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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?"
As someone who is constantly picked on by these people, 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. I've said it before, but it's not the diction that matters, but the message. Good grammer is only helpful to get a message across. I'm not writing a fucking paper, it's an response in a damn forum.
Yes, good humor, understanding, and basic people skills.The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
It doesn't help that English spelling is such a mess. In order to really know how to map sounds to spelling, one needs to (perhaps unconsciously) learn a number of rules corrisponding to the bewildering number of languages that have been borrowed from in constructing American (or British, or Australian, or ...) English. Somehow we all manage, more or less, to do it, but it's worth noting that in a lot of other languages, it's a lot harder to misspell words, and spelling bees seem somewhat humourous.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
The thing that actually bothers me is not that people have a poor grasp of the english language, but the fact that when you correct them in a non-arrogant manner, they actually refuse your help. Okay, okay, ignorance is one thing. Insisting on being ignorant is like... stupid.
"Reality continues to ruin my life" - Calvin and Hobbes
I'll play devil's advocate. The purpose of language is communication, and the standardization of such is to ensure against ambiguity, right? If someone's written work is devoid of some common rules of grammar and usage, does it matter if you completely and unambiguously understand what they are saying/writing?
I try to use the rules, but if I understand you, what else matters?
un burrito me trampeó.
You say slashdot readers are: obsessed with technical knowledge and accuracy
Some slashdot readers are. Others are more interested in:
Tech Gossip, neither knowledgeable nor accurate
Latest Gadgets, ditto
Science Fiction
Anime, large breasted Japanese girls(!?!), transforming creatures and flying penises
Microsoft Delivery Schedule, always wrong
Mac Advocacy, occassionally right.
Not so many obsessed with technical knowledge and accuracy.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
*clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap* :) Finally. I'm tired of being the grammar / spelling nazi around here. And yes I'm sh*t tired of people using stupid grammar just because they're lazy to learn the language.
Maybe it's a coincidence, but the fact that I'm _NOT_ a native english speaker answers why people have such a weak grammar / spelling. I didn't learn english by hearing. But by reading (In fact I had some trouble knowing how to pronounce certain words).
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. And then I come, and after a while of chatting I end up making a huge "WTF!? O.O" face.
Please kids, learn a little grammar. Is that too hard?
His keywords were "communicating effectively."
None of his examples hindered effective communication in the slightest. Infact it could be said that it 'increased' the effectiveness of the communication. Now we know that the submitter is more concerned with details than with results. We wouldn't have had that information if we hadn't misspelled anything.
His other point about 'appearing less intelligent' has more credibility, but not much. It comes down to knowing your audience and taking the necessary measures.
I think the reason the submitter imagined a connection between 'technical' people and grammatical/spelling shortcomings is because we are in, (and have been in) an area of real-time written communication.
If you're using Email, or worse Instant Messaging, or even worse IRC, or even worse 'talk.' The 'speed' at which you present your ideas means MUCH MUCH more to the effectiveness of the communication than dotting the I's and crossing the T's. And once it's established, it's just a matter of habit.
I wonder if the submitter has compared 'on-the-fly' writings of the 'Slashdot Crowd' vs their more permanent and published writings.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
Assuming we're dealing with a native English speaker, I see these as different problems. Poor spelling might simply be poor typing (though if I see 'loosing' for 'losing' one more time, I will become upset...). Poor grammar is more fundamental I feel, as it implies a lack of comprehension. In coding terms, I may not remember the method name but I should at least understand the algorithm I'm attempting to implement.
Good. They assume far too much importance in the world as it is. If people still get them wrong, perhaps indoctrination hasn't quite been completed yet.
Cheers,
Ian
And everyone who reads it will understand that you are of below average intelligence, and will treat you accordingly.
If you communicate like a moron, you are treated like a moron.
If you don't like that, don't reply, since I'm acting like an arrogant, elitist bastard, but I want you to treat me like a friendly, helpful mentor.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
You are wrong. It will never take hold for one simple reason: the words don't make sense together. "Of" is not a verb; "have" is. Common usage or not, it will never logically make sense. "Should of" almost certainly stems from phonetically spelling "should've" ("should have"). Even in speaking, therefore, it never occurs.
