Does Grammar Matter Anymore?

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Posted by samzenpus on Monday July 9, 2012 @12:50AM from the pretty-talk dept.

theodp writes "A lighthearted 4th of July post pointing out how Microsoft Word could help Google CEO Larry Page catch typos in his Google+ posts turned out to be fighting words for GeekWire readers. "Grammar is an important indicator of the quality of one's message," insisted one commenter. "You shouldn't have disgraced yourself by stooping to trolling your readers with an article about what essentially amounts to using a full blown word processor for a tweet. Albeit an rather long example of one," countered another. A few weeks earlier, the WSJ sparked a debate with its report that grammar gaffes have invaded the office in an age of informal e-mail, texting and Twitter. So, does grammar matter anymore?"

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It's like this. by dtmos · 2012-07-09 00:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

Whether grammar matters or not depends on the recipient of the message, not the originator. As anyone who has designed a compiler will tell you, it's an error-prone PITA to have to pre-process input before it is in a useable form. If the recipient can do this, no harm is done, except that the recipient is aware that the sender gave him more work to do than was necessary -- something usually not considered a compliment.
1. Re:It's like this. by tsa · 2012-07-09 01:03 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I think you're spot on. If someone writes and uses bad grammar (and spelling) it takes time to translate the message to normal [insert language here]. Not using correct spelling and grammar shows disdain for the receiver, wether intentional or not.
  
  --
  -- Cheers!
2. Re:It's like this. by bedonnant · 2012-07-09 01:07 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You're forgetting the part where using improper grammar makes you look like an idiot.
  
  --
  ~~~ Paf. Le chien.
3. Re:It's like this. by udoschuermann · 2012-07-09 01:12 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Use of proper grammar is an indicator that the originator of the message cared about the message, and would rather have the message be heard loud and clear, than allow presentation to distract from its poignancy.
  Whenever I read things like "id like to by a new car," I cringe inside, imagine some grunting ape who happened across a keyboard, and move on without thinking about the attempted message. If that was the intended effect, then "buy all means," have at it, folks!
  
  --
  --Udo.
4. Re:It's like this. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-09 01:13 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Who are you communicating with? I toss resumes with grammar mistakes. Yup, I'm an asshole. However, I've got plenty of resumes, and I want programmers who can communicate clearly. Similarly, I make an effort to write clearly and use decent grammer. Perfection isn't the point; clarity of communications and the perception of competency, are.
5. Re:It's like this. by arth1 · 2012-07-09 01:15 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Don't forget the problems of misinterpretation and ambiguity.
  Not understanding the message is one thing, but understanding it as something that wasn't intended is worse. And when correctly parsing the message and the result is completely different from what the author intended, it's worst of all.
  Not only do people use reduced vocabularies and lackluster grammar, but they use words and phrases wrong, so unless the recipient also does it wrong, the same way, misunderstandings are very likely.
  In short, I think it boils down to people not caring much anymore. There's no pride in anything one does. The "whatever" generation is taking over.
6. Re:It's like this. by mcgrew · 2012-07-09 01:27 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Not necessarily an idiot, but ignorantly uneducated and aliterate. Ignorance != stupidity.
  No, "aliterate" wasn't a misspelling or typo.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
7. Re:It's like this. by necro81 · 2012-07-09 01:31 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Similarly, I make an effort to write clearly and use decent grammer.
  Oh, the irony...
  No, making a spelling error while professing to use decent grammar is not an example of irony.
8. Re:It's like this. by DragonWriter · 2012-07-09 01:31 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You're completely missing the point. We should be talking about the quality of Google's tools here. If Microsoft's Word can help Google's CEO with grammar, then why the hell Google's tools cannot. It just means that Google (and cloud) is lacking behind and desktop apps still rule.
  Actually, it doesn't mean that at all. The fact that some posts could be improved by Microsoft's tools doesn't mean those tools would be a net gain. In each new version of Word, I generally spend a little while trying out the grammar check function -- and it does occasionally catch grammatical errors. But, when used by someone who knows what they are doing, it more often misflags correct grammar, and it tends to be a net productivity drag, which is why after a short try-out period, it ends up getting turned off.
  If something is important enough to have someone proofread, you should do that. If it isn't—and you have any grammar skills of your own to start with—you're probably wasting your time using an automated grammar checker.
9. Re:It's like this. by thePowerOfGrayskull · 2012-07-09 01:32 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  still depends on the recipient. If he doesn't care or don't know the proper grammar, won't matter a lot. In fact, "wrong" grammar could be a part of a subculture where the proper one is bad. And is not just for english, i'm very aware about how this is going for spanish, and probably other languages suffer the same problem too.
  Proper grammar is definitely contextual. When speaking to your peers, grammar may vary based on what is acceptable among them - so that one doesn't "stand out" or come across as trying to be "above" them. It's ridiculous that this is necessary - that speaking intelligently among any group can get you singled out as not belonging - but it's hardly new.
  During my couple years as a landscaper after high school, I quickly learned that speaking proper English ain't no way to earn the respect of coworkers. (And - trust me on this - correcting them was *definitely* not the answer.)
10. Re:It's like this. by bedonnant · 2012-07-09 01:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Grammar used to be something that you learned in school. Using correct grammar means that you can express your thoughts clearly, which means that you can think clearly. You can use tools to catch typing mistakes, but if you need them to correct grammar, the problem lies with you.
  
  --
  ~~~ Paf. Le chien.
11. Re:It's like this. by aslagle · 2012-07-09 01:48 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Well, if grammar matters, then I'd say the question is more properly, "Given that Microsoft has had desktop applications with built-in grammar check since around 1997, why doesn't Google have one?"
12. Re:It's like this. by Vanderhoth · 2012-07-09 01:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I think the disdain is subjective. Grammar matters to the point that one person can communicate an idea; what matters most to is the content of a message, not the syntax and format. I speak with many people who are mentally challenged, maybe they don't always use proper grammar, but they don't mean to offend their audience.
  
  When reading content on the net I try to assume the author isn't a mad skillz 733t grammar professor and that possibly people make mistakes, It shouldn't detract from the message. I'm also not the greatest speller in the world, so I appreciate it when people over look my minor typos.
  
  I think the real issue is when people aren't willing to over look a typo or a missing comma and instead of focusing on the content of a message they focus on the formatting. Often I've seen someone post a comment where they're entirely correct, but get torn down because they used "their" instead of "they're" or "loose" instead of "lose" in a context were the intended meaning was evident. You'll see plenty of "let's eat Grandma!" and "I helped uncle jack off his horse" examples below demonstrating the importance of grammar, but most of the time, if people relax their anus' a little, it's easy enough to tell from the context of the situation what the author's intended meaning is.
  
  It's important to communicate ideas and, to me at least, the people who spend more time degrading others for the misuse of a rule are the stupid ones because they lack of ability to process and interpret content. We don't consider computers to be very smart, their tools that require very specific input. Think about what it would be like if the response to every other word you said or wrote was "segmentation fault". We as humans have the capability to derive meaning and understand abstract ideas, if a person is going to focus on syntax and formatting and ignore the message they're no smarter than a machine.
13. Re:It's like this. by DJRumpy · 2012-07-09 01:51 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I find grammar trolls to beone of the lowest forms of Internet life. The recipient will judge the content and ether won't notice such errors, or they will note them and form their own opinion. Whether the grammar or spelling police point it out is redundant.
  Grammar and spelling police seem to thrive on the thrill of pointing out someone else's error while adding nothing of value to a topic.
  As to grammar in general, the medium is important. A mistyped tweet sent from a phone is excusable. A formal response from a corporate CEO should always be proofread. However, claiming someone is insulting or dismissive simply because they failed to notice an error is pompous. It implies malice where logically none exists.
14. Re:It's like this. by Tipa · 2012-07-09 01:58 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Probably none of them, but if one were, it would be the one between "these" and "ellipsis", but you probably wanted "ellipses" there anyway.
15. Re:It's like this. by Legume · 2012-07-09 02:02 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It's grammar that matters, not tools that pick up a handful of borderline grammar issues and false positives over and over again, while missing many more important problems. I'm pretty good at spelling, but spell checkers still catch me out several times a day. I'm only okay at grammar, but I can't remember a single instance where Microsoft's tool has been helpful.
16. Re:It's like this. by s.petry · 2012-07-09 02:03 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Complex or not, the post you replied to is very correct. It's not about "awe, these rules are hard" it's about being able to articulate thoughts to as many recipients as possible, as clearly and concisely as possible.
  One must also consider the medium being used. Twitter has a very low character limit. I am way more tolerant to someone saying "B in L8 car broke down waiting for tow truck" than I would be if someone sent that same email.
  No language is perfect, and every language has complexities. Those complexities evolved over time to accommodate clarity. I'd be very surprised if suddenly there was no need to be clear with communication any longer.
  
