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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?"
SpellCatcher has been saving my ass for 15 years now.
While I don't condone stupidity, some of us can't spell no matter how hard we try. Next time you see one of my posts, know that when I write, "M$ suks azz, I hate dem dirtee baztardz," SpellCatcher corrects it to be, "I am less than enthused with Microsoft's business practices."
Actually, you are wrong.
"should of" is not the common usage.
"should've" is the common usage - which is a contraction of "should have"
However, some people, having only heard "should've" and mis-heard it as "should of", think that "should of" is the common usage.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Well, no one will read this, but the "correct English" that you speak of does exist: the language is called "Queen's English". "Queen's English" is defined as words and their spelling that are employed by the current monarch of Britain. If, however, the monarch is a king, then it would of course change to King's English. While this may sound as if I am trolling, this is a fairly well known concept that was introduced to me by a university professor. The Queen could start spelling 'dog' as 'dogue', or pronounce 'juice' as 'JEW-ICE' and that spelling or pronounciation would be (as offical as something can be with no governing body) adopted officially as the "correct" spelling or pronunciation. As for your comment about no standard book of "English", I would guess the most recent edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and any basic university English 101 textbook would serve that purpose.
(i.e. A report for work)
;-) (Sorry to pick on you.)
e g.html, or http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/abbreviations/f /ievseg.htm. (Note the use of "e.g." for "for example.")
Here's another thing that bothers me about common usage.
The abbreviation "i.e." does not mean "for example."
Repeat after me:
The abbreviation "i.e." does not mean "for example."
The abbreviation "i.e." does not mean "for example."
The abbreviation "i.e." does not mean "for example."
The abbreviation to use if you mean "for example" is "e.g.". The abbreviation "i.e." stands for (the Latin of) "that is."
I.e., "i.e." is used when you are rephrasing, clarifying, etc. what was already said. The sentence "i.e. A report for work", if taken literally, means that the only documents that matter to you are reports for work.
For more information, see, e.g., http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/8707/52862, http://www.planetoid.org/grammar_for_geeks/ie_vs_
(Sorry, I go on this rant periodically. Don't take it personally.)
An easy way to remember this:
i.e. - in explanation
e.g. - example given
"I've almost gotten to the point where I consider a phrase like "makes its own gravy" to be written wrong because of the missing apostrophe, because it's so common -- even in advertising copy, for pete's sake."
That's because "its" is the proper spelling of the possessive form of the pronoun it.
It's is a contraction of the phrase it is.
Oh, and Russian language is in fact regulated, by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The moment I posted that, I remembered an even more appropriate quote:
Guildenstern: The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: Good God. We're out of our depths here.
Guildenstern: No, no, no! He hasn't got a daughter! The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: The old man is?
Guildenstern: Hamlet... in love... with the old man's daughter... the old man... thinks.
Rosencrantz: Ah.
I wonder what Stoppard would make of the debate here? Something amusing, probably.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
"Should", "Could" and "Would" don't have ANY tense.
A: "What do you want to to do tonight?"
B: "We could go see a movie, but I think we should just rent something... that would be cheaper."
Also, "have" in "should have" is not a verb either. It's another modifier. Usually the verb follows after, with "(sh|c|w)ould have" suggesting a possible alternative to a past action.
"He would have left a bigger tip if he had change."
"You could have turned left on main street as a shortcut."
"You should have read the manual first."
The verb determines tense. There is only a handful of exceptions where the "have" is the acting verb, and is always used as a possessive for the subject.
"The jar should have holes in the lid."
"The car could have a larger engine if you want that option."
"He would have more time if he stopped surfing slashdot."
You are absolutely correct that language evolves. However, you can't honestly claim that substituting "of" for "have" in any of the above examples is sensible, readable english because 'of' is a preposition. It might be acceptable in speech from the slurring of "should've" but that does not make it grammatically correct.
=Smidge=
The parent is Mark Twain's proposal for the improvement of english spelling. Link
An easier way for me is this:
i.e. - id est (that is)
e.g. - exempli gratia (for [the sake of an] example)
Once I learned what they actually stood for, I never got them confused again. You don't have to speak Latin to know which is which. It amazes me how many people use these every day and don't know what they stand for. Also, they should usually be followed by a comma when used in a sentence, just like the phrases "for example" and "that is" are.
Trivia: in German, instead of e.g., they use z.B. which stands for "zum Beispiel".
While we are being pedantic, that should be affect. You might say: `an effect of closing your eyes is that you cannot see', or `closing your eyes affects your ability to see'. But saying `closing your eyes effects your ability to see' is saying that closing your eyes is what gave you the ability of sight!
(I do completely agree about the degradation of the language through sloppy usage.)
Are you honestly claiming both of those words were actually acronyms? If so you've fallen for some very common, but incorrect, stories. While the origins of both words are a bit muddy they're certainly not what you're most likely claiming.
This is what the wise people at snopes.com have to say about golf and fuck
No, the spelling is NOT arbitrary. I don't know how many times I have to point this out in my life as a linguist. An arbitrary system is one like Japanese kanji, which have no phonetic component whatsoever. The fact that I can throw a word at you that you've never seen, like, for example, "orthography," and you can read it and pronounce it correctly is proof positive of this. The fact that the spoken==>written relationship is not as strong, however, is not proof of arbitrariness. It indicates something else--something people have already discussed here without realizing it (in discussions of the multitudinous influences on the development of English), and that is the concept of morphology.