"Should of" is only heard more in spoken English because people mishear "should've" and so few people read anything of substance to any appreciable extent that they don't know any better.
"Should of" is not meaningful in itself; it does not "mean" what "should have" means...it doesn't MEAN anything. It is the linguistic equivalent of people who say "expresso."
So it's really easy to say that "should of" is wrong because "should have" is an adverbial expression and "should of" is not.
If someone asked you "Have you eaten?" would you reply "I of eaten."? Maybe, but you would be wrong.
English is a living language, why do i care if "should have" is technically correct according to some english professor somewhere. "should of" is common usage, and in the long term the common usage will win out (once the grammar police die out from old age).
What a strange logic: it's like saying "most people round 100/3 to 33, it's common usage, so when the math police die out of old age, the common usage will win out".
That's stupid because 100/3 != 33, it's completely incorrect, just like "should of" makes absolutely no sense. The only reason most people understand "should of" as "should have" is because they know the correct form is "should have".
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You know, the thing about that is... proper spelling and grammar make the writer look more "grown up". A tpyo or two are one thing, but if the grammar and spelling are at an eighth-grade level, I tend to assume that the writer is in the eighth grade. I'm always on the side of the grammar nazis on slashdot (even when they get me) because really poor grammar (from an otherwise obvious native English speaker) tend to make me discount the opinion of the poster. Although the grammar nazi victim may not think this is fair, I know I'm not alone... and you'd think that the poster would want to improve his/her writing skills just to make his/her opinions, thoughts, rantings, etc. more valuable to others.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
"Should of" is a perfect example, because it's something that children say because they don't know any better. The presumption is that, as you grow up, your intelligence grows with you, and you outgrow grammar errors such as "should of", "supposably", and "pasghetti". Sure, the language will evolve, but "should of" will always sound like something a ten-year-old would say.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
What is slashdot but a bunch of intellectuals (or intellectual wannabes) showing off to each other?
As for sounding like an intellectual - spelling errors can make you look like a retard. What do you prefer?
I try to use the rules, but if I understand you, what else matters?
I think of it like a stuck pixel on an LCD around the edge of the screen. During normal use you wouldn't even notice it; the monitor works fine, you can watch movies, play games, surf the net... but in the back of your mind that monitor is still broken.
Poor spelling or grammar still gets the point across. Though, if the reader notices it lingers in the back of their mind and detracts from your message.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
What a strange logic: it's like saying "most people round 100/3 to 33, it's common usage, so when the math police die out of old age, the common usage will win out".
That's stupid because 100/3 != 33, it's completely incorrect
The main flaw in your argument is that math is constant, while language evolves. This is completely natural and more importantly, desirous. Rigid adherence to outdated grammatical constructs can only hinder communication. A perfect example would be the adoption of "google" as a verb; would you prefer to say "navigate to google's site and use it to search for widgets" or "google widgets"
That being said, I do agree with you, "should of" is horrible, but you have to take the good with the bad.
There is no specific 'correct' forum for corrections and suggestions, the reason being that language is used in all forums as a means of communications. So this is not necessarily the wrong forum. In fact, in the ideal situation here on /., a correction will be read by the parent poster, but not by most others, since it might end up being modded down.
It breaks the flow of the discussion.
Bad spelling and grammar contribute to incoherence which definitely breaks the flow of the discussion. Good spelling and grammar will reduce distractions and facilitate good flow of the discussion.
How in the world is spelling properly oppressive to minorities?
Tin foil hat time, man.
One common hacker trait is an utter disdain for things that are deliberately illogical. The problem is that the standards of language often are illogical and yet enforced anyway. It's clear that the intent of English was to have a langauge where the letters record the sound of the word. But it failed miserably at it due to merging in words from different languages and now spelling in English is an utterly illogical mess. So it's not surprising that hackers wouldn't really care to spell things by the standard. To do so you have to fight against what is logical.
Then there's the grammar standards of where punctuation marks are used. The comma was invented to just indicate an audio pause in speech. Then later on anal people changed it to only being usable under specific circumstances - Again, For, No, Reason.
