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The Great Typo Hunt
jamie writes "Incensed by a 'no tresspassing' sign, Jeff Deck launched a cross-country trip to right grammatical wrongs. He enlisted a friend, Benjamin D. Herson, and together they erased errant quotation marks, rectified misspellings and cut unnecessary possessive apostrophes. The Great Typo Hunt is the story of their crusade." We have already covered the duo's fight with The National Park Service.
Another grammar Nazi
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
I hope they went to every store with an "express lane for less than 10 items". Shudder.
NPR really needs to learn the difference between a typo (i.e. a slip of the finger) and bad spelling and grammar.
Their heads would explode reading Slashdot.
Excessive abuse of grammar is frustrating and it can be enjoyable on occasion to correct it, but something about these guys just make me view them as douches. I'm not surprised that it was featured on NPR, of all places.
Of all the things to obsess over and waste your time "contributing" to in this world, correcting government signs is going to be it? Really?!
A local Long John Silver's had "Dungeonous" crabs for sale, and a local McDonald's has a cream "dispener". I've given up on trying to remember them all. Hand-written signs and those plastic letter signs are usually great places to find outrageous (and sometimes hilarious) errors.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
should of payed for that pro spell check and not use the free build in one.
It's nice to see someone put their Asperger Syndrome to use for a noble purpose.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Language is about communication, it's not about the RULES of grammar. Yes, we have arbitrarily decided rules as to what gets an apostrophe and how things are spelled and so on...failing to follow this rule or that at any given time doesn't often hinder the communication. If someone says to me "pimipin' ain't easy", I get what they said. I don' t need them make sure they put the "g" on the end or use "isn't" instead of "ain't". Thanks to my abhorently abusive Catholic school education, I still cringe when I see someone's written "Thank's for shopping at our store's!", but I don't feel the need to correct them. That would just be douchey. You know...like these two guys.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
When I was in college in the mid-1990s, I had a clipped-out newspaper cartoon on my bulletin board, showing a group of people correcting signs, muttering things like "I before E!" and "It's Brussels Sprouts, not Brussel Sprouts!". I can't remember what comic strip it was, but the panel was captioned, "Roving Gangs of Rogue Proofreaders."
Is NPR accepting ads now? At first I thought this was idle news, until I read "In 2 1/2 months, Herson and Deck traveled the perimeter of the country..."
Perimeter of the US in 2 1/2 months? That takes some $$$$$ to do that and 2 1/2 month without a day job... and here's how they did it, by writing a book, The Great Typo Hunt
A book about traveling the country and correcting signs. Must be an amazing read, what's their next book, the Amazing Highway Trash Cleanup?
Think I'll just wait for the movie like the Twilight series, hope they sparkle in the sunlight too
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
You do realize every story currently on the front page is just a quote-box with text taken directly from the article in question?
This is one dude where I ANAL has nothing to do with lawyers.
Anybody want a peanut?
Note: it's not a typo if the error was borne of ignorance.
not much, just being forced to manually insert line breaks into my comment
Godwin's Law invoked!
It wouldn't be a language if it didn't have a grammar.
Tiresome discussion of rigid formal rules is fairly unnecessary.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Whee shud trie too maike et ezy four othars too reed wat wee right. Ewe mite trie too bee moor tolarrient off spealing erors!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"Grammer Nazis.... I hate these guys"
http://imgur.com/4R1D4
Welcome to China.
A more accurate translation would be "dry fried duck", but I suppose there's a more elegant translation.
---
http://blog-imgs-38.fc2.com/o/t/t/ottovon/_20gb601.jpg
Welcome to Hong Kong -- this one actually made it to local news headlines for its hilarity.
[ Bold/top line is original text, middle line is google's translations (which sucks), and bottom is what it really means ]
Don't quote me on this.
How do we reach these guys? A place called "Tobys Banquet's" has been bugging me for years.
