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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?"
Can...open...worms... everywhere.
I for one cannot agree with you enough here, Strom. Sadly, the epidemic of poor spelling/grammar is not confined to the tech world, but is pervasive throughout just about every aspect of American culture. I was raised and educated to believe that spelling and grammar counted...that the coherent presentation of your information was at least as important as the information itself. I don't know exactly when we as a society decided that coherence was no longer important...sometime in the mid-eighties, I'd guess.
I will agree with you, however, that this problem is especially apparent in the tech world. I've known many techs that not only didn't care about the rules of the English language, they actually regarded their ignorance of such rules as a perverse badge of honor, as if mastering the intricacies of the language was somehow beneath them. I've always found it intriguing that a programmer who could master several arcane computer languages (especially since computers are notably intolerant of errors), could fail so utterly to master his own native human language.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Hands up if you read through the paragraphs several times trying to find a mistake!
Technical precision requirement on programming language and human language is very different, for I am (and maybe many others are) extremely lazy and just want to get things done with as little effort as possible.
So if "return true;" works but not "ret tru", then I'm forced to use "return true;" every time.
However, if "alot" works as good as "a lot", I can use whatever comes to up mind at time of typing. When I was in highschool, few of us liked to say "os cof" in place of "of course" and it didn't affect our communication at all.
I think the main difference between a native English speaker and a foreign English user is the former heard a word before he learnt to write it, while the latter tends to learn to write and speak at the same time.
I'm shocked to see natives using "its good", "don't go their", these are mistakes that no foreigners will make.
I'm not sure why this has anything to do with hackers or geeks specificially. Racers, police and builders are all technically competent yet they can still make these kind of mistakes.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Uh,
What is this 'correct English' of which you speak? Can you send me a copy of the official English language handbook? No. Hrm. Well maybe you could direct me to the official governing body of the English language. You mean, French has one and English doesn't?
Bugger!
Then, how do we know what correct English is? You mean, 'correct' English is by definition 'common' English?! No! But then what will all those semi-intelligent pedants who haven't caught on to the fact that 'should have' is no more meaningful than 'should of', but that 'should of' is much more common in spoken English do? Who knows!
All I can say is that having worked in the publishing industry, you could tell the people who had little intelligence but a lot to prove by how frequently and strongly they misunderstood the fact that there is no 'correct' English, and jumped down the throats of those they perceived to not have as good a grasp on this 'correct' English as they did.
+Pete
Score:-1, Funny
I consider myself an excellent speller with a firm grasp of the English language, its syntax, and semantics. And I consider myself to be high on the scale of technical savvy. But I've met more brilliant people in 21 years in this industry who couldn't spell a lick. I don't know if it's lack of care, or just plain inability to spell.
A peer who collaborated with me on one of my major projects implemented a layer of code to make the program more transparent and usable... and one of the major pieces used file handles to hide named pipes... He spelled it "filehadle", which in this case is more likely a typo, but he missed a lot of other words too. To this day I still get questions about that variable name (it's a good filter..., a programmer who brings that question is not one who I want working with that code).
Another best friend is now VP of a company he founded, and I hope he is getting his correspondence edited before sending.
There are even examples of Mr. Gates' e-mail... if you didn't know it was he, you'd think the author of some of his missives was illiterate.
All of this said and observed, I don't think I've ever been able to see any direct relationship or correlation with "illiteracy" and the technology gurus. I have seen more of a correlation with younger people and while I have no conclusive evidence I would submit this is more about a school system that spends time worrying about the wrong things. (I've even seen typo's/misspellings pop up on the CNN crawler! Ick!)
Another experience: a best friend of mine was in a German Blue Grass band, and they came to the U.S. and toured the midwest out of our house. So, here were four Germans with whom I spent over a week... and one of the most notable things about them was they spoke better English than most Americans! Go figure.
On this subject, why do people resort to phrases like "u", "ur", "l8r", "plz", etc? You have a full keyboard, use it. Shortening a 5 letter word down to 3 saves very little time, and makes you look like a big idiot. I don't even like it in SMS messages: on my phone, and most I've seen, I have a "t9" input. To say "hello", for example, you type 43556. It automatically figures out what word you're trying to spell, and there's a "next" button if it gets it wrong. Very rarely I have to switch to alpha input to type a word it doesn't know.
Now, what really pisses me off is I bought a USB analog video capture device today. I didn't notice until I got back, but it actually says on the front: "DVD Direct Burn. No need to save in ur HDD". Seriously. I'm not sure I would have bought it if I noticed that earlier..
Speak before you think
American culture, yes. However, I blame it more specifically on the Internet, computers, and technology. Today, kids grow up sending text messages, communicating over instant message clients, chatting via IRC, etc. In these types of conversations abbreviations, shorthand, and even (shutter) l33tspeak are the norm.
Most people don't care if the person they are chatting with is using perfect English... and they certainly don't care about "minor" things like correct spelling and grammar; all that really matters is that the message gets across quickly, and is understood on the other end.
What concerns me is how all this shorthand is hurting people in other areas of their life. In a business enviroment, writing an e-mail (or anything really) that uses any "netspeak" type shorthand, makes you look, in my eyes, like a lazy idiot.
Slashdot = ((Technology + Politics) / Trolls) % Grammar Nazis
I am not a perfect speller. Occasionally I may misplace a comma or semi-colon. It bothers me when I misspell a word on a forum or document that matters. (i.e. A report for work) It bothers me less, or not at all to make these minor errors in a forum like /.
When I am posting here, I am giving my opinion on a topic. The content is what is important. I feel this is the wrong forum for your 'corrections' and 'suggestions.' It breaks the flow of the discussion. It has nothing to do with the topic being discussed, and makes you sound like a show off intellectual.
Frankly, I really dont want your critique of my grammar and spelling skills. If the post is intelligible or the error changes the meaning of the post significantly, then there's your time to jump in with your corrections. Otherwise, it just seems arrogant that folks like you feel free to offer your unsolicited advice and expect me to appreciate it.
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
I've seen this issue raised numerous times over the past several years... hell, I've brought it up in random conversation quite a bit...
But...
The question that I've *never* heard asked...
Is America the only country where the native language is so disappointingly mangled by the vast majority of native citizens?
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.
It basically falls into two categories. The one you're probably not complaining about is intentional joke misspellings like "teh intarwebnet". The one you are complaining about is the category where some words are just plain misspelled ("catagory"), and others use a correctly spelled wrong word (lose/loose, principal/principle, populace/populous, you're/your, its/it's). While some of the offenders are not native English speakers, most are the product of our (.us) wonderful educational system.
I suspect a major cause of this is people who didn't read a lot when they were young. Not that it matters any more, because publishers can't afford anyone clueful enough to copyedit spelling any more. And that is thanks to spelling checkers which blindly let correctly spelled wrong words through. I think you can thank Microsoft Word stifling competition in the word processor market for the lack of good grammar checking.
/teh intarnet is fool of morans
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I tihnk taht seplnilg rellay deosnt matetr at all. For exmalpe, I bet taht you can raed tihs precfcetly fnie.
I bieelve it was proevn that as lnog as the frist and lsat lettres do not chnage, our brians can aoutomtacalily rearragne tehm and we have full comhenpresion.
I cnnaot fnid the lnik rgiht now but I am srue taht tihs was psoted on salhsodt a few mnoths ago.
Bet this
You don't like to be criticized? Makes you grumpy does it?
That's how I feel when I'm forced to try and make sense of a "document" written by somebody that can't make the effort to use something close to proper grammar and spelling.
Unlike some of the grammar-Nazis out there, I'm happy enough to pass over minor mistakes. However, if I have to spend extra time trying to decode your message to me, of course I'm going to correct you. That way, in the future I won't have to waste my time trying to decipher your cruddy excuse for a document again.
Eh, I don't know. I tend to consider the diction an integral part of the message, myself; if there are glaringly obvious errors in basic structure, spelling, or diction, and I don't know the person well enough in any other way, it's going to impact the message for me. It's just the way I roll.
My father, a successful engineer with DEC for 15+ years, is a notoriously bad speller, to the point where I sometimes have to phonetically read his letters. (Make of that what you will in regards to my comments above. :P) The fact that I know he's intelligent and a good communicator of ideas mitigates his lack of polish grammatically in my eyes. If one of his co-workers wrote to me in such a style, though, I'd wonder how he made it out of college.
I try very hard not to be a jerk about grammar or spelling, learning to roll with the punches. 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.
I sometimes wonder if I'm one of the last generations (I'm 34) who will have any solid grounding in grammar, spelling, and basic English constructs for the future.I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I for one am happy that this topic was raised here on Slashdot, where I see perhaps most of the examples of poor English.
I've said it before, but it's not the diction that matters, but the message.
I speak Finnish as my native language. Still I have noticed the poor spelling of English by a large number of geeks. The same seems to hold, perhaps to a smaller degree, in Finnish.