Then there's the confusion over whether or not the quote marks are supposed to accurately quote what is inside them or not. I'd say that only things that are part of what is being quoted belong inside the quotes. Punctuation that is an artifact of the fact that the quote got pasted into another sentence are part of that external sentence, NOT part of the quoted material - so they logically belong outside the quote marks. For example:
Logical, but incorrect according to standard:
"Hello", John said.
Did John say, "Hello"?
Illogical, but correct according to standard:
"Hello," John said. (The comma isn't part of the quote dammit)
Did John say, "Hello?" (The question mark is there because of the sentence the "Hello" is pasted inside of, NOT because it is part of the "Hello" that John might have said. This allegedly correct way looks, to me, like the question is aksing whether John spoke "Hello" in a questioning tone, because the question mark ended up inside the quoted part.
According to standard, a question asked in the negative isn't really asked in the negative. "Aren't you coming with us", should logically be answerable by saying "Yes I am not coming with you". But the expected interpretation is the inverse of that. Again, the standard is at odds with logic.
Most people look at stuff like that and don't care. People who think logically get fed up with crap like that and rebell.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Speaking of ambiguity...
I believe the quoted OP intended the "it" in "does it matter" to refer to "someone's work if devoid of common rules of grammar and usage", not to "you completely and unambiguously understand what they are saying/writing", although both are possible legitimate parsings.
Even if a highly misspelt and ungrammatical post/email/letter is completely unambiguous and can be completely and correctly understood, it usually takes more effort for the reader to get to that point of comprehension than it would without the errors. We are wonderful error-correcting devices, but it's not a zero-cost implementation.
By purposefully ignoring grammar and/or spelling when communicating, you're making things easier for yourself at the expense of requiring more effort from your readers. That's at the very least impolite and quite possibly arrogant and downright rude.
It's especially so in a forum like a news post, where you only need to write once, but what you write will be read many many times. Just making some attempt at reasonable grammar and spelling should greatly improve the overall efficiency of communication at a relatively small cost to the author. Just because something works doesn't mean it works well...
I meant to add:
There is also the issue of ease of understanding. Any text is written just once, it is however, likely to be read multiple times by multiple readers. Shouldn't the author try to ease the workload of the readership?
Finally, consider the following quote: "As long as you completely understand them, does it matter if a person breaks common rules of grammar and usage?" transformed thus:
"As long as the page renders correctly in my browser does it matter if the HTML fails to conform to the DTD?"
Doesn't that make you shudder?
I'm a techie who is presumably competent in English; I've got published fiction and card-carrying status with a professional writers association. But my prose is hardly flawless on a first draft typed at 60 words/minute, and that's the style of communication on free-for-all boards like /. and most web venues.
Unsolicited correction of someone's English on the web is like stepping up to fellow customers in a clothes store and suggesting ways to improve their current wardrobe. Sure, you might be more fashion-savvy, but you'd still be arrogant.
I try to use the rules, but if I understand you, what else matters?
The problem is when non-native speakers are taught the meaning of "should have" and never EVER have had contact with the completely illogical term "should of". I'm saying this because i couldn't understand what my friend tried to tell me whenever he said "should of". I'm not saying it was difficult to understand him. I'm saying i could NOT understand him AT ALL. I didn't know if he missed a word, and only after the third time he tried to explain, i caught the meaning.
You call this EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION? I don't think so.
Why should non-native speakers have to LEARN a WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE that is not even english? Shouldn't native english speakers learn ENGLISH in the first place?
Poor grammar does NOT help communication between people of different countries. And the fact that english is the universal language today is only by chance. Remember latin was universal 1000 years ago.
Your text is your voice. It doesn't convey information about what you said, it conveys information about you --- it's the equivalent of your accent. If you write sloppily, you'll sound as if you're speaking sloppily, which means that people will associate what you said with sloppiness, which is probably not what you want if you want to be taken seriously...
I know it shouldn't happen, but it does, in just the same way that people associated educated accents with intelligence and working-class accents with stupidity.
Personally, I don't think you have a problem --- you come across coherently and precisely and you're not slurring at all. However, uh... I think in that last sentence you might have meant 'unintelligable'...