I don't even consider myself a stickler for grammar.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
anywhere with a big non-English speaking population will turn up a lot of these errors. The thing that always baffled me was that in the case of such signage as awnings and shop signs, how does the sign make it all the way to being attached to the shop without someone involved noticing the error? I have stopped paying attention to these errors for the most part because there are just so many of them. Occasionally I'll come across one that is really funny but most of the time it is just annoying and a bit said.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
He'd be there all day replacing the letter F with S's.
Mao would love this guy. George Orwell too.
yew mite even say a bridge two far
http://www.acetonestudio.com
If you own a sign, it's yours. You get to alter it, deface it, replace it, do whatever you want with it.
If you don't own a sign, and don't have permission of the owner or some specific sign-maintaining authority, then altering it is an act of vandalism. Your intent is irrelevant. It's not your sign. Don't like it? Too bad. Offer the sign owner some money to replace the sign with one that is to your liking, and maybe they'll take you up on it.
There's a really old-looking hand-carved sign at Yellowstone that talks about the dangers of getting too close to critters. IIRC it's near Old Faithful, but it's been about 10 years since I've been there, so my memory might be bad. The wood is well-weathered, the carving is pretty good, and it's obviously a matter of some effort on the part of the park service to preserve it. Unfortunately, it has a single spelling error (reversal of two letters in a word), and there are various correction marks that have been scratched and scrawled into it over the years that really ruin the look of the sign.
If it's not yours and you haven't been put in charge of maintaining it, keep your markers and tools off it. Please.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
How come when someone can't speak English, I tolerate it. But when I butcher a foreign word, we spend a good minute teaching me how to pronounce it correctly. Isn't my mispronunciation just my accent? How come I'm not allowed to have an accent? Perhaps it's because I'm a racist (tongue in cheek plzzz) Oops Pow Surprise
There's no such thing as rigid formal rules with any language that's in common use. Words fall in and out of use all the time - maybe the thing to which they refer becomes obsolete, maybe some other word finds favour instead - and accepted grammar changes all the time.
"Fuck", for instance, has not always been considered rude, and quite a few UK towns used to have roads called "Grope Cunt Lane". On a rather less coarse note, Bryson notes in "Mother Tongue" that the English language has changed quite a bit since the early days of the US - there's some evidence to suggest that the early immigrants spoke somewhat like Yosemite Sam. And when was the last time you hailed a hansom?
Trying to make a language uniform is tantamount to removing diversity for the sake of consistency. I'm not saying that grammar is not important, but rather what they are doing assumes that they're helping. I don't think that they've proved that what they're doing has intrinsic value. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription#Problems
Communication will work, but at the cost of lowered efficiency. Typos and the lack of clarity in a sentence will force most careful readers to backtrack and reread to ensure it wasn't an error on the reader's part. To me, it's a little like driving with a dirty windshield. Sure, it's doable, but its nonetheless distracting.
On the net, I can accept that the rules of grammar are as variable as the backgrounds of the people writing and reading it. In print, or on permanent signage, I'm not so forgiving.
I'm looking for the cited 'TEAL' website, and everything I click on leads me to their book. I don't give a crap about the book, I just want to see photos of their work.
Like it or not, I can attest to the fact that I often mentally judge someone by their speech if I am talking to them, or by their spelling and punctuation if I am reading their writing. I am sure I am hardly alone. If they lack the ability to compose a coherent sentence, or the decency to use a spell checker, and have no concept of grammatical formations, then I am inclined to judge them as uneducated, ignorant or ill-informed, and I tend to disregard whatever it was that they were trying to communicate. Now, I grant you that sometimes one might type "Pimpin' ain't easy" for the effect - but the intention is to imply someone who is a lower-class, uneducated and possibly not very bright individual. If you regularly communicate in a similar style, you will look equally lower-class, uneducated and possibly not very bright. In other words, its a matter of communication. If you communicate poorly, you tend to be ignored, and in my opinion whatever you have to say matters less.
If I am reading forum posts and I come across a post that is utterly incoherent, misspelled, or contains a lot of grammatical errors, I skip it. That person has failed to get whatever point they were trying to make across to me at least, and likely others. If you want to be given attention, and your opinions to be given any consideration, learn to communicate using proper grammar, spelling etc. Failure to do so simply makes you look like an idiot.
Now, unleash the Grammar Nazis to let me know where I have erred in my post. I tried to be correct throughout, but I am sure I have made at least one mistake :)
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Is it just like the internet where if you have one spelling error in your posting, no matter how poignant, it has no meaning because the grammar police rip you a new one?
"Yield to trian? Look they spelled train wron......... KAPOW!!!!!"
Hopefully someone will correct my spelling of "kapow" to the more accepted Batman & Robin English Oxford Dictionary spelling.
Tpyos are a pet peeve of mine.
Really, all this does is shows us how much of a loser the guy is. Just because he thinks its better his way doesn't make him right or it true. He's a criminal fucking with other peoples property without consent. Hopefully he'll get some real jail time somewhere in the near future to get it through his thick, retarded head that his behavior is unacceptable.
I'd like to see him get caught doing it in Texas where far less questions are asked after you shoot him. (Police Officer) Was this douche bag commiting a crime against you sir when you shot him in the back? (Sign owner) yep, painting my sign without my ask'n (Police Officer) Good enough for me, have a nice evening, we'll clean it up for you.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
As long as they don't mess with the Juice
That's nonsense on several counts.
Are you adequate?
So, come on, explain to my why this is (allegedly) so. Explanations that won't be accepted:
Are you adequate?
Their's werse things then that.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Is he the test tube baby of David Schwimmer and Jack from Lost?
Would have been nice to known their itinerary and plant bad signs in their path. Maybe lead them into Mexico and one of the drug cartel territories. Oh, what fun would ensue!
No, jaime plagiarizes.
If it says, "jaimee writes", then it's attributed to jaimee, and is plagiarism.
I need an irony check on aisle 3.
IMHO, these guys are out for a cheap thrill, a book deal and dangerous.
Check this link:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/08/22/men_banned_from_national_parks_after_vandalism/
Here's an excerpt:
"Jeff Michael Deck of Somerville, and Benjamin Douglas Herson, of Virginia Beach, Va., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Flagstaff after damaging a rare, hand-painted sign in Grand Canyon National Park.
They were sentenced to a year's probation, during which they cannot enter any national park, and were ordered to pay restitution.
Authorities said Deck and Herson, both 28, toured the United States from March to May, wiping out errors on government and private signs.
While at Desert View Watchtower on the South Rim on March 28, they were accused of using a whiteout product and a permanent marker to deface a sign that's a National Historic Landmark."
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Okay, I'll bite. You wrote this:
> In other words, its a matter of communication.
The "its" in that sentence is a contraction of "it is," so it should be "it's" (i.e., it needs an apostrophe).
(Confession: I suffer from the same malady as the book authors -- typos and punctuation errors drive me nuts.)
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I can't find a source anymore, but I recall hearing that good writing is strongly correlated with high intelligence. Maybe your evaluation is not as unreasonable as you suppose.
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Languages evolve by, among other things, useful "mistakes" that are adopted by the speakers and writers - with notable exceptions (such as Latin, which is no longer spoken as an L1, or French, which has a standards body and for which speaking "incorrectly" is a crime, with fines, in France).
The English language was an evolving language as of the American Revolution. But beginning about then, some people tried to standardize it.
Of course they standardized the way it was spoken on the East Coast (but added a couple rules borrowed from Latin - such as no trailing prepositions). Then they used propaganda and government education programs to spread their version and brand all the other regional variations as "improper", with the implication that the speakers and writers were either illiterate or stupid.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In other words, its a matter of communication.
You forgot the apostrophe there, chief. Don't make me sick Bob on you. Oh, too late: http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
If the geiger counter does not click, the coffee, she is not thick.
In other words, its a matter of communication.
So where's the typo on the "Pedestrians use walks not roads" sign? A walk is " a place designed for walking" according to the dictionary. It doesn't seem like a sign should follow full grammatical sentence structure since it's supposed to be a brief message directing people on what to do. How else should they have worded the sign, while still keeping it terse and to the point? They can't say "sidewalks", because that looks like a national park sign, and not all "walks" are sidewalks. Nor can they say "trails" since not all paths are trails. Maybe they could have said "path", but is a sidewalk the same as a "path"? Maybe they could have said "Pedestrians must use pedestrian pathways, not roads" but that doubles the cost of the sign and gives very little added benefit.
Am I missing something else that makes the sign incorrect?
How about because it's wrong?
By your logic, do you spell the word "done" as dun, like bun and fun, just to rigorously adhere to convention? Or do you pronounce it as a homonym of "lone" and "phone" (oops, I mean "fone")?
How do you conjugate the verb "to be"? I be, he bes, yesterday I bed (pronounced "beed," of course), etc.? Or do you go against convention like 99.9% of the rest of us and use its common conjugation of I am, he is, yesterday I was?
I'm sorry, but I find your "it goes against convention!" argument completely uncompelling. Using "it's" as a possessive pronoun is just plain incorrect, just as incorrect as the above examples. The good news is that when you do it, most people know what you're talking about, just as if you typed a sentence "I be dun" instead of "I am done." The bad news is that just like typing that first sentence, you kind of look stupid when you do so.
But how else would they tell us that they have "Free!!! DVD's for Sale!"?
Didn't the new rules just declare that an apostrophe meant, "Look out, an 'S' is coming," anyway?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
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A late friend told me he always chuckled to himself whenever he read the ubiquitous disclaimer "Void Where Prohibited" and felt the urge to obey and pee in the forbidden place.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
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Take it easy, please. On the web forums and Internet in general there are so many people who are not native english speakers. Of course there are times when you can definitely tell that the person didn't put much thought in whatever he/she was writing, but in many cases incorrect grammar does not really tell you about writer's intellect. It takes many years of practice to become fluent in any foreign language. Most of the time learners will never become as good as the native speakers. It's a better idea to judge people more by their message, not by the form.
;)
So excuse me for my non-perfect english, I come from Russia, live in Finland and currently studying in Portugal. We just don't practice it in our daily lives
My wife once found a sign in a store that used both "everyday" and "every day" and used them both correctly. She was so pleased, because 95% of the signs she sees with "everyday" on them get it wrong.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
They were just too hopped up on the caffeine to get it right the first time, and then something shiny went by.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Is the amount of words spelt the American way here in the UK. For example words ending in ize instead of ise, color, tire and gotten.
You've given the best answer so far.
Still not enough, though, because you've failed to address this: what are the criteria that you're using to judge that the "fewer" vs. "less" rule that you cite is in fact the convention?
Are you adequate?
Your post was fine. I hate the one whose posts are awful. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Uncountables can be counted, when you mean collectively. Arizona has fewer waters than Minnesota; "waters" used thus means "lakes, rivers, and so on." Wal-Mart has fewer catsups than my local grocery (Wal-Mart has Heinz, Hunt's and the store brand; the local grocer carries six).
You know, that quote continues. The next sentence after you cut it off: "Modern standard English practice does not reflect this distinction."
Note that they said standard. The entry is actually endorsing the use of constructions like less words and less men.
Um, from dictionary.com: "data (noun): a pl. of datum." Yes, the very same source that you misleadingly cite as an authority above for less/fewer.
Care to actually argue why? I can't tell you how wrong you are about that unless you spell out why you think so.
Are you adequate?
Really, what is grammar but a bunch of rules that we've agreed to use?
Keep them away from Slashdot! Otherwise they'll hack in and fix this: The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them.
'This Word is most commonly used in speaking of a Number; where I should think Fewer would do better. "No Fewer than a Hundred" appears to me, not only more elegant than "No less than a Hundred," but more strictly proper.'
"Like it or not, I can attest to the fact that I often mentally judge someone by their speech if I am talking to them, or by their spelling and punctuation if I am reading their writing."
There's your problem right there: being judgmental. That's your problem, not theirs.
"Now, unleash the Grammar Nazis ... :)"
Your problem isn't grammar, it's style. Too many words. For example, the first eleven words of your post are bloat. You could replace the whole first sentence with "I judge people by their communication skills," a savings of 30/37 words, or 81%. Most of your other sentences have extra words and the paragraphs have extra sentences. Come to think of it, you might replace the whole post with that sentence, losing some meaning but gaining clarity and brevity.
But it's your writing. It's up to you.
"Vegetarian chilli-con-carne" is no more an oxymoron that "soy meat" is. There are plenty of so-called intensional or non-intersective grammatical constructions, where modifying X with Y results in an expression that is not an X. A "fake Rolex" is not a Rolex; it's something that's pretending to be a Rolex. Likewise, "vegetarian chili con carne" is not chili con carne; it's a vegetarian dish that substitutes for chili con carne.
Are you adequate?
But the thing is that that's an uncommon, technical sense of "agree." We didn't have a convention where we all sat down and indicated our assent to a bunch of rules that Mr. Dude proposed. The "agreement" is more like this: we all carry out the practice of using the word "dog" to mean Canis familiaris. We all assume that English-speaking strangers also do. This assumption is rarely (if ever) contradicted by anybody we'd call an English speaker. An English speaker who insisted too vehemently otherwise would likely be seen as mentally insane, or at least not serious.
Do you really think that "less is only used with mass nouns" a rule of grammar in that sense?
Are you adequate?
So, some dude from 1770 thought it was "more elegant" and "more strictly proper." In what sense was he correct about this judgement?
Are you adequate?
As I suspected, you weren't actually interested, though other /. readers may be. If you have some point to make, you should make it, and not try to get me to play "guess what it has in its pocketses".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
On the other hand, someone who insists on the reverse - substituting "fewer" when they mean "less", will cause most English speakers to cringe: "My glass has fewer milk than his!"
Kafhuaw Jaurajhj Juyoyudtb. If you don't understand, perhaps I should have followed the rules that someone made up.
Really, what is grammar but a bunch of rules that we've agreed to use?
Is it simply a bunch of rules that we've agreed to use, or is it a reflection of our cognitive functions? We perceve objects, so we have nouns. Objects have characteristics, so we have adjectives. Objects seem to act; voila, verbs. These actions have their own characteristics: adverbs.
If language is based on arbitrary rules and conventions, on culture, then there should be syntax and grammars that are present in certain languages, but absent in others. However, if language mirrors our cognitive functions, then all languages should have analogous grammar and syntax.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Sure. Which is why I called such discussions tiresome. Or do you mean to deny that there are people that attempt to have such discussions?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Why do you think it identifies the speaker as "uneducated"? Have you actually researched how educated people speak and write?
Are you adequate?
I believe I address your implicit argument in this post. But in short, no, the rules of English grammar weren't "made up" by anybody.
Are you adequate?
Because it says so in Grammar and Language Arts textbooks, which are the closest things to official that language has. To say that language develops over time is fine, but at this point the language has not developed; it's still taught this way in schools. The fact that it's understandable doesn't make it right. Of course you'll say that I'm just quoting a rule someone made up. How you expect to communicate without following some sort of "rules someone made up" I don't know. It's also worth pointing out that no one is per se complaining about this in a random Internet post or other venue where perfection is neither expected nor reasonable, but in a sign that pretty much every grocery store everywhere uses.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
should of payed for that pro spell check and not use the free build in one.
Maybe you should have too... I think "built in" would be the term you were looking for.
I don't know what is worse here - that you made a really embarrassing whoosh, or that you only found one error in the quoted text.
^ more internets to this man
But (a) the Linguistics textbooks say otherwise, and (b) actually, many usage guides endorse countable less (check out, for example, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, which is probably the best usage guide).
Many history textbooks have said that Colombus faced considerable resistance to his project because medieval Europeans thought the Earth was flat. Which is just false; the people who wrote those textbooks got the claim from fictional accounts of Colombus' life. Do you know who writes the textbooks that you'd cite as authorities, and do you know the actual extent of their knowledge of language? It's very lacking. The "rules" usually come about because some dude made up some bogus reason to reject some construction as "wrong" despite the fact that everybody's used it for hundreds of years, and then grammar nazis cite him and each other as an "authority."
The story of the supposed prohibition on possessive antecents is notable for being (a) recent (the rule was invented out of thin air in the 1960's), (b) especially absurd (both in the reasoning behind the rule, and in the broad range of English classics that it would render "wrong").
The same way you communicate all the time, by using rules that nobody made up. That's what language is.
Are you adequate?
Pimping IS easy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KDa86kq8J0
Funny thing: the Davis Square sign-makers that inspired this book actually have an excuse, if they use Macs. Look at the definition for "trespassing" in the New Oxford American Dictionary that ships with every Mac (the app or the widget-- doesn't matter.) The definition includes a note called "tresspass on," with the same typo that drove Jeff Deck so crazy. Maybe Steve Jobs needs to get involved....
http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/2010/08/06/if-there-were-ever-a-time-to-hold-your-red-pen/
It's funny, the mistake wouldn't bother me.. but the Comic Sans MS?
it's under construction
Absolutely! Describe! Don't prescribe!
I can't remember which Stephen Pinker book it was, but in one they analyzed a recording of a young black American man (can't remember where he was from) speaking and found his grammar to be perfectly consistent with the rules of his own dialect. A dialect which, in many instances, is superior to "standard English" in that it allows one to be more specific with what they're saying while using less words.
I'm sorry I can't remember which book, but I'd highly recommend any of them.
it's under construction
I concur. It has been my long-held assumption that "sloppy grammar/spelling == sloppy thinking". If you don't take the time to correct any obvious errors, there is little evidence that you took the time to actually think through what it is you're saying. While a smart person might be ignorant of grammatical rules, smart people make an effort to correct their ignorance, so grammar is a decent proxy for detecting worthwhile comments. Foreigners confound this, but their mistakes are of a different sort, which becomes recognizable.
Everything has its limits though. Some people care more about the form of language than the function. So you can't let the form hinder the function (i.e. poor grammar), nor prioritize the form over the function (e.g. a grammar nazi, or going out of your way to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition).
For a sign, I don't get it. For anything else? It looks atrocious! If you're trying to convey a point to me with writing, and you cannot follow standard grammatical rules for doing so, it just makes you look like a dolt. You know the rules exist, yet chose not to follow them. So, now, how can I be fully sure that your point, even if still clear, is valid or that your argument is sound? You didn't pay attention to the EASY part, that is, writing your ideas down, how do I know you got the hard part - creating said ideas - right?
His (her?) point was probably that the less/fewer peeve is bogus. If you consult any competent history of the English language (e.g., the OED), you'll learn that "less" has been used for countable quantities for as long as we have cites for its uses. Also, math in English has always used "less than" for all numeric comparisons, discrete or continuous, and has rarely ever used "fewer" for anything. The math symbol '<' is always read "less than"; never "fewer than".
The idea that "less" should be only for mass-like quantities and "fewer" only for discrete, countable quantities is a pseudo-rule made up by people who wanted to limit them to distinct meanings. This pseudo-rule goes against the entire history of these two words in English.
(I wonder why we never seem to hear about a similar peeve for "more" vs. "greater". Hmmm ... maybe I could start a whole new language peeve, with a bit of posting to various blogs ... ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Ironically enough, spelling rules were put in place so that jack asses like you could feel smugly superior to everybody else. William Shakespeare, one of the greatest playwrights of all time would spell the same word several different ways in the same play. Proper grammar tends to get in the way of actually communicating. I happen to have a gift for language and a learning disorder, if you bother to read the posts out loud they work very well typically. But they aren't generally spelled completely proper nor do they obey the relevant conventions, because there's no point. It's one thing to write gibberish and quite another to write stuff that isn't perfectly formed. In this part of the world, you don't even get grammar in high school, let alone college.
But, the underlying problem here is that grammar Nazis are bullies, plain and simple. There's generally no reason to do it, other than a possible OCD or Asperger's diagnoses. And they should be getting relevant help.
So by your logic Steven Hawking is "uneducated". It pisses me off to no end when people start judging someone by how the communicate. It is logical fallacy , if-then.
Example: If someone cannot communicate well , then they are "uneducated".
As far as I am concerned, grammar nazis can go to hell. I spent my life being judge by communication skills, because well I have learning disability, and cannot write or speech well, but I do try, only to have ass hats judge me. I double majored in CS and Math(both tracks, theoretical math and applied math), Physics TA, and by your logic I am uneducated also.
Only because this is the grammar thread: you want "sic", not "sick".
No problem. Your style is to string overly long sentences together with commas. There are five in the fourth sentence of your first paragraph alone. Doesn't that bug you?
And yet most posts which carry the disclaimer of 'English is not my native language' are well thought out, passed through a spellcheck and are easily understandable. It's the native speakers who don't take the time to use a spellcheck, and don't put any effort into their writing at all.
Yours is a great example. There's no way I would have guessed you were not a native English speaker.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
While I realize it's probably just an error on the summary-writer's part, it's still true.
R.Mo
There are people who care about precise meanings, and people who don't care about precise meanings. Sometimes one group will win out on how we move forward, other times the other will. The imprecise side of the collective 'us' allowed the American/rest-of-us spelling rift to take place, but it was the precise side that formalised it. You can get annoyed at people who, through their laziness, make it difficult for you to understand what they are saying; or you can choose to let it go. Nobody is perfect, and there is often lots of fun in pointing out the stupid things people say without meaning to.
Two men claimed to have walked into a bar. Only one had the bruises to prove it.
That's a good hedge: you can't be wrong.
Athy, athier, athiest.
Since I'm such a fun guy, I have on occasion taken pictures of signs lacking in punctuation, and then tweeted the picture a long with my "corrected" version.
Unfortunately, I just don't have the balls to actually go buy some paint and make my corrections. Here's two examples:
"Private Lot? No, Student Parking!"
"Jesus loves you? Why? Die a victim with the devil. When you can live a victor with Jesus Christ, don't. Die in your sins."
Obviously, since the original signs lacked punctuation there's no way to be 100% sure I've preserved the intended meaning . . .
Written English is different. I find the native speakers tend to be lax with spelling or punctuation or not even know the rules. The people who learnt it as a second language have a much better grasp of grammar. Their writing has much more clarity.
Even worse is when... (Score:0)
...some jackoff with less than ten items gets into the NORMAL LANE!!!!
by Anonymous Coward writes: on Wed Aug 11, '10 02:44 PM (#33218838)
Just think how infuriating it would be if he had fewer than ten items.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
ROFL. Despite your errors, you showed fairly reasonable grammar and spelling skills. Furthermore, you showed that you had given the subject some thought. I would say your thought took you too far though. I suspect the OP is not really a grammar nazi and he is willing to discard some errors, such as yours (speech vs sepak (sic)). The problem is when the errors are so pervasive that they start affecting the actual meaning of what is being said. If I have to try and decide if you meant one thing or another because of errors, then your communication is too tedious to be worthwhile.
Again, your post was fine despite at least one simple error. You were able to communicate effectively and that is what is important. Relax. :)
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
There's your problem right there: being judgmental. That's your problem, not theirs
But everyone does it, all the time. In fact you have to be judgmental in order to differentiate. You cannot treat everyone the same, regardless of who they are.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
And would I be alone in my fight, against the whole world?
Oops, that's one comma, too much.
I am not devoid of humor.
Your own language skills must be rather poor if you completely overlooked all of his other typos.
I am not devoid of humor.
I found a scan of the comic strip on my computer. It was Bent Offerings, by Don Addis.
It could also be that it takes more intelligence to learn two written languages. The people you are meeting who write english as a second language could just be smarter than most people.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
I think you misunderstood what the AC was trying to say. If the roofer writes the estimate like a 4th-grader but has good references, he will hire the roofer. If he's getting an estimate for his business signage and the sign maker can barely spell, he will pass. High intelligence, or the apperance thereof, is not always a requirement to get shit done.
Phrogman was basically saying if someone looks or acts like a "lower class" he will ignore/dismiss them. Elitism like that is a sign too.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman