Slashdot Mirror
Literacy Limps Into the Kill Zone
Ant writes to tell us that Wired has an interesting look at the current standards of writing and the general decline of spelling and grammar in today's "comic book generation." The author blames many of the problems on instant or near-instant communications stating that the slang developed is essentially eroding our ability to formulate coherent thoughts in writing when called upon to do so.
wur r they talkin abt? lol g2g cya
What they don't realise is language changes. every generation gets this and when it happens someone will come up and say literacy is going down. George orwell even did it in 1940, said there were problems, said there were people writing bad english, said they wouldn't be able to communicate soon. Well look at what we have here, a world still functioning nearly 70 years later. Also, a roman once said the same thing or a greek. That the young people of today are a generation that look down on the world and are showing no moral principels or showing problems with language and spelling and all the hoo haa he could drag up. And this was BC.
I think these people are old thinkers stuck in a new world where communication has changed and any seventy year old would tell you they find it hard to communicate with youth but no 20 year old ever will, and it's the 20 year olds who are the future. Always.
there is always paranoia about "declining communication skills." At the same time there are always contradicting studies showing how language skills are actually increasing. Langauge and usage is always being analyzed way too much.. language is what it is. It is a method of communicating thoughts and ideas with others. As long as we understand each other there is nothing "wrong" and we are devolving or whatever these people seem to think. language exists because we created it for our benefit. People who can't accept that language evolves and branches off for different purposes are close-minded and ignorant to reality.
You know, the guy with the 'u' phobia and the 'z' fetish.
Indeed. But why does this not surprise me?
Why go far, look right here on Slashdot. These are geeks, supposedly the folks who're "smarter" than the average population.
And even here, instead of accepting grammatical and spelling mistakes, people would rather flame you for correcting them. Not to mention the piss-poor quality of writing that most Slashdotters (and the editors) have. If you can follow the rules in a programming language, why is it so hard to do so for a natural language?
Personally, if folks do not communicate in good English, I'd simply not respond - be it IM, SMS or e-mail. And guess what? Most folks talk a lot better English when they're communicating with me, simply because they know that they'd not get a response - or that they'd get their English corrected.
I do not care if you are using e-mail, IM or SMS, use that period and use that apostrophe. Use appropriate and proper punctuation, capitalization, spelling and grammar, else I'm simply not talking to you.
That needs to be the general attitude, if we want to see any semblance of Good English (TM) exist in the next few generations.
Seriously, encourage your kids to look up that dictionary. Encourage them to read good literature, aside from the pop crap that exists today. Encourage them to write, to put down their thoughts. The only way you are going to develop writing skills is by writing.
I couldn't agree more. However, it's not just a case of me getting frustrated at the apparent lack of schooling of the people with whom I'm interacting. Nor is it just a case of language evolving. No, it's reaching the point where I'm genuinely struggling to understand what people are saying. As an example, I see an increasing number of people writing "no" when they mean "know". Since my brain is conditioned to associate a completely different meaning to the word "no", I have to do a double take before I can work out what they meant. When combined with a total absence of punctuation, I'm left wondering how the generation of today manage to communicate with each other at all, let alone with others.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Goerge was wrong.
So instead of double speek in 1984, we get half speek in 2006.
As more and more of the reading I do comes from blogs, comments, and other web-based, unedited communications, I find myself making more and more errors. These are spelling and grammar and sound-alike (their vs there) mistakes that I would never have made years ago, when most of my exposure to written language came from carefully vetted print. A downside of the immediacy of the Internet is that there is little time or inclination to edit and double-check. The resulting degeneration of the language is noticeable. I don't know how to reverse it, but it is pretty embarassing when I make such basic, I-should-know-better mistakes. And I cringe when I see them creeping into more formal communications (signs, etc) as well.
The generation of young people who are currently ruining spelling and grammar rules are children of the comic book generation, if not grandchildren. Slangs develop for a reason, but this reason must be with the communication of other people. A better explanation of forming slangs is the increasing disconnection between the older generation and younger generation. The disconnect stems from many things including broken families, fewer job opporutities for teenagers, and the increasing age of professionalism. Some people simply decide that the extra wait is not worthwhile, and adolecents work to communicate with their undereducated peers. You see this phenomenon in some of the most prominent hobbies, such as car repair/performance modification, and in video game console repair/modification.