The problem with changing spellings is that the more we do it, the less the current generation can comprehend writings from the past. Isn't it nice that we can still read Shakespeare's works 400 years after they were published? But writings just 200 years before that, such as Chaucer's, are very difficult to read because there wasn't a yet standardized language. The reason there was no standardization during Chaucer's time, though, was because it was difficult for language to travel long distances. Hence it did not become standardized across regions. But now that we have television, and the Internet, it would be a shame if we changed our language. It would move us away from our cultural heritage linguistically.
my blog
There are no rules, only patterns. Grammatical rules are misleading. Langauges evolve. They have evolved from the ground up and continue to change. The "rules" at the moment represent the normative usage at this time. So it seems sort of silly to teach English "rules," but it is the best way to express the common English code to English-language-learners. In other words, "You ought to follow these rules if you want to be understood."
Language is in the mouths of the people, not the pages of the dictionary and grammar book. Usage by English speakers defines the language. That is why new words and grammatical constructions and figures of speech and idioms pop up and fall away all the time.
The purpose of language is communication. The reason we talk is so that we can communicate with one another. When someone says "should of" instead of "should have," most seasoned English speakers understand exactly what that phrase means. Communication has happened, and the language has served its purpose. This happens all the time in common English. Example: Goodbye. I do not attack people who use this nonsensical grammatically poor word. You see, it originates from "God be with ye." Goodbye is an obvious grammatical distortion that has taken hold as a normative part of English language. So will "should of" as has "aint" as done as well.
It is silly to get mad at someone for not following the "rules" of English if you know exactly what they mean.
Sure, Slashdot is a conversational forum, and people write "from the hip" without absolute consideration to their spelling. But come on
How am I supposed to take anything someone says seriously, when their text is riddled with grammatical errors that my 14 year old nephew mastered years ago.
Native English speakers who can't express themselves without making childish mistakes like that, just appear thick! And it devalues anything of real importance they may have to say.
Have you also considered that if you practice spelling correctly all the time, then you're less likely to screw up when it really matters?
According to your own argument , minimizing a person's intellect based on their tendency to minimize another person's intellect is therefore also a form of racism, and you too are guilty of tying two unrelated concepts together to diminish a person's worth.
So, either you're wrong, a racist, or a hypocrite.
Could you clarify for us by letting us know which?
Based on your numerous spelling and grammar errors, I'm gleefully jumping on your minimization bandwagon and am guessing that you're merely wrong (which means neither of us are therefore necessarily racist! yay!) though I haven't ruled out hypocrite yet.
The article is based on a flawed premise.
Look at Linus Torvalds, James Yonan, Guido van Rossum, Donald Knuth; all of these people have outstanding communication skills. It's merely the wannabes and hangers-on whose skills are inadequate -- and arguably, such individuals aren't really part of the community at all.
Indeed, I distinctly recall it having been noted decades ago that there was a disproportionate number of English majors in the computing community. Perhaps someone will have a source?
Even better is to never use them.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
blarg.
In order to understand English spelling, you first need to understand English (assembly of Japanese motorcycle requires great peace of mind).
All words in English are derived from words in other languages. The way words are spelt in English is determined by the language they came from, so when you learn a new word, you need to learn its etymology. Fortunately, this is in the dictionary (The Oxford University dictionary. Others don't count).
Unfortunately, the etymology is not entirely correct in many cases - most etymologists know their Latin, Greek, and French, and can read German text books, but know nothing of Arabic or Chinese or various Indian, and possibly African languages that may have been the origins of common English words, so they are rarely credited. Nothing is perfect except God.
Why is the preterite of run ran, yet the preterite of shun is shunned?I do not know the actual answer to this question, but there are normally two explanations for this, both working together. The change of vowel sound: run->ran is generally derived from Arabic, while the change of ending is a European (Greek, Latin) technique. The reason the difference is retained is generally to maximise the linguistic difference from words which might be confused in the same context. Context being both gramatical (similar positions in a sentence), and semantic (words with similar meaning). It may also be that this is specific to certain environments: the similarity might only occur in a classroom, printing house, or some other significant work environment. It might be to make the word easily distinguished from background noise in an environment where it was common.
English has developed in a darwinian manner, and the fact that you cannot tell the spelling from your local pronounciation is not necessarily a snag. Your accent is likely very different to mine. Within my family, we pronounce "there", "their" and "the're" recognisably differently. My wife's family pronouce "ear" and "hair" indistingushably.
I once worked on a speech synthesiser using a National Semis phonym based synthesiser chip. Unfortunately, although the users could easily tell which parts were programmed by me (with a Cambride accent) and which by my colleague (With a Newcastle accent) no one could understand what the damn thing was actually saying.
The problem is more complex than you think: People actually recognise English words by different features in different places. Yoruba speakers are used to a pitch language, and will always pronounce English words with the same pitch setting. They readily understand each other speaking English, but often find it hard to recognise English spoken by English people who use changes in pitch for emphasis.
Before the Internet was common, we had Fidonet. We found out on Fidonet that: If you obey the established spelling rules, people who are not native english speakers have a chance of understanding what you mean, even if they have to look up every word in the dictionary. If you don't, and try to write phonetically, then people outside your local area won't have a clue what you are talking about.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Amazing. You're so fucking stupid you reinforce his point and don't even fucking realize it... English is a horrible language. You simply can't argue otherwise.
Why is it then that for centuries, countless people have had no problem with the nuances of the English language? Sure, it is a difficult language to learn in later life, but it is an extremely flexible and powerful communication tool.
How long did it take you all to learn Cobol, or C++ or other programming languages? Now, how long did it take to you master those same programming languages? An 8 to 10 year old child will (should?) know the difference between to, two, and too, but you wouldn't expect them to be able to write a paper worthy of publication. Similarly, just because I can write a "hello world" application doesn't mean I can call myself a programmer and not have to study the programming language any more.
Mastering the English language is something most people will never achieve in their lifetime. And by mastering the language, I mean knowing the spelling and use of every single word in the English language plus all grammar conventions. Like all languages (including programming languages) you are constantly learning new things. New words, new operations, new conventions.
Ever needed to refer to a dictionary? Ever needed to refer to a technical reference document?
So what's my point in all this? Well, if you've chosen to give up on the English language and decided that it's not worth your time to improve your language skills, don't blame the language itself. Your skills will only be as good as you make them.
English is a horrible language. You simply can't argue otherwise.
It seems I can.
Shitdrummer.
The easy way to think about it is to consider "his, hers, its". When using "it's" you should be able to replace it with "it is", "it has" or similar and the sentence should still make sense.
its == 1 word
it's == 2 words
If you're unsure about which to use, see if "it is" works in the same place. If it doesn't, you should probably be using "its".It's a fairly simple construct, but I've seen English teachers get it wrong, and worse, teach the exact opposite.
It does seem to break the general rule of "an apostrophe indicates possession", but it's easy to think of "its" as a more specific rule that should supersede the use of "it's", if you're so inclined.
On a completely different note, does anyone find themselves previewing maybe a dozen times when posting about spelling or grammar? (And probably missing a half-dozen errors?)
We should learn the English of Chaucer, the spelling rules of Wycliff, of Dr John Dee. We should spell Shakspeare in at least as many ways has he did himself. Those worried over form, miss content.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
In Shakespeare's day, nobody worried about English spelling in large part because serious people wrote serious things in Latin, where the spelling was thoroughly standardized. Because Latin was the language of the educated, nobody had bothered to standardize the spelling of the vernacular.
Since that time, English spelling has been standardized, and very few of us have reliance on Latin as an excuse today. English spelling isn't difficult: it follows two sets of simple rules. We have a set of rules for the words adopted from Latin (about half the language) and another set for the words derived from Anglo-Saxon. Foreign borrowings generally retain their foreign spellings. See my English spelling page for some pointers to resources for learning how simple it really is.
Those worried over form, miss content.
Those who don't worry over form obscure their content, and ensure that it will be missed or misconstrued. It's just plain rude to deliberately or carelessly use bad grammar and orthography: it shows contempt for your ideas and for your audience.
See what I've been reading.