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Does Grammar Matter Anymore?
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?"
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.
Just like size matters, it depends on the context.
Some good examples:
"Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector."
"My interests include: cooking dogs, reading, poetry, fishing and music."
"Goats cheese salad ingredients: lettuce, tomato, goats, cheese"
"Butcher's sign: Try our sausages. None like them."
Of course there is always engrish.
Silence is a state of mime.
Several psychological studies (the earliest and most quoted I am aware of, being by Albert Mehrabian) list the actual words and grammar used in a message as carrying about 7% of the meaning the message recipient picks up in verbal face-to-face conversation. The rest is about 38% tone of voice, and 55% body language.
Written communication, stripped of the tone of voice and body language, means the recipient is relying on only 7% of the normally available information to determine the content and meaning of the message, giving 93% guesswork.
If the message sender includes poor grammar then that 93% guesswork will be compounded by the tendency of the message recipient to make assumptions about the intended message and the relative inability of the recipient to get immediate feedback about the meaning of a specific sentence.
"I don't want nothing from you", and "I don't want anything from you" have grammatically opposite meanings, but in verbal communication are usually taken to mean the same thing, especially with the recipient's ability to query the message and interpret the message sender's tone of voice and body language.
It is easier for a person with bad grammar skills to correctly understand a message from a person with good grammar skills, than for a person with good grammar skills to understand a person with bad grammar skills, but the possibility for misunderstanding is there in both cases.
As for the price of poor grammar, In October 2006, a contract dispute between Canadian cable company Rogers Communications and telephone company Bell Aliant revealed that a misplaced comma can be worth $2 million.
The contract said:
"This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party."
Rogers Communications believed the placement of the second comma stated the contract was good for at least five years, while Bell Aliant said the comma indicated the deal could be terminated before if one year's notice was given.
In the end, Canada's telecommunications commission sided with Bell Aliant. They stated the comma should have been omitted if the contract was intended to last five years in its shortest possible term. As a result, Bell Alliant was able to save over $2 million by ending the deal early.
I am residing in South-East Asia for the last decade or so. You must come here (even for a short holiday) to witness yourself how little natives over here care about English grammar and/or sentence structures. Apparently, there are local dialects such as Singlish (Singaporean English) and Manglish (Malaysian English). Give or take, both dialects are quite similar; and as far as the origins goes, it is direct word-to-word translation of Chinese phrases into English; though they have evolved over time with many more borrowed words and expressions.
Some interesting examples being:
English: "Would you like to join us for lunch now?"
Singlish/Manglish: "You wanna go lunch or not?"
[in a situation you disagree/reject something]
(E): "I do not agree with your suggestion"
(S/M): "Cannot one!"
[giving a lift to your friend]
(E): "I will come and pick you at the library, and drop you at the railway station"
(M): "I fetch you from library, then fetch you back to the station"
Search youtube.. there are plenty of Singlish videos.
Though I find these dialects are an energy efficient way of speaking English, and somewhat amusing to listen; I must confess that I find them nothing more than a nuisance, especially in a professional working environment. I often have communication issues with colleagues who are proficient in these dialects. Most of the time, they do not understand what I am talking about, and gives me strange looks. Then, I happen to run into the problem of misunderstanding instructions from my bosses, now that was pretty bad and costly.
I am finding it difficult to tell natives "Your English sucks!" to their face. Partly because it is rude and such remarks could go down quite horribly. On the other end, they them selves have this high esteem that they speak proper English, since most of them spoken or studied in English medium since a very young age.
Though I admit I am not perfect (after all, English is still my second tongue), I always thrive to write grammatically correct English, even when I am sending a text message. All in all, getting the right message delivered is much important than anything else in any form of communication. It puzzles me why internet age kids do not pay much attention, nor put effort in proper communication skills these days.
Not only an indicator they cared about the message, but that they care about how they present themselves.
Does grooming matter? Does proper attire matter? Does body scent matter? Does posture matter? Does makeup matter?
In a world where more communication is text based rather than face-to-face, I'd suggest grammar matters even more.
(But please don't encourage those who don't value themselves to deceive.)
PS: Even in an MMO grammar and spelling matter, those who can't communicate effectively don't get invited for runs, don't interact as much with others, and don't make the same progress, as those who do, regardless of skill level, ability, and other attributes.
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.
I don't flag it for people because it starts arguments more often than not. That doesn't stop me from cringing when I read e-mail from people who should know better, especially when they're sending out formal notices that really should go through grammar checks before being sent.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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.
You just reminded me of something I haven't seen yet mentioned in this thread: the issue is mostly about depth of use of language.
Some people skate by with communication, misusing idioms, filling their sentences with cliches, not caring whether words are spelled correctly. They don't care, and they don't care if others do it. Why? Because it communicates as much as they're used to communicating.
It's like people living their entire lives by candle light. They see nothing wrong with doing everything in this manner, and can't see why other people get annoyed when they hand them a candle to do some task. They have no grasp that there is a higher resolution available.
Then others do everything under high intensity flood lights. They see the detail of everything around them all the time, whether they need to or not -- expending vast amounts of energy to ensure that they miss nothing. To them this is normal. If they visit someone who only has candles and then presents them with a famous painting to examine, they're insulted that the person thinks so little of them as to present the painting in such bad light. The candle person then gets affronted because their candle "isn't good enough" for the flood light person.
In return, to attempt to explain the situation to the candle person, the flood light person then unexpectedly turns on their portable flood lamp to show the candle person what they're missing... which of course does nothing other than hurt the eyes of the candle person and make everything so bright that nothing is truly visible.
People who take grammar, style, spelling and word choice very seriously tend to do so because to them, saying "a flame can be hot" is vastly different to saying "a flame may be hot". Their internal narrative of the world is much more complex than that of someone who doesn't really understand the difference.
For another illustration, there are some people groups in Central America who have no word for pink. This doesn't bother them; they don't ever have a reason to use the word, as they have no need to differentiate between pink and red in their daily life. Compare that to a graphic artist, who has very specific words for distinct hues and shades of colour. Neither people group is necessarily more intelligent Get them both to look at a pink flower and one will say it is red, while the other will say it is a pale dusty rose with a hint of burnt umber.
The same goes for grammar.
Ooh... another illustration. Imagine what would happen if someone who had never done any computer programming was asked to write something in, say, Python, using as much sample code as they wanted, but having to actually write it out themselves? You can bet that at the least, it would fail due to improper indentation. You can't really say that the compiler is a "python nazi" or that it is elitist or stuck up about the author's use of the language. It just can't understand exactly what is being asked of it, because there are key details missing or too vague to actually understand what is being asked.
Similarly, those who use language lightly generally don't put in as much work as those who plumb the depths of the language, and so aren't tripped up by all the "did they really mean to say that?" moments. They just assume everyone thinks like them and will get their meaning -- where observation clearly shows that even with a precise grammar and lexicon, two people need to use flow control and error correction in their conversation to have any hope of having an approximate comprehension of what is being discussed. But when disparate comprehension is "good enough" for what is actually being attempted, why bother actually trying to understand?
Dead on right. It's all about peers. At a good (top 10) firm I joined, in the first week two senior people asked me to review a) the mail one was about to send, and b) the math in a document. The culture was seriously "we look professional, we do not let mistakes get out into the wild."
Now I'm at a much larger firm. Some of the mail I receive sounds as if it were penned by someone with final stage rabies. Makes me think the author's entire management chain isn't doing its job.