What you said in the sentence that I quoted is really wisdom, and I hope I could have such an attitude myself (but I wouldn't sacrifice my diction for it). Still I have noticed that whenever I read poorly written (grammar/spelling) text, I always have a negative presupposition against it. I just can't help it, it's something so deep in me. And I am sure I'm not the only one among those to whom grammar and spelling has never been a problem who thinks that way. What I seem to think subconsciously is something along the lines, "the writer doesn't even want to put the effort into making their text easily readable, so they cannot be very serious". Really reading poorly written text can be a slight annoyance, which you might not know (or maybe you do) if you aren't so fluent yourself.
While I'm trying to get rid of this, I'm sure a very large number of people aren't. So really I believe you would do well to yourself if you put some effort in trying to learn proper grammar and spelling if you want to be taken seriously.
Of course if you have some real, diagnosed disabilities, this might not be a possibility. That's one of the reasons why I'm trying really hard to get rid of that attitude of mine. But believe me, it's not easy (and I don't consider myself snotty or superior in any other sense).
The problem is that spelling is completely arbitrary. America obsessed about spelling in post-colonial times and came up with standard dictionaries. Britain didn't care.
We should throw out the old spelling. Knight is spelled the way it is because it used to be pronounced kuh-nig-it (yes, just like monty python). All it does is confuse everyone. With its odd mix of Latin and Anglo-Saxon words and grammar rules it's complicated enough as it is without weirdo spellings that are unrelated to pronunciation.
That being said though, the above sentence made me cry as well.
... then why should I care enough to read it?
I don't mind if someone has a few spelling mistakes or grammatical faux pas - we all make mistakes from time to time.
What I do hate - absofuckinglutely loathe - is shit like "u" instead of "you" and "4" instead of "for" and all that instant messenger shorthand when the person is clearly sitting at a regular keyboard and has plenty of time to compose a statement.
Rule of thumb: if you're IM'ing someone from your cell phone or trying to type quickly in a shoot-em-up, then fine, use shortcuts. If you're doing anything else - if you're not engaged in real-time communications - then at least make the effort to follow the rules.
Now, why am I so bugged by the "u" and "4" and all that shit? Because I'm somewhat dyslexic. When someone starts throwing stuff around like that, it takes me at least two or three times as long to parse it and make sense of it. I take the time to write clearly - I *agonize* over written communications I send out because I want to make absolutely sure that my point is getting across - it's important to me to know I'm understood.
So, if YOU don't treat what you're saying as important, then why the hell should I?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
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?
Well, the first problem is that you are begging the question: why do you think it is possible to write clearly and unambiguously without recourse to conventional spelling, grammar, and usage? I think this is a highly doubtful proposition, because even clear and correct writing is often ambiguous. When I do understand bad writing, it is because I am smarter and have worked harder than the person who wrote it (remember, we are talking about native speakers, not geniuses who don't know the language.) Then too, bad writing is rude because it conveys the implicit message that time you save in writing is worth more than time I save in reading. But why do you think I should bother to read something you can't be bothered to write?
I think you are also mistaken in assuming that the only drawback of bad writing is that other people can't understand you. Literacy is a system, and if you are a bad writer you are unlikely to be a very good reader. Consider the locution I employed in my first paragraph: "begging the question." This phrase derives from a meaning of "begging" that is no longer current, namely "taking for granted." Because this is an antiquated meaning, many people interpret the phrase as "begging for the question." What's wrong with that? After all, language is continuously changing. Certainly. But if you don't even know the old meaning, and make a point of refusing to learn it, you have cut yourself off from the writings of earlier generations; writings that in many cases are more interesting than what you have to say now (that, after all, is why they have been preserved.) For my part, I believe that most people who misuse phrases like this do so in ignorance and are tacitly acknowledging my point: they have adopted the phrase, without understanding it, in hopes that by emulating better writing, their own will be more favourably received.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
These days much of the professional interaction betwen people is through e-mail. When I get an e-mail from someone who can't be bothered to write correctly, I tend not to bother to read it with much interest. If they don't care about what they're saying, why should I?
(Obviously, I make exceptions for non-native writers, and for some kinds of informal communication.)
I'm particularly bothered by executives who have this problem. One CEO I used to work for was so busy and so important that he just didn't have time to make his messages coherent. Getting an e-mail from him was like receiving a prophesy from the Oracle of Delphi, or like trying to interpret the cryptic mumbling of Mao Tse-Tung.
Reading between the lines, the attidute here is: "I'm more important than you. I'd rather you waste an hour trying to figure out what I'm talking about than spend sixty seconds myself editing this e-mail."
I think you can imagine just how inspiring this guy was as a leader.
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Why not throw out the grammar and the dictionary as well, and just learn Lojban?