/g/ followed by an /I/. The sound no longer exists in English.
Words usually do not exist all by themselves but are members of a "word family" (and yes that is the technical term). Word families are made up of forms of the same word which feature little to no extra learning burden to master given knowledge of one of the other forms. These relationships are best represented by fixed spelling of the morphemes, even when there are pronunciation differences.
Something like Japanese (kanji, not the hiragana and katakana syllabaries) or Chinese puts all their eggs in the morphology basket, and none in the phonetic. Words are comprised of morphemes which are represented by particular graphemes (kanji/hanzi). This is great once you learn all the morpheme/grapheme pairs, but at 15,000 for Chinese, the system requires a large initial investment of time and cognitive burden.
English splits the difference between a morpheme-centric and phonetic orthographic system, wherein spellings of morphemes are relatively regular, but they are also phonetic enough that anyone with a basic understanding of the phoneme-grapheme pairings of the English use of the Roman alphabet can at least make an excellent guess at the pronunciation.
And to the many lazy and weak-minded individuals who whine about how everything should be phonetic, I would like to point out that there is an entire alphabet designed for this: the International Phonetic Alphabet. Learn this and try reading some text in it. See if it's really easier. A morpheme-centered orthographic system allows for faster processing of text because it allows the reader to bypass the sound production phase entirely, linking written words directly to their meanings (resident in the brain).
So stop whining, whiners, and learn the system. It's just a system to aid in the transfer of information. It's there to help you, not keep you down, man.
And BTW, although Noah Webster gave birth to the modern science of lexicography, dictionaries did indeed exist before his tome. They were used as spelling lists, mostly. The phase in which the English didn't care about spelling to which you are referring was up to the introduction of the printing press. Once more reading material was available to the masses it was very rightly decided that spelling should be standardized throughout the industry (he wrote with the arguably NON-standard, American spelling of "standardised). Furthermore, the "gh" that's left over in many words, including "knight" was a voiced velar fricative, not a
Read books. Seriously. Read a lot of books that have been edited well, and you'll start picking up good grammar and spelling by osmosis.
/. where people use atrocious pseudo-English and your skills will atrophy after a time.
The reverse is true. Hang around sites like
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Everybody loves to use "It's" like it's going out of style.
IT'S = a contraction of IT IS
Used in sentences like:
"It is a sunny day" = "It's a sunny day"
"It is really annoying" = "It's really annoying"
"Don't do that, it is stupid!" = "Don't do that, it's stupid!"
ITS is neuter possessive - as in his or hers, only it refers to a non-gendered object.
Used in sentences like:
"My laptop's battery lost its charge"
"Open Source Software has its drawbacks"
"The G5's strength is its vector processing abilities"
Many times you can save an extra keystroke by using "its" instead of "it's" - and you get the bonus of being grammatically correct.
I sig for world peace
Isn't it nice that we can still read Shakespeare's works 400 years after they were published?
Only a fool would simply notice familiarity in the written language of Shakespeare and ignore the fact he has no clue of it's original meaning and connotation or the probability that half of it is NOT original but transliteration from a completely bizarre and archaic form of English.
No, you CAN not "read" as in comprehend in full hardly any paragraph of an original peace from Shakespeare today. Some words like prepositions might be recognizable, some other words too but words routinely change meaning. Idioms change. Ideas are taken for granted. We see drapery atop a bed as a strong sophisticated and classical meaning, we might even see "rich". It's to keep insects, rodents and dirt and crude from dropping on you at night, long before electricity and when roofs weren't very clean or had insect infested straw/hay layers; how "rich" is that?! It's intended use is a most disgusting situation. So Shakespeare describes one in his works, and you get a totally different image.
Language has to evolve, otherwise it's not getting any better. And, for those who THINK they have authority over English--cough those Indians--a native English speaker is afforded the right of using the language the best way he see's fit regardless of what rules YOU were taught.
"And most of the poor people in this country happen to be guess what! NOT WHITE."
2 .html
From 2003 census data:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/hstpov
Poverty percentages by race
white 10.5
black 24.5
hispanic 22.5
asian 10.2
And from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762156.html
Total Population 290,809,777
by race
White 234,196,357
Black 37,098,946
Hispanic 39,898,889
Asian 11,924,912
So the number in poverty by race:
White 24,590,617
Black 9,089,242
Hispanic 8,977,250
Asian 1,216,341
So, you are wrong. The majority of poor people in this country are without a doubt white.
"me" in that context is a phonetic transcription of how people in that dialect of English pronounce the word "my". Are you suggesting that they also spelled it that way?
This article (PDF) suggests that the genitive ending was -es in Old English, and -ies or -ys in Middle English, and that the apostrophe was introduced as a replacement for omitted vowels.
However, he also describes an alternative view: that the apostrophe was originally used because of the mistaken assumption that the genitive ending was already a contraction of "his". Apparently even Shakespeare made this mistake...