyone can do about it.

Re:Email vs. IM

[MikeBabcock]

A lot of the articulate people you may read the writings of are only articulate on the reader's side of an editor. If you've ever read the first draft of a scientific article or even a fiction novel, you'd realize that there are very few people out there capable of articulating themselves well.

By 'well' I mean both correct in grammar and succinct. Many people are capable of basically correct speach and even writing but can't get a thought out edgewise because their typing is as scrambled as their initial thoughts.

Take a minute to think about how you wish to respond to a message, then respond, then re-read once, then send if its readable.

"Professional" Writers do it, too

[TFGeditor]

I am editor of a regional magazine. Some of the stuff I receive from "professional" writers is almost as bad--in some ways, maybe worse.

Here is an excerpt from a mss sent by a "professional"/published writer:

"Flocks following the longer days and warmer weather as winter slowly give up its grip to spring as most of the migrating flocks pass over the central flyway west of the Mississippi River into the wintering grounds in Texas and Louisiana."

Fortunately, like /. editors, I have "unlimited mod points" for stuff like this, but it still galls me.

Re:"Professional" Writers do it, too

[Sein]

I feel your pain. Friend of mine used to be an editor of a publication that shall remain nameless - and she told me that with some of the writing staff it was a lot faster and easier to simply dump their submissions and write the entire article herself than to try to hack what she got into something resembling coherency and actually having relevance to what the article was supposed to be about. And sending it back for a rewrite would usually only result in something even more mangled and less on-topic.

She quit, since she couldn't get permission to fire the incompetents.

Re:"Professional" Writers do it, too

[TFGeditor]

Yeah, I have to do that, too. Usually, though, I only do rewrites when deadline precludes rejection for rewrite by the (freelance) author. Fortunately, I do have autonomy to fire writer for incompetency, and have exercised that a few times.

Language must be commonly understood to be useful

[StRex]

Merriam-Webster defines language as follows:

1 a : the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community
b (1) : audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs
(2) : a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings
(3) : the suggestion by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings <language in their very gesture -- Shakespeare>
(4) : the means by which animals communicate
(5) : a formal system of signs and symbols (as FORTRAN or a calculus in logic) including rules for the formation and transformation of admissible expressions
(6) : MACHINE LANGUAGE 1
2 a : form or manner of verbal expression; specifically : STYLE
b : the vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or a department of knowledge
c : PROFANITY
3 : the study of language especially as a school subject

Starting with the very first definition, language must be understood by a community.

I will concede that the grammar Nazis carry things to an extreme. As much as it annoys me, I can understand text with common grammar issues (wrong verb tense, plural vs. singular) and common typographical errors. Beyond that, and I have to work harder to understand the text.

As errors approach infinity, the probability approaches zero that a "community" understands what is being said or written. Thus, this is not some sort of natural evolution of language. Language, particularly as described by definition 1a above, naturally evolves towards commonly understood phrases and word combinations. Uncommon or inconsistent spelling, usage or ordering of words will always get in the way of the understanding of the "community".

Second Mandatory BTAF link.

[slappyjack]

forgot one:
Destroy the Apostrophe

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[bob65]

We've been reading literature and making inferences.

Of course it doesn't help that most of the literature we read doesn't have correct (generally accepted) grammar anyways (Of Mice and Men, etc...)

Re:H-1Bs: Chinese Engineer vs. American Engineer

[ChrisMaple]

The database for English speakers originating in Antarctica is rather small.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[HermanAB]

'grammar then"

Then what???

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Sein]

It's a stylistic trick to make you click through to the next page - if the page ends in the middle of a sentence you'll know that there's more to read and click next.

Yes, I know that there's also that little 1|2|3 at the bottom of each page, but that broken sentence thing is there as an extra clue/incentive to make you click next to see how the sentence ends.

It's one of the many tricks of commercial copywriting that breaks the rules of proper english...

Context

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that sometimes the problem may be one of context. "1337" speak or the dialect used in am IM environment SHOULD NOT be used in a more formal business environment. It's like "aw shucks"-ing or saying "motherfucker". There are times when it may be appropriate, but almost never in a business context. Your "homies" are not in the office, amigo.
But I do find it interesting (as a Linguist) that there seems to be a trend towards simplification of written language. English especially needs this. My interpretation of "IM"-speak is that people are trying to reduce English orthography to a more phonetic writing system. Once I was familiar with the IPA (http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html) it made perfect sense to me that orthography should be phonetic and that English was particularly bad in this regard. Now, it would probably be a big slap in the face to the history of the language to shift English orthography to being phonetic as we would loose most of the ties with other languages, but is that a very high price to pay for greater accessability? I pity ESL students who have to learn how to spell in English. And it has the potential to make written communication much, much quicker.
Language, like the people who use it, is a living thing. Maybe it's time ours evolved some more.

Re:God help us!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind."

-- Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

that's really sad

[Anonymous Coward]

way to quote your own witty self in your sig
loser.

FYI:The myth of 'Eskimo words for "Snow"'

[Fuzzy Bo]

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archive s/000405.html

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Anonymous Coward]

xie xie! ^_^

What is really sad...

[esmoothie]

...is that these people have jobs and so many literate people do not.

accomodating brocolli in the cemetary

[isolde100]

This is the title of a book about declining standards in spelling. It is very funny. Do you think Microsoft Word's spellcheck function is to blame?

I read "Eats Shoots & Leaves" earlier this year. That one was about punctuation.

Havening

[Tzarius]

The Chronicles of George

"George is, quite simply, the worst helpdesk technician ever.

His grasp on the written word is shakier than a canoe full of epileptics. His knowledge of computers is thinner than a Vegas dancer's chiffon underpants. He is, by all standards of intelligence, a rock.

While we worked together, George was responsible for turning out some of the most mangled, garbled, and just plain screwed up help desk tickets ever before seen by mortal man. I have taken these tickets and collected them, and I present them to you as a cathartic expression, a venting of fourteen months' pain and frustration (George's employ and my own overlapped by that amount of time).

Mean? Perhaps. Spiteful? Probably. Funny? Oh, most definitely."


Includes such choice qoutes as:
"she is havening problems connecting to the z drive ,she told never i will figure it out on my own"
"is receiving an error that states line x excuration locked at another user will not be created at this time"
"would like to have a reinstall a ghost image development evirroment"

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Quino]

I totally agree. I'm an ESL student and I think it's actually been beneficial that I had to study English instead of learning it through "osmosis".

Not only that, I remember hearing about a study that said Americans who study a foreign language tend to improve their English skills as well -- so it may just be beneficial to know or be fluent in more than one language (I'd wonder if there is a linguistics explanation for this).

I do wonder about your statement regarding spoken language lacking grammar -- on the surface this doesn't seem possible. Put another way, ability with language (in my personal experience with people I work with) is either present in both or neither forms (spoken and written).

Re:Should I boost the power on the thrombo?

[Kris_J]

"NO!!!! If you turn it up to eleven, you'll overheat the motors, and IT MIGHT EXPLODE!!"

Aren't we perhaps being a little over-dramatic? Surely, "No, at a setting of eleven you risk catastrophic failure." is equally as urgent, without resorting to a single exclaimation point. Over-users of CAPS and exclaimation points just need a better vocabulary.

refer to Dilbert's Management Handbook

[Khashishi]

on margin scribbles. Email is merely the evolution of that. Wath yoo trya gible? RTM geent me aggin. D4u't joo guool!

I give essay tests in interviews

[Mastoid]

Seriously. When I interview candidates for a position, I require likely applicants to write an essay and email it to me later. The topic is usually quite simple and the length is only a few paragraphs.

The purpose of this exercise is to weed out the functionally illiterate. I can't stand typing shorthand, bad punctuation, or the inability to coherently present concepts without an excess of words. The essay tells me a lot about an applicant's ability to organize thoughts logically and right gude english, to.

Important information

[lahvak]

I my previous place of emplyment, the administration people kept sending out messages with subject "Important information". Every time I went to look in my mailbox to find which day was a certain meeting rescheduled to, all I saw was 150 messages with subjet "Important information", with contents ranging from broken water main through electricity outages, reminders to get new parking stickers, class cancellations to announcements of important meeting etc.

And the best thing was that those people had the guts to constantly bother the faculty with stupid "inservices" on phone and e-mail usage.

not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

i literaly get office email
looks an reads
like this

no sentences or
punctuation random line breaks and spacing

im sirious

I only wish the above was a joke. I'm serious!

