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Hackers, Spelling, and Grammar?
Strom Carlson asks: "Over the last few years, I've noticed that a surprisingly large number of native English speakers, who are otherwise very technically competent, seem to lack strong English skills. Mostly, this seems to manifest itself as varying degrees of poor spelling and grammar: 'definately' instead of 'definitely'; 'should of' instead of 'should have'; and I even see the names of products and companies misspelled from time to time. It baffles me that a culture so obsessed with technical knowledge and accuracy can demonstrate such little attention to detail when it comes to communicating that knowledge with others, and it baffles me even more that many people become enraged when you attempt to help them correct and learn from their mistakes. Do hackers and geeks just not care about communicating effectively? Do they not realize that a mediocre command of written English makes them appear less intelligent? Am I missing something here?"
Definately.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Talk about your flamebate!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
At georgia tech there is a road named Ferst street. Naturally the running joke is that they misspelled First Street.
j00 b3tt3r t4k3 th4t b4ck
th3Ms f1ght1n w0rds 4r0und h3r3!
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
HuKt aWn FoNix WerKt fer mE.
Oh snap! I'ma hafta remember dat, yo.
feints within feints, wheels within wheels
Seriously though, I think being taught phonix(sp? lol) as a child really hendered my spelling capabilities because so many words are spelled in ways they shouldn't...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Talk English, dude!
"...I can say that more than often, they are rude, have very little to add to any discussion, other than showing off their impressive command of the English language. I'd be more receptive if some of them made their response to the thread at hand, and did a BTW, but that's not what happens. Usually they are just have one line response that is rude, and often picking on one or two 'mistakes', and always critical of one's intelligence."
So they're just like computer geeks, but of the english language?
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Seriously though, I think being taught phonix(sp? lol) as a child really hendered my spelling capabilities because so many words are spelled in ways they shouldn't...
The above sentence made me cry.
Video Phone Blogs send video messages straight to the web.
What is this "grammer" you speak of?
But anyway, from Mexico, it's common the rumour that americans are oh god the cream of the crop and they're so superior to us in everything.
Geeze, have a little chip on your shoulder, don't we?
I try to use the rules, but if I understand you, what else matters?
So if your sentences are only a little difficult to understand then you'd rather that nobody corrects you until the accumulation of bad practices over a number of years makes half of what you say gibberish?
Correcting innocent typos is pointless, and rather impolite. Correcting persistent errors (like Cmdr Taco's "than" and "then" confusion) should aid future communication.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
*A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling*
by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
What I hate the most is the missing capitalization in more and more emails I receive. Most of the slashdot readers are speaking english, but capitalization really counts in the german language. It is extremely difficult to read all-lower-case emails.
Capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse.." and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.."
> a quick proofread
But... but if we proofread how will we get FP?!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
So, like, right now?
Aautllcy, I bvielee taht the rrpeot was taht you can slrbcame the letetrs of a word, lianevg the frist and last leretts incatt, and you can stlil read most wodrs. Afetr raeidng taht, I wrote a plgiun for trilalin taht does jsut that. This is its opuutt.
What you reap is what you sow
I think you meant "shudder".
from an otherwise obvious native English speaker
Just wanted to emphasizes this point, as I'm something of a closet grammar nazi myself. I'm always more forgiving to those who don't sound like native speakers, except for when the change is particularly amusing.
Eg:
A Russian coder that I used to work with once wrote some C code that would generate SQL queries dynamically. In his comments inside the code, he described this as "Building SQL queries on a fly" which had me giggling quite a bit when I first read it.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Do hackers and geeks just not care about communicating effectively?
That's H4X0rs and g33ks you insensitive clod. Besides if the leader of the free world can invent new countries like Lebalebanon, who am I to judge?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Get back to finishing Perl 6.
"I dislike the French because because they do not speak English, but I abhor the Americans because they speak English badly."
-Winston Churchill.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is "not." Death isn't. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no... What you've been is not on boats.
-Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I agree!! For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. -Mark Twain
"I think of it like a stuck pixel on an LCD around the edge of the screen."
Stuck pixel? STUCK PIXEL? My GOD, man! This is Slashdot! It's more like someone took a freaking 12 gauge shotgun to my poor 21" SyncMaster!
Some of these drive me nuts. "Walla" when Voilá is meant, for example.
Bullshit! That's short for "ergo"!
Don't worry, I've got points I'll mod him up....Doh!
Please don't read my sig.
You forgot the apostrophe in "don't".
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
but that begs the question, who dies when a bear shits on a fallen log in the woods if no one is around to smell it?
moo.
Have you heard a scottish person talk? Maybe they have good grammar, but who can tell?
Second, geeks and such are often a bit autistic-- if not actually clinically suffering from autism, then at least they exhibit symptoms by virtue of being so underexposed to other humans. As a result of this, good grammar or not, they just can't communicate.
As an aside:
The funny/sad thing is when an American will gripe about a foreigner verbally mangling English... yet that same American most likely can't even speak a 2nd language... let alone speak it fluently. Bah.
I'd say it's funny/sad when Europeans try to condemn Americans for having less exposure to the cultures of other countries. Sure, it's easy to become familiar with other countries when you're so tiny that you can't ride a train for more than 2 hours without leaving the country.
To go back to your original point, size alone can explain part of the reason Americans mangle English so badly: the larger an area you're encompassing, the more dialects will emerge. After all, most of europe really just speaks what are essentially dialects of one of two languages: Latin and German.
Pax tecum.
~Idarubicin
The Mark Twain quote reminded me of the following, printed in my high school yearbook and probably inspired by it: The Great European Dream The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish. In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c." Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k." Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f." This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a dterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go. By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v." During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou," and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx
Some of you feel that English syntax is illogical or that language should be allowed to evolve, but would you be required to express those opinions if you weren't defending your poor word choices? Yes, it's illogical, but millions of people manage to learn it. Yes, it can evolve, but allowing you to direct its evolution is like letting a monkey design a skyscraper. Master the rules before you flaunt them. Once you have an adult comprehension of the language and can speak and write properly, I'll listen to your anti-English rant. I'll roll my eyes but I'll listen. If you can't spell or pronounce simple English words, save me your "English is a bastardization of Low German" rant along with your ode to Common Usage as King. Learn the language. You should have been paying attention in 3rd grade and it's not my fault that you didn't. Speakers with a good grasp of the language can feel free to use slang and colorful idiom, secure in the knowledge that their audience understands them. The rest of you - zip it.
Hey ... you sound like you know what you're talking about. No fair.
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
of who your English teacher was
whom
who is nominative case. of who simply does not work in the English language.
If you want something that sounds more elegant--though not being completely orthographically sound--try "hexle U."
Actually, it's really an Oscar Wilde quote. See Oscar Wilde Quotations, or, to quote; "It is easy to find Oscar Wilde quotes ... The more progressive and risque among Britain's social climbers may on occasion be tempted to ask for a quote by Winston Churchill, although the old money still views this as irredeemably gauche."
I'm a concientious
I'm a worshipper of Bacchus, you insensitive clod!
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
My favourite is "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes". It adds a dash of passion to something that's usually only adequate.
You think this makes sense:
"company for cleaning commission members' cars' tax declaration deadline"
What kind of freakin' tax structure do you have in your country?
I've written a small thing on this very subject actually, a coupel of weeks back.
I've always wondered why it is that people write as poorly as they do, when it comes to writing online.
My guess is that it's because they want to express themselves in the same way, and at the same speed as they would if they were talking to you. This, of course, mostly applies to emails and IMs and irc and such.
I know I'm not a great speller, but I do tend to get my grammar correctly. Also, what my brain doesn't catch, the spellchecker usually does.
Move sig!