Sometimes parents need to understand that they give their children advice, AND an environment. The child may listen to advice, but will not be able to avoid paying attention to their environment. The environment in this case has nothing to do with comic books however.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Of course, this very article - with hardly a coherent paragraph, shows the trend clealy.
I do not have a problem with the language undergoing natural evolution. The issue is that some ways of speaking / writing gets allowed, which makes the language less consistent and full of things that mean the same. Being Norwegian, I have seen my language getting raped by youngsters who appearantly do not care that their sloppy use of the language gives their sentence two or three different interpretations. It is the old "Hang him not, wait until I come" vs. "Hang him, not wait until I come" (Ok, this thing does not sound that good in English, as it is a common Norwegian expamle.)
Dvorak on Doomtech
Maybe it's just me, but aside from a speling(sic!) error here and there I hardly ever find bigger errors (not to mention the LOL, ROTFL, etc. "monstrosities" he mentions) in comic books, and there's a lot of interesting stories that are more than just the pulp he thinks they are out there - and of course there's also a lot of printed dreck novels out there - Rosamunde Pilcher, anyone?
Can we please call it the "1337 chat generation" already?
KTHXBYE.
np: Luke Vibert - Acidisco (YosepH)
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
I could be said that more people are using the written word for communications now than ever before. And don't get too hung up on spelling. Before the dictionary words were a lot more fluid than they are even now. Even Shakespeare was found to spell his own name different ways... are we going to say he had trouble putting his thoughts down on paper in a coherant manner...
i cnt c ur problem m8. :)
But seriously, kiddie slang is one thing, but when the degradation reaches the point at which the writer is no longer understandable, that's not language evolution as part of some natural process of change, that's just illiteracy, pure and simple.
Here's a small anecdote I sometimes relate when this subject comes up. When I'm not messing around on Slashdot, I often help out on some on-line programming forums, particularly those dedicated to helping less experienced people learn new skills. The quality of posts there vary from nicely written, polite, clear requests for help, to L337sp33k "can u do my homework 4 me kthx" drivel. Guess which posts the expert volunteers invest their time answering?
The really saddening thing, though, is when you see a post from someone who clearly is making a genuine effort, but simply isn't making sense because their language skills are so poor. Some of us try to help those people to clarify what they're asking and to form their questions more helpfully, but at the end of the day, their lack of literacy is directly disadvantaging them. If that's what they get on a board dedicated to helping them and run by volunteers who are willing to give up a certain amount of their time for that purpose, what are they going to get in the job market, for example?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Orwell wrote this same essay with more style and more grace in 1946. He also wrote it with a point in mind. It's called 'Politics and the English Language'. Google it and read it instead of this lame Wired article.
This essay is just a rant and that the coming generation is doomed, doomed, doomed! People have been saying that about the coming generation since ancient times. Ironically for someone who criticizes the emptiness of writing in the modern age, the author also says very little. Some writing by some people sucks. There are a lot of some people. Duh.
The author also ignores the enormous quantity of written material produced on a daily basis. Just because his friends and acquaintences are semi-literate doesn't mean the rest of us travel in the same circles of bad grammar and poor diction. It's really a sort of pompous thing to say from a position of authority that 'the world' can't write, read MY article it will tell you so. Sigh. Noob.
I think we will start to see more of an impact on literacy from the employment market in the coming years. One of the biggest things I hear employers complain about is that young hires can barely write a coherent sentence, and consequently can't be relied upon to compose text for important presentations, reports, and so on. Assuming grammar checking software that magically turns shite into gold doesn't materialize in the very near future, we may well see an emphasis on writing skills trickle down from the knowledge-worker market to universities, colleges, and high schools. Let's hope so, anyway.
A-Bomb
I fucking hate the word "usage." Nobody uses it correctly, if there is a single correct use. Usually, the use "usage" when they mean "use."
What total losage.
I blame comic books. They contribute to a short attention span. Fucking comic books, with their pretty pictures and busty, half-clad superwomen. Mmmmm.... Superwoman. If Superwoman and Wonder Woman had a fight in, say, a tub of Jell-o, who do you think would lose her top first?