  --
  -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
17. Re:It's like this. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-09 02:03 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I'll take one "grammer" over misuse of "they're" "their" and "their" any day. Misplacing a vowel is nothing compared to bizarre distortions of entire sentences that force re-reading them to make any sense of them.
  Putting it another way: some spelling and grammar errors matter to clear communication. Some are irrelevant except to pedants. If you can't tell the difference, then your writing is probably so poor that it "doesn't matter" to you. To everyone else in the world, it probably does matter, because you're likely confusing the hell out of them and looking unprofessional at the same time. Seriously, if you can't get correct spelling and coherent sentences on a resume, where the writing is an important demonstration of your communication abilities and it clearly does matter to the impression it will make on a potential employer, then it must be pretty darn bad. An employer that signs you on anyway will have difficulty communicating with you. That's a recipe for disaster unless there is no need to communicate on the job.
  Heh. My favorite was a restaurant a couple of weeks ago that had a chicken stir-fry special written on the chalkboard sign at the door: "with brocoili". We mentioned to the server that it was misspelled, thinking we were being helpful. As we left the restaurant we glanced at the sign: "with broccoili". Oh well. It doesn't really matter. It tastes the same either way :-)
18. Re:It's like this. by hackula · 2012-07-09 02:07 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Very true. Being in the south, you see that sales people seem to have their own dialect. They intentionally sprinkle in slang and "Good Ole Boy"-isms all the time. Every business interaction is an act of some kind. When sales people talk like that to the engineers, of course they sound like morons, but to a client, it is conversational and disarming. Look at presidential campaigns. Whenever Hilary Clinton walked into an AME church, she started throwing out "ain't"s and "yall"s like candy. To be an effective communicator, you have to understand the context and audience more than anything. Of course, if you are incapable of using grammar correctly when it is required, you are going to be fairly limited.
19. Re:It's like this. by rockout · 2012-07-09 02:16 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You could argue it is, due to the close relationship between grammar and spelling in the current context. For example, he'd likely toss a resume with grammar OR spelling mistakes in it; although he didn't explicitly mention spelling errors, that part can be reasonably inferred.
  
  --
  I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
20. Re:It's like this. by arth1 · 2012-07-09 02:40 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  However, claiming someone is insulting or dismissive simply because they failed to notice an error is pompous. It implies malice where logically none exists.
  On the contrary, it implies stupidity, ignorance, a slapdash attitude, or combinations of these. Neither are traits I favour or reward.
21. Re:It's like this. by mcgrew · 2012-07-09 03:10 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Your (and a whole lot of others') refusal to use the shift key hurts mine. Do you realise how uneducated it makes you look?
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
22. Re:It's like this. by Eravau · 2012-07-09 03:34 · Score: 4, Insightful
  Yes, punctuation may also convey meaning , but has a much shallower effect than grammar.
  I beg to differ. Something as small as a comma can make a huge difference in the meaning of what is written. For example:
  
  — Stop clubbing baby seals: Cease beating baby seals with a club!
  — Stop clubbing baby, seals: Hey you seals! Stop beating that baby with a club!
  — Stop clubbing, baby seals: hey you baby seals! Stop going out dancing!
  I'm not sure I would call that shallow. It may be a silly example, but it applies to real-life sentences as well.
23. Re:It's like this. by Grishnakh · 2012-07-09 03:49 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  English's Germanic roots are great. The problem was when the French Normans invaded Britain and fucked it up by merging their language with the Germanic language that was in place there.
  Putting a French language together with a Germanic language is like putting ketchup on a chocolate cake. And this is why English is the way it is now.
24. Re:It's like this. by gorzek · 2012-07-09 04:55 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I've used MS Word's grammar checking capabilities, and I agree that they can only be a supplement to someone who already has solid writing skills. It has prodded me to rewrite long sentences, fix subject-verb agreement, get rid of passive voice, other things of that nature. It's also caught my occasional typo and duplicate word--errors that are easy to skip over when you're re-reading your draft for the tenth time.
  If someone is a poor writer in the first place, all the spelling- and grammar-checkers in the world won't fix that. They'll just paper over the more obvious defects. People should never, ever count on a software tool to fix their writing. It can only be a modestly-helpful guide, not a blunt tool to do the work for you. Natural language processing is just not very good. Even online translation tools do little more than find-and-replace words with their foreign language counterparts, then try to rearrange them into a grammar consistent with that language. You can usually get the general idea of the original text, but a human translation by someone fluent in both languages is almost always vastly superior. The bottom line is that computers are very bad at semantics, and even worse at "reading between the lines." This is not a fault of computers, either, but of software researchers and the industry as a whole.
  Lay people often get the mistaken impression that because computers are now good at pattern recognition (picking out faces, analyzing voice samples into text, etc.) they are also good at figuring out the "meaning" of these things. They are not. Pattern recognition and semantics are totally different areas of research.
  
  --
  Check out my world simulator thingy.
25. Re:It's like this. by thomst · 2012-07-09 05:00 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Martin Blank opined:
  
  You may be one of the rare few that can truly tax Word's grammar checker but the overwhelming majority of people who believe that it's useless are flat wrong. I see this at work basically every day. I work with people who have degrees and should be able to write fairly well (at least well enough to not lose a grade on grammar) but neither properly capitalize nor know the common homonyms. There is also the unnecessary capitalization of words because people think they're acronyms: I see "WEB" and "FOB" (access tokens) all the time. That the lose/loose problem is spilling into the workplace is an even bigger sign of the problem. I'd love to be able to blame it on the new Internet generation, but as I see it among older professionals who don't really spend much time online, I suspect it's just something working its way through the culture.
  The thing is, none of the errors you list are mistakes of GRAMMAR. Instead, each of them is a USAGE error, as distinct from a grammatical one.
  Grammar, per se, is structural in nature: basically, it's the rules of sentence construction. In common usage, grammar is often conflated with such topics as spelling, usage, capitalization, and punctuation, but they are, in fact separate issues. Tthe fact that you, yourself, conflate them is an indication of the size of the gap between what "everybody knows" about language, and what the technical terms they bandy about actually mean.
  Those of us who care about such distinctions are vastly outnumbered by those who don't - and the disparity in numbers is growing. Texting is a contributor to the problem, as is the dismal state of public "education" in the U.S. So is the perceived casual nature of email and blog commenting, where errors of grammar, usage, spelling, punctuation and capitalization are so commonplace that they have become the new norm - and fuddy-duddies like me, who insist on employing grammatically-correct, properly-spelled-and-punctuated Engilsh, paying careful attention to usage, are looked at as dinosaurs, at best, or, less charitably, as elitist snobs.
  Welcome to Idiocracy.
  
  --
  Check out my novel.
26. Re:It's like this. by purpledinoz · 2012-07-09 07:57 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  German is not great. It's terrible. Nouns can be female, male, or neutral, there are 4 cases (Nominativ, Dativ, Akkusativ, Genitiv), they pile all their verbs at the end in a giant confusing stack, and the worst part, the "trennbare Verben", the separable verbs. Some verbs can separate into 2 parts. The first part is used normally, and the second part is dumped at the end of the sentence, which can be miles away. This means, you can be reading a super complicated huge sentence which spans two pages, and when you get to the end, you're greeted by an "ab", which changes the whole damn meaning of the sentence. By this time, you've already forgotten which verb this belongs to. Mark Twain wrote a great short called "The Awful German Language", which is very entertaining for English speakers learning German.
27. Re:It's like this. by Pseudonym · 2012-07-09 14:17 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  ps, i weep that you will never know the beauty of an e e cummings poem
  Speaking only for myself, I happily accept nonstandard grammar, spelling or punctuation if there is a clear attempt at creativity behind it. It needn't be anywhere near as good as E.E. Cummings' poetry or James Joyce's prose; few are capable of that. A good use of language does not have to be a correct use of language, where "correct" is measured against your favourite style guide.
  I also don't have a problem with nonstandard language to overcome a limitation of the medium, such as the 140 character limit or the ergonomics of many mobile devices. I also concede cultural conventions, such as the conversational characteristics of comments. In addition, you often can't assume that someone is writing in their native language.
  Having said all that, using "correct" language is fundamentally a matter of courtesy. By using "correct" spelling, good grammar and correct punctuation, you are saying to your reader that you understand that they don't have to read what you say, and so you are going to do them the courtesy of making it easy for them to do so. If you, as a speaker or writer, signal that you don't care about me, then I don't care about what you have to say.
  I don't mind a creative writer who plays with language. They, at least, are trying to reward me for the extra effort I have to expend to read it. If it's not my cup of fur, I appreciate that others will enjoy it and I appreciate that you tried.
  
  --
  sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Yes. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-09 00:53 · Score: 1, Insightful

Yes, it does.
Grammar, by benito27uk · 2012-07-09 00:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

The difference between knowing your shit, and knowing you're shit.
1. Re:Grammar, by Krau+Ming · 2012-07-09 01:01 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Unfortunately, only those who have a reasonable grasp on grammar seem to care.
2. Re:Grammar, by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-09 01:30 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You're the third one with this example, and you're the third one to stick this fucking comma where it shouldn't fucking be.
  You three should just shrivel up and die, you fucking victims of Muphry's law. - See, here's the comma where it should be.
  In your example it makes no fucking sense. It's not an enumeration, neither it is a vocative, a parenthetical nor a separate clause. The only thing that example points out is importance of capitalization.
  Ain't it great, discussing (and modding discussion about) importance of grammar while knowing fuck all about grammar in the first place.
Grammar is Extremely Important! by El+Fantasmo · 2012-07-09 00:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

Let's eat Grandma!
or
Let's eat, Grandma!
Yes, grammar is still very important.
No, really, it doesn't - trust me by argStyopa · 2012-07-09 01:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you believe that it's ok to use tweetspeak and such in emails and electronic communication for business, etc. - then please, be my guest.
I sincerely doubt that any amount of persuasion from me is going to convince the people who already do this to change their habits. On the contrary, I invite people to use WHATEVER language they feel is appropriate in their communications with management, coworkers, and customers.
When I get your email, I'll treat you with the respect and professionalism it appears to deserve, and I look forward to watching your progress in the workplace/marketplace.

--
-Styopa
Grammar yes, however... by ChunderDownunder · 2012-07-09 01:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

Grammar checkers can die a miserable death.
I turned off MS Word's after too many false positives such as eliminating the passive voice - I don't need some bullshit rule telling me my thoughts are invalid.
Brain bandwidth by goodmanj · 2012-07-09 01:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

Bear with me if this seems offtopic at first: Reading and writing are powerful not just because they store things permanently, but because they amplify the speed of communication. I can read five times faster than I can listen to someone talk. (This is one reason why video blogs, Youtube howtos, and other videos which are nothing but people talking are so annoying: it's frustrating to wait for someone to flap their mouthparts to make ideas come out, when I could get those same ideas much faster if they'd written them down.)
So reading is like a high-speed downlink to the brain. BUT, it only works if the author has taken the time to spell and use grammar properly. I can still read badly-written text, but puzzling it out slows me down, to the speed someone can talk, or worse. There's a tradeoff here: it takes a little more time for someone to write something down, and write it properly. But that pays dividends each time someone reads it, and with the exception of PhD theses, anything worth reading is read by multiple people. So if you make a video message instead of writing, or you don't take the time to write properly, what you're telling me is that your time is more valuable than mine. So don't be surprised if I'm insulted at your arrogance.
We seem to be heading toward a postliterate society. I have no problem with losing the art of writing per se: the problem is that by losing *reading*, we lose the single biggest accelerator of human thought ever invented. You've heard of the "last mile" problem: this is the "last two feet" problem. In a world where data flows through wires faster and faster, the last hop from screen to brain is getting slower and slower as we lose the art of writing well.
Now, all of this is only true if everyone reads faster than they can listen to someone talk. Sadly, that's not the case. The problems of a postliterate society are invisible to people who aren't all that literate to begin with.
I'm sorry! by thePowerOfGrayskull · 2012-07-09 01:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

Can't... help... myself...

..and Grammar affect the quality...
There. FTFY.
Ahhh. Better now.
The thesis by ceoyoyo · 2012-07-09 01:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

So the thesis for the "no" side is that grammar matters less now that writing has become a much more important day-to-day communication medium.
That makes perfect sense.
A typo is not the same as "bad grammar" by brunes69 · 2012-07-09 02:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

Reading the first 100 comments on this post, I don't think a single person actually clicked-through to see the actual story and Google+ post being referenced.
The mistake is not a case of "bad grammar" *AT ALL*. It is a simple typo and is totally obvious to anyone reading it. I make typos in tweets and posts all the time - sometimes the spell-check catches them, sometimes it does not. A typo is not "bad grammar", it is a simple mistake.
It isn't the end of the universe because it's not a professional document.