Since when has the true geek cared about appearing anything? We tend to wear clothing that is the most convenient (cheapness, comfort, availability, etc). Also traditional technical geeks tend to follow with hard sciences, but not so much with soft sciences and liberal arts. Most techies take many of these "unnecessary" classes because they are forced to, and it is generally by sheer will that they make it through them. It's unlike taking a few extra Chem classes or Physics classes just because you think they are fun.
Now you can certainly be an obsessive bookworm who loves to debate the details of various well known and obscure literature. And that person is likely to have very good written an verbal skills.
Now would a powerful command of the english language be useful in one's career? Certainly. Just as having excellent technical skills would be useful for just about anyone in this day and age.
Perhaps anyone that talk good become manager and stop being engineeer. (or vice versa)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Just to clear this up, the general rule is actually "When you leave a letter out, put in an apostrophe". This explains everything, including "it's", "won't", and the like.
The posessive is a leftover from the days when English had more noun declensions. For example, we still have "I", "me", and "my" as examples of the Nominative (Subject), Accusative (Object), and Genitive (Possessive) cases. Currently, a person's name would be represented as eg. "John", "John", "John's". But at one time, the Genitive case had an "i" in it, so it would've been "John", "John", "Johnis". You still occasionally see this in old place names. For example, the Spotswood hotel near here has embedded into its concrete "Spottiswoode".
People who prefer to avoid language history usually remember the apostrophe indication posessive as a secondary rule to the one about a letter being left out.
HAH! exactly what is logical about the semi-random assignment of gender to nouns (die-das-der)?
The Tale of the Fishwife and its Sad Fate:(as literally translated into English)
"It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and of the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has even got into its Eye, and it cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm. And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a Fin, she holds her in her Mouth -- will she swallow her? No, the Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and rescues the Fin -- which he eats, himself, as his Reward. O, horror, the Lightning has struck the Fish-basket; he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how she licks the doomed Utensil with her red and angry Tongue; now she attacks the helpless Fishwife's Foot -- she burns him up, all but the big Toe, and even she is partly consumed; and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery Tongues; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys it; she attacks its Hand and destroys her also; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys her also; she attacks its Body and consumes him; she wreathes herself about its Heart and it is consumed; next about its Breast, and in a Moment she is a Cinder; now she reaches its Neck -- he goes; now its Chin -- it goes; now its Nose -- she goes. In another Moment, except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more. Time presses -- is there none to succor and save? Yes! Joy, joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas, the generous she-Female is too late: where now is the fated Fishwife? It has ceased from its Sufferings, it has gone to a better Land; all that is left of it for its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear him to his long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises again it will be a Realm where he will have one good square responsible Sex, and have it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted Sexes scattered all over him in Spots."
-Mark Twain
For the full laundry list of the difficulties of the German language see The Awful German Language, by Mark Twain
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
"Language has to evolve, otherwise it's not getting any better"
You're confusing evolution with change. Languages change , they don't "evolve". Theres no natural selection going on with the most efficient word usage etc. If there were then english would never have come out of the far more logical (grammatically and with spelling) anglo-saxon tongue. They simply change by random drift depending on the prevailing societal conditions and fashions at any given time.
- The Roman Alphabet is not designed for English: In Spanish we have about 30 phonemes (only 5 of them vowels) and we have a written alphabet with 29 letters (we consider rr, ll, and ~n separate letters). That's a really nice fit. It means we spell mostly everything phonetically. (No spelling bees for us, thank you very much). Things fit because the writing system was derived from Latin and Spanish is a direct decedent of that language. In contrast, English is way more complicated. There are are about 48 phonemes 22 of these are vowels. Yet, English has an alphabet with only 26 characters and only 5 of them are vowels. Thus, spelling is hard. This presents a huge problem, but not a unique one. The Japanese borrowed their writing system from China, but it didn't fit with them phonetically so they created their own writing systems to address this issue (hiragana, katakana). The same holds true for the Koreans. I remember reading somewhere that Abraham Lincoln tried to address this issue by extending the Roman language for English, but his alphabet didn't take (don't know if that's a myth though). Think of all of the time and effort spent in our schools teaching children how to spell, this time could be better spent on more important things like math and science. As a Spanish speaker, I taught myself to read as a child before I even entered school. It was really easy, you learn a couple of rules and that's it you're done. I don't understand why English has never come up with its own alphabet.
- English has the nasty habit of maintaining foreign spelling when it adopts a new word: I don't understand why this is done at all. It makes no sense. In Spanish, as with other languages, we adopt foreign words into our writing system so that we know how to spell them. Why is it than in English we have to know where a word comes from to know how it should be spelled?
In my opinion, written English is a mess. The language in its written form is so complicated that it sets you up for failure. That's why people get upset when you correct them.