More people communicate today than have ever communicated before. The poor grammar they exhibit is probably a result of these amatuers being, well, amatuers. People 100 years ago mostly didn't write; those that did were generally better-educated.
I would say that literacy is on the rise, not the inverse.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Not to flame you or anything like that, but you should have used a semicolon instead of a comma after the word "grammar" in the fifth paragraph. ;-)
"What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter."
Um, comic book generation? Has this fellow just recieved "Seduction of the Innocent" via Pony Express? The average Generation Y kid has seldom seen a comic book, they don't show up on the news stand anymore. The average of the modern comic book reader is 34 and the level of the high end of the comic book market is considerably more literate than this fool. For example Warren Ellis'es issue of Planetary "Death Machine Telemetry" discusses the afterlife, nanotechnology, Richard Feynman, the Delphic oracle (and speculations on the biochemical nature of the fumes they inhaled) and the Kabbalah in one brilliant episode. Ellis probably used a shorter word count than this wanker used.
Of course he might mean manga, having been confused by the mysterious ways of the distant orient. Given that a huge percentage of the population read manga over in Japan, and use e-mail and texting, this must account for their horrific litteracy rates. Horrifically high that is.
First, I'm over 40 and (therefore) hopelessly out of touch. I have my own set of grammatic foibles (using of parentheses to offer alternate readings is one (recursive use of parentheses another)) that I ask readers to cope with. Ignore me if you like.
My big complaint with some writers who are growing up as part of the IM generation (we had zephyr-grams, and we liked 'em! - so there) is the use of styles that make text easier to write but harder to read. Things like lack of punctuation, no capitalization, numbers as abbreviations for words make writing quick, are handy when trying to write text on phone keypad, but slow down the reader.
I start out with a statement: "Chat speak" is not permitted in any form and is defined it as using punctuation symbols or shorthand as cognates for words and concepts that are normally expressed with letters. To wit, Using "@" for "at" or "2" for "to" or "too" or "U" for "you" is not permitted and not limited to those examples. Abbreviations are permitted as long as an abbreviation appears in Webster's New World College Dictionary and conforms either to the Chicago or APA styles. Any usage of "chat speak" in any communication to me in query to this class or through the normal course of instruction, test answer for grade or essay submitted for grade will result in my ignoring the communication and automatically marking the answer as incorrect or marking the grade down on the essay.
;) thx" bullshit in its tracks.
Stops that "Hey prof U are keepin me outta grad skool can i meet U @ yr office 2 talk?
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
We all use slang, we all use abbreviations, jargon and impolite ways of speaking, especially with friends and family. The problem i run into is more and more people who cant "Turn it off" when they need to. People who use the same bad grammar when writing an office e-mail that they do when chatting with buddies online or at happy hour. Kids who cant write a coherent written sentence because they are so used to using slang. Its nothing that different from what I say when talking to friends, or get into a flamewar, but i DONT use it in the office, or when meeting someone for the first time, or when applying for a job. Thats the problem.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
What, the use of AIM and MSN etc is causing a decline in spelling skills! Unpossible!
Seriously, this is a big issue. My little sister is 14 and whenever I see her on the computer she's typing away to her friends in another language. It's more than just the old cliché "lol"s and "omfg"s, it's also a large influence from 'ghetto' speak or whatever you want to call that particular variety of pidgin English. All her friends do the same and it's so difficult to decipher it. Contractions are the order of the day, even contractions of contractions, so "uk babe" means "are you okay, my dear?" - that one's quite ambiguous to a non-savvy reader. Also, these other words creep in from spoken language; eg, in Nottingham it seems to be 'cool' for these kids to refer to members of the female gender as "gyals" - your guess is as good as mine as to how this one's pronounced, but they all know what it means.