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander

[Anonymous Coward]

I was taught it's impolite to correct another's grammar. Thus, I take twisted pleasure in the irony of publicly correcting your rant.

I used to think...

"I once thought..." Apparently, you didn't use when you thought.

...Don't get me wrong, I mistype words occasionally and I certainly do not always use perfect grammar.

Separate independent clauses with a semicolon; a comma is used between dependent clausse.

But,

The comma disrupts the flow of the sentence and should be omitted.

I see an awful lot of...

This colloquialism does not belong in formal writing. "I see too many..." is a more appropriate wording.

emails and reports that are nearly incomprehensible. I have also come to the conclusion that an awful lot of...

Not only is this the same error, but also it is repetitious!

people really do not know how to spell or have a basic understanding of grammar.

The second part of this phrase parses as either "people really do not know how to have a basic understanding of grammar" or "people have a basic understanding of grammar". Both meanings make little sense in context.

I guess...

Something is missing here, such as the predicate.

further evidence that our public education system is failing miserably.

Your own performance is nothing to brag about. That's seven corrections at -5 points each. Your grade is 65%: D-!

No grammar?

[notwrong]

I am surprised that it is possible to believe that spoken language has no grammar. Seeing that you've studied some linguistics at University, I'll assume you have a good reason for this - just for my own curiosity though, could you elaborate?

I would have thought there has to be some grammar in any spoken language - the fact that any native speaker can immediately identify when an utterance "sounds wrong", or "doesn't make any sense", indicates that there are some rules, even if entirely tacit. Spoken languages use grammatical techniques (like word order, inflection, agglutination, etc) to distinguish between the subject/object of transitive verbs, the timing of an event, the number of something and many other things. Isn't this grammar? Isn't the presence of a grammar also generally considered the difference between a pidgin and a creole?

I would also have thought that there are analogues to punctuation in spoken language - pauses, tonal inflection, emphasis etc all make listening easier, and written punctuation was invented to make reading easier in a similar way.

I agree that the rules of formal English (and probably other languages) are more rigid and prohibit many perfectly clear expressions. This does not however mean that a native speaker's intuitive understanding can't ever be expressed as rules - just that the rules of formal/written language may not always match those of informal/spoken language.

I would guess that non-native speakers may sometimes make fewer mistakes partly due to the meta-knowledge gained by learning a new language; they get a better idea of how language and grammar work in general. I know that my (fairly limited) knowledge of a language very different to English certainly improved my understanding of the way that English worked.

Re:No grammar?

[myowntrueself]

Sure, they can identify when it sounds wrong.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that it 'sounds wrong relative to a set of rules'. It could mean 'sounds counterintuitive'.

I came to this conclusion after many very animated conversations with a Japanese friend who had *extremely* bad English.

I found myself listening to him and making perfect sense out of what he was saying, and then realising that the utterances which came out of his mouth had more-or-less no connection with what the grammar of the English language is supposed to be.

I didn't understand him through a rule-based grammar; I understood by intuiting his meaning from a wide variety of things; context, bodylanguage etc.

When two people have a conversation, there is a LOT going on. Linguists refer to this sort of thing as 'metalinguistic' and it tends to get written off as cruft.

Linguistics has no way to cope with things like tone, intensity, amplitude and so forth (except when they are phonemic as in tonal languages).

Yet in my experience, these factors are even more important than the order in which words are spoken, for example.

In flowing conversation, people say things, change their minds and say them again, say words out of order and all sorts of wierd and whacky things.

Yet it makes sense, more or less. People cope with free flowing speech very well. Even with free flowing writing (to an extent; James Joyce Ulyses (sp?) comes to mind).

Its only in (what were once) extraordinary situations (like talking to someone you can't see or can't hear properly) that the 'rules of grammar' become important.

Today, this sort of communication is more common hence it has become more important to us to develop 'rules of grammar'.

But I believe that speech is independent of grammar and that grammar is a relatively modern invention.

Thats a start, anyway

:)

Re:No grammar?

[rxmd]

Sure, they can identify when it sounds wrong. [...] But I believe that speech is independent of grammar and that grammar is a relatively modern invention.

Grammar doesn't only govern when an utterance sounds wrong, it also serves to build sentences that convey the intended meaning in interpersonal communication. Take word order in English sentences, for example. From a sentence such as

Joe kicks Bob

every English native speaker will know who's doing the kicking. This word order is quite strict, in a sentence such as

Bob kicks Joe

the meaning is entirely different. A feature such as the subject-verb-object (SVO) rule of word order is already a feature of grammar, specific to some languages. At least in English, this rule should be observed, and you can't randomly shift words around to, say, OVS without risking to give an entirely different meaning to the whole sentence. Every English speaker is intuitively aware of this. When word order isn't observed, the result will sometimes just sounds awkward, and sometimes the meaning will be entirely misunderstood.

Linguistics has no way to cope with things like tone, intensity, amplitude and so forth (except when they are phonemic as in tonal languages).

Of course it has! They're called prosodic features, such as stress and intonation. They are extremely important in linguistics, especially when it comes to more complex fields such as discourse analysis. But even at the most basic level, these have to be considered. In Russian, for example, these prosodic features are often the only way do discern whether an utterance is actually a question or a statement.

Re:Exactly. - goodbye slashdot

[Imazalil]

The world's economies system collapsed yesterday as thousands and thousands of people demanded money for their time trying to understand messages posted to a website refered to as "/."

More at 11:00, back to you Jim.

This is stupid

[HarveyBirdman]

There's an article like this every year, and it's dumb.

I've had my writing published (and, yes, got paid for it), but many of my emails at work would be just as foggy to someone not up to speed with the persons and topics involved. It's really just a case of shorthand - saving a few unecessary keystrokes here and there.

Honestly, the number of professional emails I receive where the author is truly battling an inability to write number perhaps 1 in 1000.

I NEED HELP

[hohack]

in a lowly undercase kind of way

Re: top posting

[lahvak]

Decent e-mail clients will let you hide all quoted text with a single keystroke.

Grammatically correct but stupid.

[korbin_dallas]

At the company I am at now, we get emails for way up the chain.

The email contains an important message from a VP.
Attached is a Word doc.

Inside the Word doc is an html link to the 'memo' on the corporate web server

That link is a PDF file.

I think M$ figured out the perfect way to drive linux users insane.

Re:Grammatically correct but stupid.

[MikeBabcock]

Hmmm ... new feature for Thunderbird ... link burrowing.

(yes, just kidding).

The Title is Funny.

[twitter]

What corporate America can't build: a sentence

No irony was intended. Let's try another more direct form,

CNet can't write a title.

Sam, the limits of form imposed by advertisement funded, dead tree writing are clear to see. I'm sure the title was made up by some editor, but I feel bad for you.

This wasn't posted by CmdrTaco.

When the nations "Paper of Record" can't get it right, what do you expect from the rest of us? Slashdot digs up news that matters and that's all I care about. Noam Chomsky would say that the media should not be able to write a proper sentence if it's working right. He claims the media's purpose is to limit thought and it does so by presenting what it's owners consider the limits of an acceptable future in an obnoxious and belligerent way. You are supposed to think of news and politics as unpleasant, unpolite and ultimately something beyond your control. What you get from your average 15 minutes a day of news "consumption" is direction not information. George Orwell's "Duck Speak" is exactly what you should expect.

Go back to sleep now.

Re:The Title is Funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I come back from being away a couple of weeks to see that my fucking IP address is still banned.

It's not banned, Twitter rewrote your host file and your ISP's. Just be glad you can see any English language site, you pathetic M$ luser/PR drone.

Happy Holidays, bitch.

Re:The Title is Funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy Holidays, bitch.

Willy, you disappoint me. We've talked about this foul mouth of yours before. Please wash up before posting again.

- Bill

Re:The Title is Funny.

[twitter]

Willy, you disappoint me

I am an AC dick. Who is Willy?

Re:H-1Bs: Chinese Engineer vs. American Engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should think it through. If 8/10 people you meet were born in the US, and 8/10 illiterates were born in the US, that suggests there's no real correlation between being illiterate and being a foreigner, as suggested by the original poster.

Capitalization

[caesar79]

Capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse." and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse."

Source:http://bash.org/?367896

Re:capitalization

[Zoxed]

> People just don't care anymore, do they? Capitalization,

Reminds me of a sig I saw on Slashdot the other day:

Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse".

(Well it made me laugh)

phonetics

[borgasm]

I find that when typing, sometimes my words come out as they are phonetically spoken.

for example:

thread --> thraid

I think some of our mistakes can be unconscious....But it is no excuse for poor editing

Dilbert

[kwietman]

Hasn't Scott Adams been pointing out these very things in the DNRC Newsletter for a few years now? Coincidentally, I got a new one in my email today...

Nows my chance.

[Satertek]

Hah! Just as I am procrasting an English class essay (senior in HS), I get inspired by this. My grammer is so good, employers would even pay me to work for them.

Fun with grammar

[solprovider]

In the same way as your examples, dependent clauses normally take a placement that makes it easy to see what they depend on. (There, I broke a rule, rather than write "that on which they depend", which would sound stilted and archaic, but nicely Latinate).

Ending with a preposition often indicates a verb phrase was used where a noun would suffice. Much writing can be improved by reducing each sentence to the basic concepts. Start by removing "that", "which", and all prepositions; then rebuild the sentence adding as few words as possible. Do not be afraid to change words' "parts of speech".

You could have replaced the phrase with a noun, improving the grammar and making it more concise. You almost fixed it when you realized the phrase could have been the noun phrase "that on which they depend", which can be shortened to the single word "dependencies". In reverse, "take a placement" can be replaced by "placed".

Like your examples, dependent clauses are normally placed to see their dependencies easily.

[I prefer to split the infinitive ("to easily see"), but that would be dangerous in this forum.]

--- Advanced editing
After editing each sentence for conciseness, remove all conjunctions. Then add just enough connectors to make each paragraph make sense. Add paragraph breaks to group the sentences properly.

I tend to write very long sentences. Each sentence should contain only one thought. This process greatly improves readability.

Compare to:
After editing each sentence for conciseness, remove all conjunctions, then add just enough connectors to make each paragraph make sense, and add paragraph breaks to group the sentences properly. I tend to write very long sentences, although each sentence should contain only one thought, but this process greatly improves readability.

---
I spend so much time writing and talking professionally for work, my last girlfriend was surprised by my speech patterns when a vacation allowed me to revert to "normal".

I wonder if usage of the "Preview" button for posts to this article is greatly above the norm.

Re:Fun with grammar

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Hey Yossarian it's Wednesday so death to all modifiers.

Re:Fun with grammar

[bla]

Much writing can be improved by reducing each sentence to the basic concepts. Start by removing "that", "which", and all prepositions; then rebuild the sentence adding as few words as possible.

Disclaimer: I can't even tell if your post is serious or not, but since this is /., here's my $0.02

Further Disclaimer: I know 5 languages. Sadly, all of them are Indo-European and 2 of them are dead. And yes, I was actually born in the States.

Your suggestions may simplify your writing, but it also makes you look like you have a simple mind. One of the key points that people (or english teachers) look for in a person's writing is the ability to properly use subordinate clauses (usually introduced by "that" or "which"). The use of subordinate clauses indicates a more complex sentence structure, and implies a more complex thought structure. The idea that a sentence should only contain one idea is mildly ridiculous when you look at all the grammatical structures that have evolved to enable us to contain more than one idea in one sentence (conjunctions and subordinate clauses to begin with). Writing short, choppy sentences disturbs the flow of the writing and brings the reader up hard at the end of each sentence. Sentences using conjunctions or subordinate clauses are actually easier for me to read (and write), because they flow more smoothly.

Big difference

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between a simple grammar and/or spelling mistake than the sorts of problems we're really discussing here. I mean, I make the occassional misspelling or typo or even phrase a sentence badly. Nothing wrong with that, as such. Yes, it's an error, but it's a minor one and overlookable. I don't blame people for that sort of thing. The occassional extra comma bothers me not in the slightest.

But when you read some emails that look like they were written by somebody who can barely type, let alone do any actual thinking, then you start to wonder about that person. I mean, some of the examples in the article were actually quite tame compared to several I've received before.
-No capitalization
-No punctuation
-Replacing of words with letters/symbols ("for" becomes "4", "are" becomes "r", "you're" becomes "ur", etc)

Any of these are unforgivable IN REAL LIFE, much less a professional environment.

This sort of email invariably indicates a person who is uncomfortable with using the computer and the internet in general. Either lack of typing skills forces the person to use shortcuts, or they simply are not understanding that other people are actually reading this and that it reflects upon them. If you're emailing it to somebody, it should be as good as if it's written down in your own handwriting, on actual pen and paper, using actual ink.

Sometimes you even encounter people who lack the maturity to understand why expressing yourself is an important skill.

Well, put simply, if I were a boss who received any emails along these lines from an employee, that employee would be terminated. Period. I don't care if they were discussing the latest sports event, that's jusst unacceptable.

I don't expect proper English in IM's and IRC (that's going too far, IMO), but in forums or email or any kind of communication where you're writing in a paragraph structure, it's not only essential, it's required for your job.

Unfortunately...

[Niet3sche]

This seems like it may be the culmination of a generation of kids told to "hammer away on the keyboard and hash any old thing out". It seems to me that this has gone hand-in-hand with letter writing going out - as individuals (myself included) tend not to write letters any longer, perhaps the construct of "permanence" has gone out the window. Looking back at historical writings, the letters are just beautiful and well thought-out. However, I worry that now, 100 to 150 years later, we'll only leave a legacy of "j00 ar4 s0 lame, d00dz!". In short, I think that we can boil this down to one word with regard to technology mediating our communications: mis-application. :(

Language changes, get used to it.

[infonography]

W'll fnd 0ut th@t n tm l@ngu@g ch@ngs. Wh@t's slly t0 0n gnr@t0n s vrb@tm t0 @n0thr. w0ndr wh@t Wll@m Sh@ksp@r w0uld s@y @b0ut h0w w sp@k t0d@y.

W3'll find out that in tim3 languag3 chang3s. What's silly to on3 g3n3ration is v3rbatim to anoth3r. I wond3r what William Shak3sp3ar would say about how w3 sp3ak today.

\/\/'££ |\| 07 7|-|@7 |\| 7|\/| £@|\|9@9 ç|-|@|\|9. \/\/|-|@7' ££¥ 70 0|\| 9|\||2@70|\| \/|2ß@7|\/| 70 @|\|07|-||2. \/\/0|\||2 \/\/|-|@7 \/\/££@|\/| |-|@|

We'll find out that in time language changes. What's silly to one generation is verbatim to another. I wonder what William Shakespear would say about how we speak today.

And yes I cheated:

SPELLING - SHMELLING....

[d474]

Who said spelling was important!!!!?

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt...

Grammer, is different now a that story!

u'r really asking for this one

[ed__]

(see i used the correct form of ur). arguing for purism in the english language is the moral equivalent of teaching creation science to lemurs.

Only Americans make grammitcal errors?

[borgheron]

I think not. Get over yourselves please and find something more interesting to talk about.

GJC

Ptetry Dman Itnetesirng

[bechdol]

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.

Re:Ptetry Dman Itnetesirng

[SluttyButt]

It's true to say this.

And it's the same example that once i made a kite that requires more effort and another neighbourhood kid made a shoddy piece. Both pieces flew well enough, but going for thrills, mine has more agility to twist and turn about.

So, in a world of functionality vs. art - which side do you come from?

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[atuk_daud]

People who speak English as a second language are often better at correct grammer than native English-speakers. And.. they assume that a person who speaks/writes English clearly and correctly must have learned it as a seond language. Sad to say but most often they are correct.

The funny thing is

[Sycraft-fu]

Most people consider more flowery, long, and dense language to be better, and more intelligent. I went back and forth with someone on this as they'd found a little stastical analyzer that told you, roghly, what grade level of reading skill someone would need to understand a given peice.

If you run it on most of my Internet posts, you come up with beterrn 5th and 7th grade. Words tend to be short and commona nd sentences to the point. I was taught that was good writing; to make your thoughts as direct and accessable as possible.

As a demonstration I showed him that I could write the same thing two ways, one as normal, and one with big (and often unnecessary) words. Sure enough the flowery version rated 12+ grade. Well he seemed to think I ought to write that way, since it was obviously more intelligent.

Personally I agree with Orwell: Elegance isn't using large or uncommon words, elegance is getting your point across as clearly and directly as possible. You want your language to communicate ideas, not get in the way of that communication.

Now of course it's different for things like plays, poems, etc, but for strictly direct communiative speech (like bussiness memos) the more literal, direct, simple, and to the point, the better.

Re:The funny thing is

[Anonymous Coward]

I dare you to run that program on your own post above.

Re:H-1Bs: Chinese Engineer vs. American Engineer

[Moofie]

I'll bother to answer your objection if you bother to log in.

While Reading that I heard Dr.Zbaitso in my head.

[Anonymous Coward]

and how exactly do you write that fun doctors name again?

The obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

All your base are belong to us.

showing your age

[lubricated]

yes top posting used to be bad in those bandwidth and storage starved days. Bottom posting though is annoying. If I'm reading a reply I wan't to see the most important stuff on top, not stuff I've already read, or even wrote. The bottom quote is just for context, in case you forgot what was said earlier.

True story

[windowpain]

I'm an independent film producer. For my latest shoot I placed an ad on Craig's List. Here's a reply I got:

"hello, i am a freelance makeup artist who is also a film student. i have worked on many productions in the philadelphia area including film, video, commercial, print etc.. i would love to work on your project. give ma a call @ 267-nnn-nnnn. thank you
Christy McCabe"

My reply:

"Hello,

I appreciate your interest in Dangerous Movies. We're hip, we're independent and we're unconventional. We have no confidence, however, in people who do not know enough to use proper grammar in business correspondence. The rules for capitalization have not been repealed. And it's obvious you did not proofread your email before sending it out. If you're that careless in trying to get the gig, how careful are you going to be on the job?

I hope you accept this advice in the spirit in which it was given: not to put you down, but to educate you."

Her reply to my reply:

"you are a complete asshole. it is common knowledge that when sending an e mail, all rules of capitalization are thrown out the window. thank you for saving me from having to work on a shitty movie with a bunch of pompous assholes such as yourself. i hope your movie never makes any money.
fuck off."

I'm afraid Miss McCabe's attitude is not unusual among young people these days. She's not merely ignorant. She's indignant when someone is kind enough to try to help her out. Not to mention vulgar and hateful.

Re:True story

[Anonymous Coward]

Her reply could have been more effective had it been written differently. Take the following as an example.

"Thank you for your timely response to my inquiry. However, I would like to point out that your critiques of my improper usage of punctuation and capitalization are somewhat founded in hipocracy when compared to your slaughtering of English grammar.

You stated, "We're hip, we're independent and we're unconventional." This sentence contains three independent clauses which should each be separated by periods, thereby forming three sentences. Alternatively, each independent clause may be separated by commas, forming a dense compound sentence. Such an alternative would be written as, "We're hip, we're independent, and we're unconventional." Similarly, the three independent clauses could have been condensed into a single sentence having greater clarity. For example, "We're hip, independent, and unconventional," would have been an even better solution.

Second, it is incorrect in every case to begin a sentence with the word, "And." The word, "And," is a conjugate that is used to convey plurality within a single sentence when the subject has already been given. While some have ridiculed this rule, it remains a rule nonetheless. The correct approach would have been to start this sentence with an appropriate adverb. Candidate adverbs include "Also," "Furthermore," "Likewise," and so on. Please note my correct usage of the word to convey plurality of subject.

Using the correct tense and sentence structure, I will say that I hope you will accept this advice in the spirit in which it is being given, which is not to put you down, but to educate you.

Sincerely,
$NAME

Re:True story

[Anonymous Coward]

The original poster could have replied with:

"I also appreciate the use of proper spelling, particularly when pointing out my own hypocrisy regarding grammar. It is apparent we're both guilty of hypocrisy."

Don't you love pedantry?

Re:True story

[A_Non_Moose]

I'm afraid Miss McCabe's attitude is not unusual among young people these days. She's not merely ignorant. She's indignant when someone is kind enough to try to help her out. Not to mention vulgar and hateful.

{/tounge firmly in cheek over my pet peeve}

Yeah, she really did loose it at the end.

Ah, well, I'm sure you'd have to turn her lose sooner or later.

Re:True story

[meringuoid]

hipocracy

This, I suppose, would be something to do with the practice of medicine?

Re:True story

[Anonymous Coward]

That's awesome. I'm adding you to my friends list!

Re:True story

[born_to_live_forever]

I can match that story with one of my own. On a serious forum for discussing anime (Yeah, I know, I know - are you done laughing? Can I get on with my story now?), a new user posted a borderline legible post in the introduction, only to be taken to task for this by one of the staff.

The new user replied predictably. Here's my reply, with included quotes from the other posts - all usernames have been replaced as appropriate, but if you're really curious, Google for it.

----

grammarchallenged wrote:

loosen up this is the net. :p a place to relax and not worry about things. anime should be your greatest concern not how bad my spelling and grammar are. :p place for that and it's called school.

No, grammarchallenged, you are wrong. If you can't be bothered to maintain a minimum of courtesy (and that includes the basic niceties of spelling and grammar), then why should we consider your conversation worth our time?

And if an appeal to common courtesy doesn't convince you (as I suspect it may not), then I urge you to read the rules of this forum.

Among other things, they clearly state:

2) This forum is an English-language forum. All users are expected to have a working knowledge of proper English. We are not an IM chatroom; we expect proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. If English is your Second Language, please say so in your first post.

As staffguy quite correctly said,

A college freshman should know that letter "I" and the first letter in every sentence should be in UPPER CASE, and each sentence should end with a period.

Unless you have pretensions to be a modern e.e. cummings, don't use all-lower-case text, please.

By the way, whoever told you the net was a place where no rules applied was either immature or lying.

----

As you can see, this is a near-textbook case of the same mechanic in operation. It's as if people sincerely believe this hogwash about the internet being a "no-fly zone", in terms of grammar and spelling.

I have to ask of all of you: has anyone, in all the time you've been 'net users, authoritatively informed you that you didn't have to use correct grammar or spelling on the internet?

No? I didn't think so.

Where do these people get this idea from? How does this moron-meme propagate?

Re:True story

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you any different when you were young?

Re:True story

[Steve Cowan]

I just came across this comment in M2 and felt I had to respond.

I wanted to confirm that she was interested in being a makeup artist, as opposed to production or legal staff. If you actually had the nerve to chastise her for not capitalizing properly in email, then I'm afraid your company is not as "hip" as you suggest.

She was probably running through Craig's List and quickly putting her feelers out for the plethora of stuff on there. Craig's List is a very casual forum. Besides - maybe if you had called her she would have offered you a very attractive resume.

To me, I'm afraid, it sounds as though you have contracted Filmmakers' Ego, and your immediate rejection of this woman without any knowledge of her skills as a makeup artist is consistent with this. You sound like the type who would fire the hard-working assistant for forgetting to cut the crusts off your sandwiches.

I hope your films are really, really good, because it won't be your attitude that earns you respect.

I hope you accept this advice in the spirit in which it was given: not to put you down, but as an eye-opener of sorts, so that you will realize that there is much, much more to the intensely artistic institution that is film than capitalization.

It's called the Oxford comma

[ishmaelflood]

The comma before "and" in a list is optional and unusual in British English, where it is known as the Oxford comma.

I was taught not to use it, but now I do.

Re:It's called the Oxford comma

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to use it, but now I don't. I must admit that I'm an American and do find myself using British English conventions when writing.

My grammar a-splode!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=impact

impaction n.
Usage Note: The use of impact as a verb meaning "to have an effect" often has a big impact on readers. Eighty-four percent of the Usage Panel disapproves of the construction to impact on, as in the phrase social pathologies, common to the inner city, that impact heavily on such a community; fully 95 percent disapproves of the use of impact as a transitive verb in the sentence Companies have used disposable techniques that have a potential for impacting our health. It is unclear why this usage provokes such a strong response, but it cannot be because of novelty. Impact has been used as a verb since 1601, when it meant "to fix or pack in," and its modern, figurative use dates from 1935. It may be that its frequent appearance in the jargon-riddled remarks of politicians, military officials, and financial analysts continues to make people suspicious. Nevertheless, the verbal use of impact has become so common in the working language of corporations and institutions that many speakers have begun to regard it as standard. It seems likely, then, that the verb will eventually become as unobjectionable as contact is now, since it will no longer betray any particular pretentiousness on the part of those who use it.

The problem is everywhere . . . .

[BakaBaka]

I wish the poor spelling and grammar were restricted to e-mail, but that's sadly not the case. I've received several notes, e-mails, and memos from the people who are supposed to run our company network and maintain the machines. I'm fairly certain that they're not elementary school students, but the text indicates they haven't had the benefit of instruction their native English. Having just purchased a horse, I've been looking at saddles, books, equipment, and various horsey things. I looked at the web sites of several well-respected trainers, and would not buy products from any one of them. Their articles and product endorsements lack proper syntax, are full of spelling errors, and are generally offensive to my eyes. Subject-verb agreement is apparently an advanced concept, as is constructing a complete sentence. Their printed books aren't much better. People who are trying to sell their expertise in any area should represent themselves as having at least a ninth-grade education (even if they have to get a copywriter or editor). It's permissible to use colloquial English in informal peer-to-peer e-mails, but any communication outside your group should help present your best face to the world - you never know who will be reading! [Don't judge me by my strictness. When speaking, I can be as colorful as anyone, and frequently curse like a sailor.]

Panda misunderstandings

[Anonymous Coward]

No one wants a panda that eats, shoots, and leaves, That should read, "No one wants a panda that eats, shits, and leaves." Truss didn't understand that little detail about pandas.

Did you miss the recent UK bestseller?

[msblack]

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the UK bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. The title is based on a joke about a panda who walks into a bar, orders a drink, shoots up the place, and then exits. Aparently, the panda was offended by a poorly puncuated travel brouchure and its description of pandas (read title sans punctuation). It's a very funny book about this thread topic.

In reading the posts here, I see a lot of misplaced punctuation. When using quotation marks, the punctuation goes inside the quotes as in "here." The following example is improperly punctuated and logically incorrect.

• When using quotation marks, the punchtuation goes outside the quotes as in "here". [sic]

Grammar Nanny #37

More bad Slashdot grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

People mistakenly call it a "lameness filter.
It's a lame filter.

What is your thrombo set to?

[Don Faulkner]

(From the article:)

"Should I boost the power on the thrombo?

"NO!!!! If you turn it up to eleven, you'll overheat the motors, and IT MIGHT EXPLODE!!"

I don't know about you, but I regularly turn my thrombo up to eleven, and sometimes beyond. I think it's good for it.

Behold the horde of Slashdotters

[Dusabre]

suddenly, albeit temporarily, becoming conscious of grammar, punctuation and spelling. The posts on this article are more coherent than those on other subjects.

Oh yes, I hate emails from e-illiterates. Advertising people are probably the worst, especially advertising people writing in a foreign, for them, language.

Eye four one ...

[maxwell demon]

... well come our knew ill literate overloads!

Old joke

[Flyboy Connor]

last yer i cudnt spell 'ingineer' and now i are one!

Where does it end?

[wild_berry]

I suspect you missed the joke. Subtle humour is not a strong point of the Brits... ;)

(And now you're going to miss that one, too: Britons whine about Americans missing subtleties of British humour.)

Re:Where does it end?

[GWTPict]

I considered that, but thought it was a little weak for an attempt at humour, so instead I took it as a a genuine question. I do apologise.

Actually I'm all for Americans missing the subtlety of our quaint sense of humour, it allows us to take the piss without you realising :)

I love it

[uspsguy]

When the world is full of idiots, the man with a brain has power.
I'm old enough that I really had to learn the rules in high school and I've studied a couple of other languages. With the wonderful anonimity of the internet, I can choose to project whatever image I want to my receipents. With just a little effort, I can blend in with a group from Mensa or the typical NASCAR fan. When you understand the abysmal state of email, you can use that information to your advantage.
"On the internet, no one knows you're a dog"

Dangers of spell checking and not proof reading

[clickety6]

We have a mailing list at work for housing, buying & selling items, etc.

Recently sombeody posted a notice for a house for rent. He ran it through the spell checker but forgot to carefully check the corrections the spell checker was offering.

It was the first house people had seen that came with a fitted chicken !

I've got the conch...

[Daytona89]

Sucks to your commar!

Re:I've got the conch...

[mrak and swepe]

Best. Slashdot Post. Ever.

That, sir, deserves modding up. A lovely bit of tangential thinking.

Either it's too deep in the hierarchy to get noticed, or the mods got confused by the whistling sound it made as it flew over their heads.

Re:Should I boost the power on the thrombo?

[ColaMan]

That's true - I believe you risk not being taken seriously if you go with the caps and the exclamation marks.

Hyperbole is unwanted if you're trying to be serious about an issue. Even if you just reply with simply, "No. If you turn it up to eleven, you'll overheat the motors and it might explode.". It sounds a lot more factual and the recipient is much more likely to take your advice seriously.

Illiterate article title

[tuxlove]

The Illiteracy of Corporate American E-Mail

Shouldn't that be "illiteracy in corporate", not "of"? It's not the mail that's illiterate, it's the people who write the email.

Not as big a problem

[TheLink]

It's not as big a problem as the lack of clear/decent thinking.

Usually if the brain/mind behind the bad spelling and grammar is at least half-decent, after some effort and iterations you can figure out what it wants, AND most importantly - it is more likely to be well worth the effort.

My real peeve is the Marketing Bullshit stuff you see on so many corporate documents.

What's with all these multisyllabic words and meaningless phrases? After all as the topic goes -so many people are near illiterate.

I don't agree that "formal" writing should be like that e.g. "mesh user-centric e-tailers", "maximize synergistic supply-chains".

Blaise Pascal: "Je N'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parceque je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." -- "I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter."

Grammar prob is minor next to "corporatespeak"

[bzipitidoo]

Bad grammar doesn't bug me compared to bad writing such as this from MS's website:

At a minimum, your Enterprise Resource Planning solution should help you streamline operations, automate processes that should be automated, and give you increased management visibility with an easy-to-use, flexible, agile solution.

They actually can see that their attempt to sound smart and helpful is neither. They are not being sincere. By writing that drivel anyway, they may be showing several things. One is contempt for the rest of us-- do they really think we can't see through those words? Another is that maybe the product is so bad they couldn't think of anything better to say.

It is very tiresome sifting through constant attempts to hype, baffle, conceal, mislead, shift blame, and lie that try to seem smart, friendly and helpful. Most people can construct acceptable sentences. Some don't grasp why they shouldn't abuse communication. The Byzantine Empire didn't fall because the citizens couldn't master Greek.

Next meeting, play Bullshit Bingo.

grammar in email

[chrisranjana.com]

Yes grammar in email is important. Provided we all have the time !!

Thats why

[oliverthered]

They invented the secutary.
Hell, I bet there are some top executives out there who haven't written a single word for ages.

I despise bad grammar, but...

[incog8723]

Language is a function of human emotion. I hate being unable to comprehend a fellow human's commmunication due to lack of training, or lack of intelligence as much as the next person. However, consider the time it takes to BITCH about it (like I am doing now), versus the time it takes to ask someone in 30 seconds to clarify.

It took me 1 minute to write this comment. In that time, I could have clarified and resolved any issue that was miscommunicated. Point taken?

It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy

[Ingolfke]

From the article "It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy"

I don't know... I think it might be a small price to pay to assign improve grammer, clarity, and form in emails. Who cares if no one can read the emails because they're all written in perfect Russian.

"Pubic" domain software

[Anonymous Coward]

In my younger days, I worked for a large computer company as a first-level PHB. (Might be THE largest computer company, now that IBM is selling off chunks...)

After hearing complaints from a major client about how our engineers were installing unlicensed software on their servers - potentially adding security or license risks, I sent a corporate memo about the perils of circulating public domain software. This was in the '80s, so the way to get that done was to hand-write it and ask a secretary to put it on letterhead.

She typed the memo, typed "PUBIC" domain instead of Public Domain, and it got circulated to hundreds of people (including the customer) with my name on it. I could hear my rising star plummeting that day!

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[Anonymous Coward]

Please elaborate, everyone is wondering what that happens to do with the current topic of conversation...

that's Bash,

[weierstrass]

Tsh, Ksh or Sh.

Re:that's Bash,

[StalinJoe]

The reason bash, tsh, ksh, sh and other *nix commands are referenced in lower case is because the proper commands are syntactically lower case, and silly *nix commands are case sensitive! Additioanlly, none of those shells are formal (or proper, or recognised) languages. The point was about inappropriate lower-casing of letters, such as the "W" in Weierstrass.

Bad writing contest

[nyri]

Bad Writing Contest

My fafourite is from D.G. Leahy's book Foundation: Matter the Body Itself:
Total presence breaks on the univocal predication of the exterior absolute the absolute existent (of that of which it is not possible to univocally predicate an outside, while the equivocal predication of the outside of the absolute exterior is possible of that of which the reality so predicated is not the reality, viz., of the dark/of the self, the identity of which is not outside the absolute identity of the outside, which is to say that the equivocal predication of identity is possible of the self-identity which is not identity, while identity is univocally predicated of the limit to the darkness, of the limit of the reality of the self). This is the real exteriority of the absolute outside: the reality of the absolutely unconditioned absolute outside univocally predicated of the dark: the light univocally predicated of the darkness: the shining of the light univocally predicated of the limit of the darkness: actuality univocally predicated of the other of self-identity: existence univocally predicated of the absolutely unconditioned other of the self. The precision of the shining of the light breaking the dark is the other-identity of the light. The precision of the absolutely minimum transcendence of the dark is the light itself/the absolutely unconditioned exteriority of existence for the first time/the absolutely facial identity of existence/the proportion of the new creation sans depth/the light itself ex nihilo: the dark itself univocally identified, i.e., not self-identity identity itself equivocally, not the dark itself equivocally, in "self-alienation," not "self-identity, itself in self-alienation" "released" in and by "otherness," and "actual other," "itself," not the abysmal inversion of the light, the reality of the darkness equivocally, absolute identity equivocally predicated of the self/selfhood equivocally predicated of the dark (the reality of this darkness the other-self-covering of identity which is the identification person-self).

One example that can be explained...

[Anonymous Coward]

The early example from the systems analyst in Palo Alto is reasonable; it was a technical note from one geek to another, written in geek speak (a derivative of geek thought) with a small amount of carelessness thrown in. I found it quite coherent. I've been known to write like that, but I usually go back and clean it up once all my thoughts are safely recorded.

The big hurry, of course, is to get the thoughts recorded before I lose them.

Functional?

[Anonymous Coward]

A functional illiterate cannot use email. If you can read and write email poorly you are by definition not a functional illiterate. Functional illiteracy is defined as being unable to communicate via the written word, not as having poor grammar and spelling.

Maybe because of IM?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is excepted to use that kind of short hand in an IM conversation. People don't waste time correcting grammar for a short chat no one will ever see.

Maybe this is why people get the impression that it is OK to communicate this way electronically.

People show their disrespect by email

[defile]

For years I dealt with a client who would write long, incoherent rambling emails that he constructed across several states of mind. I'd have to spend hours every morning deciphering what he was trying to say. He just wasn't cut out for email, or so I thought.

Then one day he forwarded me an email he had written to his lawyers regarding some extremely important litigation, and what a suprise. He wrote succinctly, spelled perfectly, and got his point across with minimal deciphering required.

As I got to know this client, it became apparant that most of the people in his life just didn't matter to him. As such, he wrote them utter garbage without fail. He showed his respect for you by how he would write messages to you. The ones he felt were important got readable, useful messages. Luckily, I got to bill him for the time I had to spend decrypting his garbage emails and asking his staff to clarify.

It's not illiteracy, dumbass.

[mandrake*rpgdx]

They can read, they just can't write properly. Completely different ball of wax. That doesn't make them illiterate, just unable to pass Elementarily School.

Just goes to show.

[mandrake*rpgdx]

I'm as retarded as they are. Elementary school was what I meant.

Bash.org said it best:

[Jucius Maximus]

"I helped my uncle Jack off a horse."

"I helped my uncle jack off a horse."

Yay!

[mandrake*rpgdx]

I love it when people misuse the word Illiterate. It makes them look just as dumb as those they are attacking. Someone who can't spell isn't illiterate, they can obv. read and write. Just not well. I think people that misuse the word illiterate are illiterate.

emoticons

[circusboy]

I know they are generally looked at askance, but things like smileys (copyrighted though some may be) can add a certain amount of clarity. One of the biggest problems with e-mail as a communication method is that people hear themselves speak what they are writing, and assume that the reader will hear the same thing.

Intonation is NOT generally communicated in writing.

Some of the biggest fights in the company I used to work for, which had an office in England and California, (8 hrs apart,) were due to people misunderstanding sarcasm which would have been obvious when spoken aloud.

On the other hand I support creative punctuation and capitalization too. Though I am restraining myself here for clarity.

But....

[mandrake*rpgdx]

Forums are more like formal conversation between people, where the rules of grammar and spelling are usually bent. Correcting grammar in a forum is like correcting the grammar of someone while they are talking. An annoying and unsocial habit. People that do such a thing must be histrionic and looking for some small thing to inflate their ego with.

Re:But....

[Senzei]

People that do such a thing must be histrionic and looking for some small thing to inflate their ego with.

Maybe they are simply looking to engage in conversation on that forum without having to decipher the messages of other posters. Computers have protocols that allow them to understand one another. We have common conventions and understandings that facilitate the process of communication. Why is it so different to expect that messages written in English be reasonably clear to someone who is proficient with the language?

I admit that I am no spelling/grammar nazi(see sig), but why does it become someone else's problem when they cannot understand the garbage that you stream of consciousnessed onto the page? That seems comparable to someone in person telling me to not pay attention to their body odor as I am not speaking to them in some kind of business or official sense.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[rxmd]

grammar and punctuation are, IMO, artifacts of education and written language; spoken language has *no* punctuation and (I believe) no grammar.

You need to discern between two different ideas of "grammar":

• (A) grammar as an artificial system for the description of language
• (B) grammar as an intralinguistic ruleset that governs the well-formedness of statements.

Native speakers may not be aware of the grammar (A) of their language, but every native speaker is intuitively aware of grammar (B). It's internalized during early childhood in the speech acquisition phase. Even before Chomsky (at least since Ferdinand de Saussure), linguists were well aware that there is a complex system to how native speakers form their utterances.

Every linguistic utterance is structured according to some grammatical rules, be it from a native speaker or not. Try it: you can't, for example, shift words around arbitrarily in an English sentence without possibly losing or changing its meaning.

As far as the punctuation is concerned, you're right, but spoken language has intonation and stress instead. Usually you know when a spoken sentence is over.

Double standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I have posted here commenting on the ludicrous spelling and grammar that have appeared, I have been rather viciously flamed. However, this article is worthy of Slashdot's attention.

How do you spell double-standard? Look in the mirror, you vicious pack of trolls.

gilty as charged, yonner.

[gosand]

It's not just corporate email. The "New York Times" now routinely spells "NASCAR" as "Nascar" as well as mangling other acronyms. I have written to them several times to find out what is going on but they haven't replied.

"Lissen here, boy. Wachoo doin' spellin NASCOORR wrong, huh? I tell you whut, yer fixin to get an ass whuppin ifn ya keep it up. Me n my cousin Jimmy'll road trip up to yer fancy-pants New York City and stomp a mudhole in yer yankee asses. NASSSCOOORRR Wooooooooo!"

Re:gilty as charged, yonner.

[peter hoffman]

I'm sorry, you're spelling was so atrocious I couldn't make out your point. Would you please re-phrase it? Thank you ever so much! :-)

By the way, you did know NASCAR wants to build a track in the NYC area (Staten Island) because the demand is so high in that area and that nationwide NASCAR is more popular than the NFL? You'll need to start modifying your "NASCAR talk dictionary" to include phrases like "youse guys", "faddah", "muddah", and maybe even "chowdah".

In other words. . .

[smooth wombat]

they just scraped some postings from /. and cobbled them into a piece for publication.

Brilliant! Does this fall into the:

1) Do something
2) ...
3) Profit!

category?

Not surprising

[bitswapper]

I think several factors contribute to this kind of problem. First, everybody I have interacted with who has a degree of some kind in business strikes me as uneducated. They clearly lack any kind of background in any kind of discipline, whether logical or physical. People I know who run business who have never had any kind of college business coursework are more intelligent by an easily observable margin. Second, nearly all business are run from 'cubicle farms', that actually make their victims less intelligent, aware, and thoughtfull.

Good Writing Equals Smarts

[Icephreak1]

Being able to write well virtually ensures you're dealing with a person who possesses a meticulously organized thought process, or at the most, somebody with a fairly high IQ.

Some may argue that there's no relationship between writing ability and general intelligence, but my reasoning states that in order to produce good writing, one must recognize good writing. And that requires exposure to good writing through reading. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to suggest that the less a person reads, the more likely he is to have an average or below average vocabulary and base of knowledge.

Moral of the story is thus: if you write poorly, chances are you're a poor reader. And if you're a poor reader, chances are you just aren't cut out for the IQ game.

- IP

[Close-Captioned for the l33tsp3@k Impaired]

[pragma_x]

Once they get into the workforce, there is a prevailing myth among the plebes that spelling and grammar don't matter, as long as the message is right. However, this ignores the fact that bad spelling and grammar can severely impact the coherency of any message, as well as hurting the credibilty of the author.

Bollocks - we is professionals.

You get what you pay for

[jfuller]

Has anyone who holds a tech position and who can write well ever been hired because of that ability, or gotten a better starting salary because of it? I haven't. I write like Samuel Johnson as restrained by Strunk and White. I do not misspell or make punctuation errors. Compound-complex sentences and the subjunctive hold no terrors for me. This has all been useful to me in my work in various ways but I have never been specifically rewarded for it, as I have for being a long-term *nix admin, or having an MCSE, or being able to run a Fluke meter. If companies are distraught because their staff is illiterate let them pay a premium for literate new hires, or quit pissing and moaning. If the day ever comes when teachers can say "Kids, if you pay attention in English class your starting salary at Oracle goes up $5000," that might have some effect.

Re:You get what you pay for

[TClevenger]

I got hired by my one of my employer's customers to run their IT department, and my verbal and written communications skills were cited as part of the reason. Does that count?

Re:You get what you pay for

[SysGoddess]

"I got hired by my one of my employer's customers to run their IT department, and my verbal and written communications skills were cited as part of the reason. Does that count?"

Obviously they were aiming quite low given your demonstrated 'ability.'

It gets worse...

[sad_]

I'm working for a american company based in europe (we have english classes at school, but they are minimal!!). All the 'important' communications have to be in english and sometimes it gets far beyond the point of sanity.

My favourites are when local sayings are translated directly into english like;

- some of the slides i will walk faster through (during a powerpoint presentation)
- the server is _sitting_ in that room
- we have to keep our heads stiff!
- we have to watch our passes down the road

like any english speaking person will ever understand what they are talking about.

how about...SAVING YOUR SORRY ASSES

[Anonymous Coward]

USA to world;
Y'know...It's not that you're ungrateful as a frenchman, it's just that you're so horribly retarded that you believe communism/socialism actually works...

foad, already

Typical sign of the times

[nothingtodo]

Everyone lives life so fast that attention to detail does not matter anymore, as in this topic.

At work, pretty much everyone does a good job. On message boards however, I see plenty of messages of what should be a paragraph or two but it's all run together with no periods. I won't even waste me time trying to figure out what the message says.
Grammar and punctuation are my pet peeves. Apostrophes and their use in plural words really pisses me off.
I've also noticed a trend of making up words by modifying existing ones. Only two examples I can think of right now are monetize and disgracement. I've also seen this on TV as well.
The simplest thing that can be done is to simply proofread your message. I have ADHD, and I always go back and reread my message just to make sure my mind didn't outrun my keyboard. It's all about attention to detail.
As for me, I don't care who you are, but if I notice significant problems with a writer's text, I'm going to make certain assumptions.

What about chat programs at work?

[alc6379]

In my position at work, one of my responsibilies is to provide assistance to in-house reps through an IM/chat program.

When you're trying to ask a technical question, it becomes far more important to be clear when communicating. But, I swear, some of the people I support would be put to shame by a 6th-grader's grammar skills.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[mutterc]

I have a lot of trouble with this in my day job when supporting overseas customers.

I've gotten many a bug report that, despite all of the puzzling-over that myself and a Taiwanese guy can do, we literally can't figure out.

Also, since these customers tend to be 12 hours out of phase with us, we have to reply "huh?" and they send more info, which kills a day.

(Disclaimer: Some of this trouble is because of atrocious bug-reporting skills that are orthogonal to language skills; even if "I see packet loss" is a perfectly formed English sentence, typically I need a little more than that to go on!)

It's not just harder on the reader

[fizbin]

Another aspect that falls out of the above is one of respect. Since comprehending sloppily-written messages takes more time and effort, writing well is nothing less than displaying respect for the value of the time of one's readers, whereas writing poorly is stating that your time and effort is more valuable than that of the individual to whom you send your message. I make a serious effort to do this when writing material for others' consumption; consequently, I find it only reasonable for others to respond in kind.

I have found that, by and large, I hear messages as I type them. The end result is (I think) that I end up typing a message as I would say it. That is, the grammar, diction, etc. are as I'd say spoken words if I had the time to think about them generated by the typing delay. (I can only type at maybe 30 wpm tops)

Now granted, I'm being a bit more careful in this post than usual, because I'm thinking about it, but I just don't understand how people can possibly write the examples cited in that article - and I've seen it at my workplace too. I just don't understand how it is in any way easier to write in the sloppy, stream-of-consciousness manner that... well, let me exerpt something from my own emails (some proper names have been blanked out to protect, well, me)

I have also all XXXXXXXXX tables and sum others (XXXXXXX, sybase XXXXXX) to help u get familiar.

Let me know if u want to walk thru client connectivity and queries.

Now, I just don't understand how it is easier to produce this than it is to produce something that, say, has all the words there (I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be a verb before "all"), or something that spells "some", "through" or "you" correctly. I really don't.

I can understand someone occasionally swapping "it's" for "its" or "their" for "they're", or minor spelling mistakes along the lines of a dropped or added double letter (so long as the mistake doesn't result in another common word). I can also easily understand the occasional ambiguous antecedent or sentece fragment passed off as a complete sentence. I can even forgive the occasional accidentally omitted small grammar word ("to", "the", "a", "for", etc. though it's difficult to forgive when the omitted word is "not"). And stuff that happens naturally in English speech, such as the dreaded split infinitve, is fine too.

But that's not what's at issue here - here we're talking about people who write as they might talk when completely drunk. It honestly appears to me as though people who write this way are deliberately trying to make my life difficult, as I can't imagine anyone producing crud like this without real effort to confuse and slow down the reader. Just as it's common courtesy not to park your car any way you can in a parking lot, but to make at least a pretense of following the marked spaces, I really can't understand how producing crud as cited in the article isn't considered unthinkably rude.

Then again, I find writing documentation almost physically painful, so maybe I'm subconsciously engaging too much of my brain when I write prose, and would just be better off lobotomizing myself until the crud looks natural...

Re: List structure

[porges]

Since this is appropriate thread for it: the company name is Procter and Gamble, not Proctor. This is surprising to people who know how to spell the word "proctor".

Is she nuts?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you want to indicate stronger emphasis, use all capital letters and toss in some extra exclamation points," Sherwood advises in her guide, available at Webfoot.com, where she offers a vivid example:

"Should I boost the power on the thrombo?

"NO!!!! If you turn it up to eleven, you'll overheat the motors, and IT MIGHT EXPLODE!!"

Uh, no. How is "it might explode" not clear enough on its own? The exclamation points and capitalization provide absolutely nothing, except to make it harder to read. If you just make your language clear, there is no reason to have this unneccesary emphasis.

Writing deficiency not limited PHBs

[Anonymous Coward]

It really is sad, but seeing this reminds me of an AP(or maybe Reuter) news article that I was reading the other day that had several errors. For example the word exhibiting was used where, clearly, the author meant to use the word existing. In this case I think that it is true that the article was probably written with some office word processor package with a too aggressive word suggestion/insertion "feature", as I have nearly been bitten by this same "feature" myself while writing various papers in recent years.

The above example is really only one of many that I HAVE observed from both news agencies' articles in recent months, and other errors have been far worse, and in no way, attributable to overly aggressive assistance software "features". The scary part about this is that these articles are, presumably, written by journalist, whom, one would expect, to have a higher than ordinary level of training in the language that they are writing in. In the end, however, I suspect that if the articles in question were ever printed that they would have been corrected, as I really, almost never see such errors in print articles, although I have noticed error rates creeping up in various texts: fiction & otherwise. (The otherwise is even more scary than these other examples as they tend to be technical texts, and if there are errors contained in the explanation/introduction/etc section, I have to wonder about the technical facts/formulae/etc. The other part of this which is extremely bad, is that with the cost of books jumping significantly, I would have thought that editing would improve rather than drastically decline, which reminds me of a conversation that I had with an e-book publisher trying to justify excessive prices of e-texts by the "fact" that the majority of thhe cost was in the royalty to the author(generally, $1/copy, usually ~$0.50 or less), along with editing costs, and art(what art?! none of their books included any!).)

Lastly, there are colleagues who couldn't correctly spell a multi-syllabic word in their native language(or any other) to save their lives. Also, they tend to show signs of copy-paste-itis, wherein they copy a part of something written before, but inadvertently or otherwise also copy in a string of other vebage which make entirely zero sense in the pasted context.

Beyond these, I think that there really are times when punctuating fully, or even using entire sentences in email is not necessary, especially if it relates to part of an ongoing exchange, or is otherwise already expected to be understood what is currently referenced. Bah! This response is already too wordy, and wasting too much time.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[myowntrueself]

Well I believe that there is only (A)

To reinforce...

[rbird76]

If you can't be bothered to check your writing to see that it is easily understood by your readers, what makes anyone reading the email think that you actually thought hard about the content of the writing? If you can't be bothered to do easy little things, what makes one think that you've taken the time and effort to do the big and difficult tasks?

The point of writing is communication - if I have to get a translator and the fourteen-year-old "hacker" from down to the street to parse your writing, then I'm wasting a lot of time that could be spent on productive tasks. If you intend your writing as self-pleasuring, I'm sure there are some pornographic websites that will take your services. If you intend your writing to communicate actual thoughts and ideas, then you need to spend the time to do so clearly.

Incorrect

[lorcha]

Last Name: Grammer

1. English: occupational name for a scholar or astrologer, from Old French gramaire 'grammarian', 'scholar', also 'astrologer'.
2. German: variant of Gramer.

HTH. HAND.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[TClevenger]

I, for one, welcome our Esperanto-speaking overlords!

Techies

[sadiklis]

Picking "umount" over "unmount"?..

"Slashdot"?

Recursive acronyms?!

Sloppy English is a sign of disrespect: an example

[KWTm]

What a timely article! No sooner had I read this on Slashdot than I receive the following email.

The background: I have a somewhat unusual background of an engineering education prior to entering medical school, and I've written on the Web a few articles for engineering students interested in pursuing medicine as a career. In these articles, I encourage readers to contact me with questions, and even though it has been a few years now, requests continue to come in regularly.

This is not the only email I've received that sounds like this:

> i read u r artical in information on medical.
> pl let me know in which college/universities is engineering along with medical is avialable like
> in university of western ontorio.so that if we dont get admission in medical we can continue in
> engineering.
> with engineering is good for females both monetary and job satisfation.
[name withheld]

My first thought was: "You gotta be kidding me." My reply:

--(start)--

You will not get into medical school.

Your sloppily written email to me reveals that you have failed to bother with any modicum of care in writing your request.

First, your English is bad. There are parts I still don't understand, such as "with engineering is good for females both monetary and job satisfation". What is that supposed to mean? Women will be attracted to you if you become an engineer?

While you might simply blame it on a lack of skill with English, it is clearly more than this. You make mistakes with something as straightforward as the name of the university. Who do you think you will impress with an essay entitled Why I Should Be Accepted To "university of western ontorio"? Are you not aware that the word "I" is capitalized in English? That "u r" is not a substitute for "you are"? (This in any case is incorrect usage, since it should be "your", not "you're" or "you are", and certainly not "u r".)

You've read my article on entering medicine, an article freely available to you that I posted at my own expense of time and effort. Having presumably benefitted from my free advice, you now seek further free advice from me. Can you not show me some basic respect by putting some thought into compsing your email? Can you not even be bothered to press the "Shift" key when you type the word "I"?

If all this is really due to ignorance, then you lack the basic learning capacity to function in medical school. If this is due to sloth, then all the worse --you may possibly have the potential, but you certainly haven't the attitude.

Please save yourself and others a great deal of effort by turning your endeavours to other fields. Thank you.

Even in answering your question, I've wasted more than you deserve. To compensate, I'm going to post your missive, and my reply, on the Web so that I will not be bothered by others like you.

--(end)--

Re:Sloppy English is a sign of disrespect: an exam

[Icephreak1]

Can you not show me some basic respect by putting some thought into compsing your email?

Such irony. There's an 'O' missing from "composing."

- IP

Even the schools aren't safe....

[killeena]

I get horrible emails from teachers all the time. I thought that teachers may know better, but apparently not. I see things such as, "THE COMPUTOR IN ROOM 243 DOES NOT WORK AT ALL CAN NOT GET ANYTHING IT FREEZES UP AND ALSO HAVING A HARD TIME LOGING ON." I have completely lost faith in the public school system.

Grammar complexity based on writer or audience?

[solprovider]

I remember a program (WordPerfect? WordStar?) that determined the complexity of a written work by finding the average number of words per sentence (wps). IIRC, the levels were:
"simple" (<6wps)
"normal" (7-10wps)
"technical" (11-19wps)
"doctoral" (>20wps).

(I am certain these numbers and labels are not correct. I think the program also considered the average word length.)

This supports your theory that longer sentence structures imply a more educated mind. I tend to write very long sentences, and am accused of having a very complex mind rather often. That does not mean I should not attempt to simplify my writing so lesser minds can understand more easily.

Writing must consider the audience. Do longer sentence structure imply the writer has a complex mind, or that complex minds are the expected audience?

Books for the very young usually have about 3 words per sentence, like "See Spot run." If anybody under age seven will read it, do not use sentences with more than 5 words.

Most sentences in business writing should have 8-15 words. A sentence with less words will get more attention, such as "Do not click DELETE ALL." or "He is being terminated."

A sentence with more than 15 words requires complex thought from the reader. If they are focused on the subject, such as reading a technical manual, they will work for understanding. If they are not focused on the subject, such as an email for something other than their current task, they will stop reading.

I follow the rules I suggested in the gradparent post. Even after editing, my writing usually contains long sentences. Hopefully my audience cares enough to take the effort to comprehend. If they go numb, I have failed as a writer.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[rxmd]

How then, for example, do you know that "Man bites dog" and "Dog bites man" mean different things? Unless you have a rule that correlates semantic dependencies with word order, there's no way to tell. This is already a feature of grammar (B).

Again Around

[virg_mattes]

> >They may have aced their CCIE exam, but if I don't already know them then I may not take them to be so bright if they don't know basic grammar like where to capitalize and where to put periods and commas (overuse of which are probably the most common non-spelling error I see).

> This is a good example of a run-on sentence.

If you're going to be a grammar Nazi, you need to know your grammar better. This isn't a run-on sentence. Also, he didn't misuse the "ifs" at all. Sure, the sentence is long, but even though it's convoluted and includes a big parenthetic, it's a single thought about a single subject, and grammatically it's correct.

Virg

How Now?

[virg_mattes]

"Impact" has been a verb for quite some time. It's possible to impact with something in your travels. For common usage, I refer to the Gospel According to George, being the Star Wars script, when Red Leader fired a torpedo at the famed exhaust port and missed:

"Negative, negative, it didn't go in. It just impacted on the surface."

This was in the '70s, and demonstrates that the word was being used as a verb at that time.

Virg

Oh, My...

[virg_mattes]

> ...that you stream of consciousnessed onto the page?

You "verbed" a phrase? That's just hateful.

Virg

Another error in a newspaper

[lamber45]

Spelling errors aren't the only ones that result when people don't proofread properly. A local paper routinely spells "façade" as "faÂade", probably because the original author uses Word (with auto-correct turned on) and then they pass it through some incompletely-implemented format-converter.

Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua

[myowntrueself]

because of the way we are educated, we tend to see rules everywhere, even in the so-called 'laws' of physics.

But there are no rules in nature; only heuristics.

Our brains are not automata, in the sense of 'finite state automata' or 'turing machines'.

In fact, our brains seem remarkably bad at even simulating automata and to be able to do so requires extensive training and discipline.

There are other ways that language comprehension can work than rule-based systems.

Nitpickery

[virg_mattes]

Your grading needs grading.

> This colloquialism does not belong in formal writing.

Your reasoning for considering an online message forum as "formal writing" is what, exactly? Give him his ten points back. His performance is still not great, but it's a passing grade. And since when is 65 a D- instead of D?

Virg

Or Maybe

[virg_mattes]

How does he know they're from different villages in the first place? Ask them? Wouldn't that introduce its own problems?

Virg

sorry, whong url

[Anonymous Coward]

The URL to the graph at finance.yahoo.com should be this.

What I Could Never Figure Out

[Anonymous Coward]

In programming (coding, that is) every character counts, as NASA found out much to their chagrin.

Why is it, then, that programmers are so bad at spelling and grammar?

And before you flame me for a spelling or grammatical mistake: English is not my first language.

It's closer than you think!

[Anonymous Coward]

Illiteracy is pandemic in society and it seems to be intentional, given that it's source is public education...

May I suggest that your Christmas gifts to yourself include a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation?