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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[Anonymous Coward]

What exectly is a constant-velocity proofreader?

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[Moofie]

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

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?

[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?

[landrocker]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[dbIII]

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

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?

Conspicuously...

[MoxCamel]

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

Mox

Heh

[Neil Blender]

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

All because of vatican 2

[yorkpaddy]

See what happens when you stop saying mass in Latin.

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.

My personal favorite

[Anonymous Crowhead]

The subject line email:

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

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?

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

[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

[Beautyon]

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

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.

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 ;)

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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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.

sorry, had to do it:

[w98]

All your base are belong to us

Some help needed here...

[z3021017]

Looks like they need some help from the Bad Boys of Punctuation!

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.

(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.

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!"

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.

*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.

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.

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.)

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.

[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...

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....

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

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:Not too suprising

[James_Duncan8181]

Amusingly "American's" should not have a commar as it is merely plural, not indicative of ownership.

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.

Obligory quote

[DragonPup]

"Me fail english? That unpossible!"

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: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: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: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.

Re:Not too suprising

[calibanDNS]

More amusingly, that's an apostrophe, not a "commar"...

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

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).

Too much L33T!

[Excen]

I think R2-D2 just crapped a rainbow in my brain!

(With apologies to any Sealab fans out there)

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.

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.

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!

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:I filtered out all the crap

[cephyn]

Wow, there was a Welsh version of the site?

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!!

What scares me

[mindstrm]

is that I can read that quite fluently.

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?

[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...).

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...

[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.

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: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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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

[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

[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:Time to ditch the English Language?

[Dragonfly]

Quite right. Information should be transferred as properly formatted XML, with CSS used to indicate emotion.

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.

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...

[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."

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: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: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.

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).

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.

Grammer?

[Cybertect]

Perhaps it's just another Americanism, but over here in England we spell it 'grammar' :)

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?

[RealAlaskan]

Well, I spell it `grammar', too. I misspell it `grammer'. Consistantly, in that post. If you RTFA, you're probably not surprised.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:Obligory Simpsons quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pffft, English. Who needs that? I'm never going to England."

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.

"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

[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

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.

quote of the article

[gijoel]

"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy,"

Unless they want their emails written in Russian.

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.

"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. ;-)

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!

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: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.

FYI:The myth of 'Eskimo words for "Snow"'

[Fuzzy Bo]

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archive s/000405.html

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

I NEED HELP

[hohack]

in a lowly undercase kind of way

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: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

:)

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:Consistantly?

[NitroWolf]

I believe that's what they coined the term "pwned" for.

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.

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

[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.

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

Bash.org said it best:

[Jucius Maximus]

"I helped my uncle Jack off a horse."

"I helped my uncle jack off a horse."

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

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.

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.

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.

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)--