The fact is (and I'm speaking as an English undergraduate) that written and spoken language are (obviously) two very different beasts, but the rise of technology and the communications advances it brings have blurred the lines. What method of communication is IM - spoken or written? Logic would say written, but virtually nobody (below the age of 20, anyway) types as they would write in, say, a letter. Instant Messaging and other forms of online communication (email, forums, etc) aren't one or the other, but they do tend to show closer links with spoken language, which is having a detrimental effect on written language since the twain should never meet, historically. We know it's becoming an issue when kids are handing in exam papers written in 'net shorthand, and if there aren't better controls established either in schools to make sure kids can see the differences, or online to try to limit the level of intellect-crushing abrvtns, the future generations are gonna be really limited.
this thought is nothing new: morals, the language, etc.: it's all going to pot, the end of the world is nigh, etc.
bullshit
what is going on is that some people are almost autistic in their attachment to certain signifiers of what "good language" is or what "moral behavior" is
human beings need morality, and they need to communicate. these needs are nver going away, nor are our ability to satisfy those needs ever going away
it is just that, from one century to the next, what signifies these things changes
but so you have some people becoming hysterical ninnies because what signifies these things to them changes, and they can't deal with it
they're just brittle people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Good. More jobs for me, and with a little work, my kids. (Ok, it's a lot of work, including reading to my kids 30-45 minutes a day, and the older one (6) is transitioning to reading to us. But I digress.)
Seriously, not everyone can be a rocket scientist. Some folks have to take less mentally-strenuous jobs, and the upside to that is that it takes less education and effort to get a job that focuses on rote process or repetitive simple problem-solving. Of course, there's the whole unfairness issue relating to people who work in jobs that are physically or emotionally draining for shit pay, but that's not the issue here. It used to be that motivated people could rise to hit the maximum vocation that their formal or self education allowed. Now it seems that educated people sink to the vocational level that their self motivation and application of that education allows. Same effect, no?
My brother, for example, is an overeducated undermotivated weenie who's dumbed himself down with IM-speak, and wonders why he's not an appealing job candidate. But that brings up an interesting issue: I don't think that the deterioration of language skills can be examined in a vacuum. What about the deterioration of social skills that seems to accompany the IM-speak txting crap? IM/TXT communciations involve effects from reduced level of effort, lack of persistence, reduced affect, and perceived levels of anonymity.
All I have is anecdotal evidence, but the idea of sending thank-you letters, participating in professional societies, and writing articles for review by your peers seems totally alien to that crowd. And I don't mean to be stuck-up about that. An article for your peers might be a well-written blog entry or a political rant in email, not necessarily an academic paper. >>>> My point is that if you notice that people are sharing soundbites instead of whole ideas, then it makes sense to take a look at the mode of sharing, not just the sound-bite vs whole-idea issue.
Jon
I think not...(*poof*)
They also make for a worse overall reading experience. I'm only 23 (and therefore not *quite* out of touch) but I can't stand overuse of abbreviations and rubbish punctuation. On a mobile phone it can be excused but when writing a letter, or even a /. posting, more effort should be put into creating something both readable and articulate. Of course, a few minor spelling/grammer/punctuation mistakes *should* be tolerated :P
Silly rabbit
So you're saying that English is like Perl?
comic book generation? was this written in 1950? what kid reads comic books today? and, incidentally, my memory is that comic books have fairly good grammar and spelling, with the exceptions of your 'pow's and 'biff's.
go get it
I recently taught a course to help undergraduate students to write English properly. I made them all create blogs and told them to write a short review of a game every week. Most weeks I conducted a "critique" session on Friday, where I went through every review and gave pointers on style, grammar and punctuation (mostly the latter two). I think the most interesting thing that I learned was that most students don't think of these things as important at all. So for a long time, some of them had significant problems understanding the difference between writing properly and not writing properly. Often they would write just as they speak, and it took a while for them to understand that this looks wrong. Many of my students had an extremely hard time finding errors in their own writing, no matter how many times they re-read it. When I asked students to edit other students' work, they tended to lack the confidence in their own ability to do this. The technique that most of them found most helpful was to concentrate hard on the structure of paragraphs and to build up paragraphs sentence by sentence in a very formulaic way.
I think that over the course of the module, most students did improve somewhat and they said that they enjoyed it. However, I have doubts about how much of what they learned will stick during the rest of their studies. I feel that it will be pretty hard for them to undo fifteen years of neglect of their English writing skills.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
So you say, but from whence the pudding? As language gets more freeform--that is, while remaining cognizant of the rules and informed by convention, likelier and likelier nevertheless to flaunt them, to deliberately ignore them for purposes not apparently so much in evidence to you--does that not make it more expressive, not less? Dashing off a text message replete with abbreviations and symbol mash might indicate thoughtlessness, if sent to someone you barely know. The same thing might indicate a shared sense of privacy, if to a friend or close associate. Either way, the literal interpretation of your message is given color and additional meaning by your chosen form of expression, much pithier for having avoided the verbosity of conventional (read: stodgy) English, and correspondingly so more piercing and direct.
Communication is nothing if not contextual in essence and expression, and to declare that it is robbed of meaning by our contemporary canvas, wide at the margins, is to mistake grammar for literary intent.
I agree, Jane. If a Slashdot post, Usenet posting, or distribution list is so poorly written that it pains me, I just ignore it. If someone doesn't respect me enough to take the most basic care, I don't feel the need to read their thoughts. Their thoughts are invariably as sloppy as their mechanics.
Now, I'm not a pedant - I'm talking about posts that don't use any capital letters- very rarely use punctuation, and string half-baked thoughts together like popcorn on a Christmas tree. I'm not talking about people who make mistakes -that's all of us. I'm talking about people who don't care that they make 20 mistakes in a single post/email.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
I learned to read when I was three. Over the last twenty years, my brain has gradually optimised the paths used to recognise words and parse phrases and sentences until the point where I can do it very quickly. If you write in a way that is ambiguous, then I have to pause and try both ways of interpreting your sentence. If you spell things incorrectly, then I will have to backtrack and re-parse. If you use 'you're' instead of 'your' (for example) then I will get to the end of your sentence, realise it doesn't make sense, and spend a second re-parsing it. Over the length of an article, then a number of mistakes like this may waste a minute or two of my time[1]. Now, imagine you have 100,000 readers. You have just wasted 100,000 person-minutes. That works out at just under seventy person-days. If you are willing to waste that much time out of laziness then you are no better than a spammer.
[1] Actually, it won't. I will simply decide that if your ideas are not important enough to express well, then they are not important enough for me to read, and move on.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I disagree -- the technology is not leading to an inability to communicate. Technology is making it possible to circulate written items far more widely and easily than before. This merely exposes a reality long hidden: the vast majority of people have never been able to communicate in the written form.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
Modern comics are written by professional writers and contain far more complex vocabulary than he's crediting them. The only exceptions would be special characters like "Bizarro" that speak improper grammar because it's a trait of the character. Even the japanese manga imported has proper grammar if it's translated correctly.
i can see i communicated an idea across to you, as you encapsulated it in your response
of course, you won't ever admit that
you're to busy getting off on the vile evil i've committed of not capitalizing
whatever, yawn
the point is to communicate
everything else, EVERYTHING ELSE, is superfluous
if you can understand the idea i was trying to communicate, the language did it's job
everything else, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING ELSE, is superfluous, wasteful, unnecessary semantic structure
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Our literacy is eroding? WTF? OMG! ROFL!
BRB
Don't drag independent thinking into this. That has absolutely nothing to do with the point being discussed. Neither does one's 'true nature'. Using that sort of thing as an argument against proper grammar and spelling makes you look like an idiot. In fact, any argument against proper grammar and spelling makes you look like an idiot.
/. forum, but what if you were looking for a job?
To be honest, I read your post and my first thoughts were that you were young, immature and not very bright. maybe not a big deal in a
Sure, you can say that you run your important stuff through a spelling checker; but what about the grammar? Now what? Grammar checkers are notoriously bad, and spelling checkers won't pick up mistakes like misspelling 'lose' as 'loose'.
You still need to know the rules.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
A thread where spelling and grammar nazis won't be modded off-topic! Yes!
Telltale Games: Bone, Sam and Max
Windows is shutting down, and grammar are
On their last leg. So what am we to do?
A letter of complaint go just so far,
Proving the only one in step are you.
Better, perhaps, to simply let it goes.
A sentence have to be screwed pretty bad
Before they gets to where you doesnt knows
The meaning what it must of meant to had.
The meteor have hit. Extinction spread,
But evolution do not stop for that.
A mutant languages rise from the dead
And all them rules is suddenly old hat.
Too bad for we, us what has had so long
The best seat from the only game in town.
But there it am, and whom can say its wrong?
Those are the break. Windows is shutting down.
Clive James in The Guardian -- Saturday April 30, 2005
Insert witty sig here.
The observation that language is in a constant state of change is true. What is so interesting about the way language is changing today is the speed and the direction. Language is a direct reflection of how fast things change. Language is, in part, the way we describe that change.
Change, as noted by "Future Shock" and several more reputable sources, has accelerated in the past fifty years at breakneck speed. Discussions of our inability as people to absorb all of this change have led to the by now familiar "Singularity" discussions. If even a fraction of this is true, it would stand to reason that language and its use would be one of the first place this all manifests.
I am less interested in protecting the "King's English" than I am with the ability of one generation to communicate with the next in a complex and meaningful way. There is plenty of well written discourse on the Internet. I do not see that declining. The ghettoization of language as a marketing tool worries me a bit more, since it is sold as a generational identity.
My conversations with people in their early twenties shows me they are just as bright and articulate as anyone. Their opinions on language are much different. One of my favorites is the compression of language and meaning in rap music. Rap is a great place to look at the elasticity of language. Aside from the "bitches and ho's " rhetoric, which is the low end of that artform, there is clear and skillful use of language, rhythm and tone at work.
The other movement in language is the migration to visual rather than verbal communication. Language is no longer just about words. Image has changed the way we speak, the way we communicate, the way we articualte. The "comic-book" culture may not be a bad thing. The issue is not about comics- this is a medium that has a powerful and complex ability to communicate. The issue is that it is used mostly to communicate sex and power fantasies. However, I find it interesting that Dan Clowes now has a weekly comic that runs in the New York Times Magazine.
There is some virtue to being a "keeper of the flame" as far a literature is concerned. But television, movies and the internet are changing the concepts of literature. In the 21st century, is a good library just books, or does it include DVDs and CDs as well?
Part of the issue might have to do with the definition of language. If we insist on sticking to the definition where language is exclusively the written word, then language indeed might be in trouble, but not for the reasons mentioned.
This closely ties in with the recent article about college students being unable to decipher credit card agreements.
Basically :
If you cannot read an End User License Agreement and understand what it is saying, you need to improve your English skills. NOW.
Legalese is the last bastion of specifically correct, carefully worded, properly formed English. Even words such as "shall" or "should" - the meaning of which can usually be inferred in everyday English - are often explicitly defined to avoid confusion. And you can be damned sure that Legalese is not going anywhere soon. If you can't comprehend Legalese (or any form of complex English), you're going to end up in a whole lot of trouble one day down the track. If you can comprehend it, you essentially have a grasp of the correct structure and form of Modern English.
The leet-speak, IM'ing crowd can poo-pooh it as much as they want, but learning correct English will serve you well in the future.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Attila the Hun didn't sack Rome because of his masterful literary skills. Nor did the Visigoths, the Ostrigoths, or any of the other barbrian hordes that had a hand in Rome's destruction. Mainly they used superior weaponry and military tactics, and I think we're pretty covered there.
He also states he wants students to study Latin (I did, for 6 years) and minor in English Literature.
These two assertions make him a complete fool - and not worth the pixels he's used.
His concept may be correct, but his ability to deliver his message has itself been ruined due to his inability to remain neutral and objective on the topic. He's also failed to address the central thesis of his article, and this is:
"Failure in language causes an inability to think clearly, to create complex inventions inside the skull, and to communicate effectively with other human beings."
Frankly, the only thing which seperates us from animals is language. Tool use and large brains are not uncommon, only we have created language to extend our brains and knowledge beyond our inherent abilities.
Poor language skills will ALWAYS be fine to exchange pleasantries, stupid repartee, insults, and a wide range of human ideas, but they will NEVER permit the creation or accurate dissemination of complex new ideas.
In other words, it lies at the very heart of human ability.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Of course, I'll test for other things as well. Unfortunately, this may be a humbling experience for some applicants.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Unless a way is found of boosting intelligence, there isn't going to be a solution to the problem of bad writing, but it will probably become less visible when the present text-based methods of communication (or non-communication) are superseded for most people by speech-based methods, derived from VOIP or whatever. Those of us who read and write may, at worst, be left with faint traces of the horde's brief invasion, if such ugly spellings as "u" for "you" persist, but so what? The English language was perhaps richer and more subtle when we wrote "ye" in the nominative and "thou" or "thee" in the singular, but we didn't enter a dark age when we stopped doing so.
Math is a different matter. No student should be allowed to bring a calculator into a math class. Ever.
This is when I stopped reading TFA. So, pray tell, master of what is wrong with education, when exactly should our intrepid students learn to use a calculator, one of the most useful inventions since we got rid of the slide rule?
This a falicious argument that when taken to its logical conclusion implies that all students should understand particle physics in order to use the web. While it may be true that learning how to do long division gives a student some greater insight into how math works, that doesn't mean that it is useful to them. I know how to do long division, and I think I understand division a little better because I do, but was the three years it took to learn in elementary school worth it? I've used this "greater understanding" maybe 4 or 5 times in my life. I don't think it was worth 3 years of my young life, when I could've been learning something more relevant to modern life.
There are lots of things that are useful to know, but we're not going to learn all of them. And teaching kids things we learned just because we had to, has more to do with bitterness about things like long division and less to do with their success in life.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
1) Try to grade a set of English papers.
2) Read Less Than Words Can Say by Richard Mitchell.
3) Stop and contemplate whether it is really in the best interest of the younger generation to speak and write in a way that makes them uncomprehesible to the older generation.
Then ask yourself: is the language changing in order to become more flexible (a la Shakespeare), or is the language changing in order to accommodate more sloppy thinking? Both could be true in different cases, of course, but on average -- which is the case?
Language is a tool, no more and no less. If you want to mod the tool, then fine. But if in the process you wreck that tool, then your mods need some more thought.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
there are people who are brittle, almost autistic about their signifiers
if i write:
the dog ate the bone, the dog was happy
or i write:
The dog ate the bone. The dog was happy.
i've said the same thing, communicated the same idea, made the same point
again: communication is what is important. if i can recreate the idea in your head with the minimum of effort required, i've done my job. everything else, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING ELSE, is superfluous and unnecessary
the first sentence is no different than the last, but for someone with a brittle mind, the lack of capitals or periods screams at them, proves difficult for them to digest. these people need the periods and the caps, because their minds are stuck on them
so i have an idea: rather than make the world easier for the people with brittle unyeiding minds, why don't we fucking let the people with brittle minds off at the next bus stop, and proceed on without them?
what are they adding besides a loud insistence upon obeying superfluous rules, because of their own mental difficulties? WHAT ELSE ARE THEY ADDING
why is it my job to exert more effort because you have a brittle, unyeilding mind?
my lack of capitals and periods is not the noise that has to be pushed through to get at the root of what is being communicated. YOUR MENTAL DIFFICULTY IS THE NOISE THAT NEEDS TO BE PUSHED THROUGH
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...I mean, they didn't call it "The Vulgate" for no reason.
I think what is at issue is that with the rise of universal education, we've demanded that everyone speak, read and write at a level of education that has not commonly existed but for the last century, really, just the last few decades. If you took random samples of 18yos in the early 19th century and today, no doubt you would be far more horrified at the former's ability to communicate than the latter.
I remember reading an article recently which argued that the distressing thing about the intellectual state of civilization isn't that we aren't producing great minds the way we used to, it's that there are now so many, in so many highly specialized fields, that people have a hard time keeping track of those outside their field of specialization (arguably, even within), ergo, everyone is under the illusion that all is going to hell simply because they can't grasp the volume of advances that are being made.
Fine, if "u want 2 rite" like that I'm sure your friends will know what you mean. Try that when you need to apply for a job and see how far you get.
Just because you don't care how people older than you speak doesn't mean you'll never interact with them. You don't have to have to be an English Professor but at least know how to spell!
It's about communication not grammar.
I've got a good parser and it can handle "OMG! ROTFLMAO!" with aplomb. That's a sentence with a clear meaning. I will, however, come to a painful crashing halt if I read something like "caused Apple to loose their lawsuit". Words have meanings. Loosing and losing are separate concepts and always will be separate concepts whatever the words are that represent them.
If you can't say what you mean, how can you mean what you say?
(I'm doomed now. I've complained about grammar in public. There is certain to be a humiliating typo in here somewhere.)
You hit upon a key point there. Vocabulary, grammar and spelling are not improved significantly through writing; they are improved by reading well written works that challenge your current knowledge.
The larger your vocabulary, the more accurately you can describe the world. The better your grammar, the more likely you will be to keep your readers interested in the subject matter. The more accurate your spelling the less confusion you will sow among your readers.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain