Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
"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.
Yeah he is being right about criticizing the example being an too long one. Why Jack Kerouac's On-the-Road is stream of conscious flowing but my posts, the ones that have the similar validity of writing or of grammar, are the same quality for some reason make you mad while his wins awards? Society has the double standards if we're going to talk about any of.
My work here is dung.
Yes, it does.
The difference between knowing your shit, and knowing you're shit.
Let's eat Grandma!
or
Let's eat, Grandma!
Yes, grammar is still very important.
It does.
Grammer is meaning less. All your bases are belonging to US now...
Yes it don't matter to anyone not looking to never make any conversation.
Personally I believe proper grammar to be very important, as it's the only way to be absolutely clear as to what the original person intended to say. For instance, this humorous example of why capitalisation is important:
I went to the family farm, and while there helped my uncle Jack off a horse.
Now drop the capital "J".
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
You tell me:
I helped jack off his donkey.
vs.
I helped Jack, off his donkey.
Grammar matters to the extent that it makes a message clear. However Grammar Nazi's care far too much about this stuff. If I start a sentence with 'and' or split an infinitive it doesn't matter at all unless in so doing I make my message unclear.
Same with UK/US spellings, people care far too much about a few letters difference that doesn't affect meaning.
If you wrote a message that no one could understand due to your lack of cpmmunications skills, which includes the poor grammar and spelling you would not make it in this world. People rely on well-written, clear sentences that actually make a point, not gibberish.
Reading comments by internet posters about a story discussing bad grammar on the internet is truly delightful, from a certain point of view!
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.
Oh, look, there's a girl on Slashdot.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Grammar does matter.
It shows quite a lot in general about the writer of any message. Good grammar put into something written shows also the clarity of the idea that needs to be conveyed by the written piece. You can possibly understand that "Me now go home it now is very late" really means "I have to go home now as it is very late for me", but if I saw any of the two on a CV for employee selection, I would definitely consider the later one first.
In japan the importance of language education is on yet another higher level. They use 3 different alphabets there, hiragana, katagana and kanji. The exact same pasage can be written by using hiragana and katagana alone, but also by using all three. The more kanji you throw in, the more it is considered that you are well learned and educated, the more everyone will grant you respect-points.
It is not a matter of feeding your written piece to a spell checker or grammar corrector. This is what this process has succumbed to. The importance of grammar is really what you put into written pieces immediately as you think about it. Correcting yourself with those is always a good thing, but relying on those to fix and covers errors which you know you have in your written piece, that's what will keep you going in the short term of course, but sooner or later your inability to articulate will be discovered. That moment is usually not a very comfortable one.
Not flying happy grammar discuss message deliver clear structure understand.
(NOte: this is not off topic. It's an example of terribly bad grammar. Does it not matter?)
Article is a trollfeed.
I really think that grammar is important. But from what I have noticed in my native language (Spanish), there is also a "non-evolution" of it. Sure, new words are included every day, but there is not evolution to try to make the language and written communication easier. I was hoping someday that the "v" will be deprecated and all words starts using only "b" :)
Grammar is just an aid to clarity- when the two conflict, geek rule is that clarity trumps grammar.
For example, consider the old format:
Helen asked "How do you plan to do that"?
versus the newer:
Helen asked "How do you plan to do that?".
The first form, although "grammatically correct" according to S&W, is ambiguous - did the speaker state that Helen asked a question, or ask if Helen did so? The second form is unabiguous; the speaker states that Helen asked a question.
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 may not be all that important in informal communication, so long as one's message can be understood. There is an accounting manager where I work who has terrible grammar. He also sprinkles his emails with business buzzwords. Consequently, I can never make heads or tails out of what he is trying to convey in his emails, and always have to schedule a face-to-face meeting with him to figure it out.
On the other hand, there are some people I work with who, though they have poor grammar, are still able to make their needs clear. Their grammar gaffes are forgivable because they can still make themselves understood.
Proverbs 21:19
We were told at a young age that grammar is quite important and grammar lessons were drilled into us, which is why we feel the urge to correct other's grammar when we see mistakes. However, grammar is a tool of language, which has the ultimate goal of conveying information. Thus, I'd say grammar is only important so far as it helps convey information. If you can under-stand what I'm saying hear, than grammar is nothing more then a miled annoyance.
....Grammar does not matter anymore. Who the heck needs a good spelling knowledge when you own the best smartphone/tablet/mobile shit in the world? C'mon....
This is a good post because last week I pointed out how grammar doesn't really matter any more. Now don't get me wrong, there is a time and a place for proper writing style but in most of the day to day activity we deal with it just doesn't matter.
For instance if I make some spelling mistakes, use the wrong form of there or to and don't use comma's you'll still understand what I wrote. If what I just mentioned would throw you for such a loop it would make my writing unreadable then the issue isn't the author is the literacy of the reader. Grammar exists to help give hints or clues on how the author intends for his works to be understood, even with out good grammar in 99.999% of all cases you get along just fine as long as they use the common period.
So this leads to an interesting point, most of communication today is quick one off remarks and tweets and one liners and etc.... Nothing that requires full blown public technical document level standards. To this regard grammar is dead, when it comes into play is when the written work has to matter, such as a big public technical document, until then just write and leave it.
"I's in ur tweets, correctins ur grammers, I mean, I'm in your tweets, correcting your grammar."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If it is a blog article, news-paper column, term paper, or anything of semi-importance then yes otherwise it doesn't matter. Come one people let's use some common sense here. Tweets are supposed to be peoples thoughts that they share with everyone via the twitter website. So, do you think in grammatically correct sentences? If not then leave the guy the hell alone! :P
I'm going to have to go through every comment and correct everyone's grammar now?
Yes it does. We should strive to have proper grammar no matter how unimportant our written work may be. We don't need a slippery slope into a degradation of our grammar. Okay, so maybe I'm a bit of a grammar snob. And I am far from perfect in terms of my grammar. But if you have time to think about what you're going to write, as opposed to having a live conversation, what's the harm in taking a few minutes to make sure it's better than "okay"? Oh, there's also a need to read what you type before hitting submit. It's easier to catch typos that way.
I typed the offending sentence into Word, which pointed out that there was a problem with the word "be." I right-clicked the offending word and it suggested "are". So, according to MS Word, the correct sentence should have read: "There also we are some other great keynotes beginning at 10am on the same page."
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
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.
Oh Lordy.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As of late I've been noticing and commenting to friends about a growing disregard for spelling, grammar, and proper English as a whole. In school I was taught to never use contractions when writing a "professional" piece; I see that constantly now. I was also taught to avoid "familiar" language and colloquialisms, to spell out any number ten or lower, and things like this. It seems to me that "Tweetspeak" and shorthand common to texting and Facebook messaging are now considered acceptable to journalism editors, particularly online.
Has this caught anybody else's attention?
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.
Are we talking about the mob boss or a panda?
Grammar still matters. Even Kelsey Grammer still matters to someone, somewhere.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
When I read text, I am evaluating the spelling and grammar of the text, subconsciously determining the quality of the message. If the content was important, the author would have paid more attention while composing the text. If, while composing the text, the author does not feel it deserves his full attention, why should the text be given my full attention?
Does anyone else have something to add?
Example.. This person sent the following to the entire company.
"Hello my name is Xxxxxx Xxxx and I work in the lab and was wondering if u knew n e 1 that's selling a car because my transmititon went out on me and I have a 14 month old lil girl and we're new to Iowa and not too familure with the town. So if u can please help I would appreciate it thank u"
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Grammar matters if you don't want to appear an utter clodpate. If anything, it keeps people from putting your message immediately into the trash. A bad idea wrapped up in good grammar will survive longer than a good idea written in gibberish.
Also, it keeps from being misunderstood.
"Let's eat, Grandma!"
Is far different from
"Let's eat Grandma!"
And to finish my message, any grammar checker tool is only as good as the person wielding it.
--
BMO
Grammar only matters to a point because English grammar is an antiquated inconsistent mess of silliness whose chief purpose is keeping English teachers employed. Many great minds over the past few centuries have argued that grammar does not matter. Seymour Papert cites studies showing that children who are good at math can be turned off to English because its rules are illogical and inconsistent. Isaac Asimov blamed our inconsistent grammar and spelling system for illiteracy in America. Richard Feynman argued that if kids are having problems with grammar and spelling then there are problems with your grammar and spelling standards. Benjamin Franklin proposed a phonetic spelling system arguing that our current alphabetic spelling system would become like Chinese characters, devoid of an phonetic meaning if we did not implement reform. China implemented spelling reform to simplify its characters in order to improve literacy with quantifiable results.
I'm approaching this as someone who majored in English in college before going into programming. I couldn't get a job working for a newspaper because the editors would take one look at my BA and say, "Sorry. You know how to write." It took me years to understand what they were talking about. Grammar is important to the point of being able to properly communicate ideas, but that's all. Grammar-nazism is all about job security for elitist journalists and English teachers at the expense of increasing literacy in America. It's like the imperial/metric debate or qwerty/dvorak keyboards, just another out-of-date standard that could be fixed in one generation if that generation could get over the fact that "through," "coo," "do," "true," "knew," and "queue" all rhyme nonsensically but spelling them "throo," "koo," "doo," "troo," "nyoo," and "kyoo" simply looks silly despite being logical.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
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.
The real problem here is that a lot of "proper" grammar comes from 18 hundred prescriptive grammar books made by people who believed English should be more like latin and sold to people who wanted to sound more upper class.
This gives 2 problems:
1) English is not latin and forcing latin rules is the kind of tedious nonsense up with which no one should put.
2) In order to sell more prescriptive grammars more rules had to be added. Why buy "101 essential rules for speaking proper English" when there is a 202 book from a competing publisher?
It turns out that proper English rules such as "My friend and I" instead of "Me and my friend" are not just improper English, it's improper any human language, yet it is being forced upon us as "proper" grammar.
Source: The language instinct.
Can't... help... myself...
..and Grammar affect the quality...
There. FTFY.
Ahhh. Better now.
How dare you say that Grammar doesn't matter. My Grampa will want a word with you.
If you are a British English user the Microsoft grammar checker will make thing worse, telling you to "fix" things to the American grammatical constructs. Things like the use of "that" or "which", organisations treated as singular, etc. are not fixed for British English.
"Albeit an rather long example of one,"
That should be "a rather". If you're going to make a comment about poor grammar, shouldn't you grammar check yourself?
Grammar is important. When you are a young child and you go to school you learn grammar so you are capable of writing as an alternate form of communication. If you take grammar lightly and do not care what is written and why it should be correct, it impresses upon those around you that you hold no respect for the language you communicate to others. I've seen some wonderful examples in this stream of /. posts that point out how the context of a sentence may change when missing a comma.
Have you ever had to try to read a paragraph from a person where there is little to no capitalization, virtually no punctuation and misspelled words throughout the paragraph? I have had this unfortunate experience. It is terribly exhausting.
I have a sibling, who finished high school, who would have written my first paragraph this way. (See Below)
grammer is impotent when u r a yung child an you go too school u lern gramer so u ar capable of riting as an alternat form of comunicashun if you tak gramer litely and do no car whut is riten an y it shuld be correct it impreses upon thos around u tha u hold no respect for the languge you comunicate to others i've seens sum wunderful egzamples in this streem of /. posts that point out the contaxt of a sentance my change whn mising a comma
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
If you're writing for a professional purpose, having good grammar shows attention to detail. If you can't show you have paid attention to detail on this small thing, I'll assume you didn't pay attention on the things that mattered.
If you're writing fiction, if I notice patterns in the writing (like poor grammar), I'll start paying attention to them instead of the narrative flow. This is a bad thing.
If you're writing to a person, consider what impression you want them to have on you. Good grammar / complicated words may not be necessary. Or they might be very necessary. See http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-849/ .
... and today's pet project has
Anymore and nowadays. Special thanks to Philadelphia (origin of "This car needs cleaned") for slowly spreading the virus of using "anymore" when "nowadays" should be used. It's taking over the country. Ten yrs, you'd never hear a headline like this. It should be "Does grammar even matter nowadays?"
Complete nonsense. The interrogative usage appears to be standard based on its OED entry (1a). What you're thinking of is the fact that "anymore" is generally considered a negative polarity item, which requires an interrogative or negative context to license its use (example: "Clothes are expensive anymore," meaning "...nowadays," acceptable only in certain dialects; compare with "I can't afford clothes anymore," a negative context which should be fine for everyone--except, of course, nutty prescriptivists who recite "rules" that are completely baseless and which they themselves often don't understand).
Even in the regional or colloquial, non-NPI context there's nothing "wrong" about it--in fact, it appears to be standard in Irish English. For what it's worth, the OED dates this usage back to at least the 1800s--certainly not within the last decade, and not originating in Philadelphia. But most importantly, what is part of the "standard" variety is completely arbitrary (and perhaps even somewhat abstract). There is nothing inherently wrong with the use of "anymore" to mean "nowadays," even if you don't accept it as part of the "standard" variety.
R.Mo
If Grammar mattered, MS Word wouldn't default to US English on UK installs! The Queen is most displeased!
Jonathanjk.com
Notice there's no creditable defense, that grammar isn't necessary, in privately comprehensible chat drivel.
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.
The English language is a hodgepodge of inconsistent and somewhat nonsensical rules. For example, "To boldly go where no man has gone before" (Split infinitive) vs. "To go boldly go where no man has gone before" (Equally bombastic, but grammatically correct).
Grammar and punctuation rules should be followed where they make sense. In a 140 character tweet, they are sensibly dispensed with (Oopsie! Preposition at the end of a sentence).
But don't get me started on spelling and semantic redundancy. (Gasp! Beginning a word with "But" or "And!")
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I believe that the importance of grammar in text is proportional to the number of consumers of that text. Poor grammar slows down the reader, so if something is going to be read by many people, it is probably worth the extra time to get the grammar correct as the smooth reading benefit, requiring less time to read and digest, will be multiplied across all the readers and if there are enough readers, this more than compensates for the time required by the author to write a grammatically correct message.
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.
Why advertise sloppiness?
People mite not trulie appreciate your sloppyness if you dont advertise it.
I hate it when people use "u" to say "you".
If your words aren't worth your own time, don't expect me to waste my time on it either.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I saw Sally in a red shirt with a telescope.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
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.
English is not a strongly structured language. That is why there is an entire discipline called Structured English.
Its a language used for communication between people. People are smart the brain is flexible. The stand that should operate for obedience to spelling and grammar rules is "Can the recipient understand the message content completely and correctly without the effort required to interpret the message distracting from the message." or so said my high-school English teacher.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Anymore is correct in this usage. It means "any longer". Something did happen, and now it doesn't. "You don't need to wash the car anymore, we are getting a new one soon." There is a comparison to the past. The philly usage, on the other hand, is using it to compare with the future, or as a simple time indicator, like in place of "now" or "lately" or "from now on". "You need to start washing your hair anymore." or "Is grammar irrelevant anymore?"
Sadly I'm old enough to remember the phrase as "What you talkin' 'bout Willis?"
I think that's even worse than your recollection...
"Hello my name is Xxxxxx Xxxx ...
Wow, he must be the guy who owns the brewery.
I hate it when people use "u" to say "you".
y do u?
I'd avoid using "anymore" at all. It's a relatively new word (you won't find it in a 30 year old paper dictionary) and it adds nothing because it means exactly the same as the two words "any more" meant before. Compare this with, for instance, "everyday" and "every day". "everyday" is often mis-used, but it does at least have a different meaning from "every day". "He went to visit his mother every day." "He went shopping for everyday provisions." John
You would think that the WSJ, being a leading business publication, would have made the point that once you get to court there's no such thing as informal e-mail. In that situation, it's not a hallway conversation, it's a discoverable document. And those messages can get you in serious trouble. For example, Microsoft's "cut off Netscape's air supply" enjoyed a prominent place in the judge's order (later overturned) to break up the company.
Haha, no. Desktop apps like Word are for producing formal documents, which includes helping to limit human error. Google apps are based around Google's task of handling a range of input, from the formal to the informalist of the informal. It's about content production, vs. content handling. As much as Google branches out into social networking and whatever, they're still about content handling, not content production.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
The penis mightier than the sword...
Never confuse law with justice, nor religion with morality.
Trying to type on a mobile device is annoying. The auto correct features can sometimes be more embarrassing than just a simple misspelling. I sometimes text/email friends with shortened forms of words, or abbreviations and misspellings, but I don't send professional correspondences out that way. I take the extra time to make things, well, more professional.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Here are some examples of bad grammar that I see all the time from native speakers. It doesn't matter what country they went to school in, I still see them.
.
1) The belief that "could of"/"coulduv" or "should of"/"shoulduv" are real words instead of "could've" and "should've"
2) The belief that "prolly" is a real word and that "probably" is a made up one. My nephew, who is currently attending college and is genuinely smarter that average, told me that. He claimed that he had never in his life seen "probably".
3) The belief that any time a speaker is puzzled or surprised by something that he or she can just put a question mark at the end of it. For example, "That was the biggest dog I ever saw in my life?" is an example of what now passes for a question. This has become so prevalent on the internet that now even non-native speakers of English with excellent English comprehension have picked it up.
After talking with recent high school graduates (I live in the USA) I have learned that high schools don't teach grammar any more and at best the last time a kid maybe got a grammar lesson was in the 8th grade. I've decided that we're probably at most a few years away from college papers being somewhat similar to mobile telephone messages in terms of spelling and grammar.
Good grammar (and spelling) is the protocol for human communication.
Since there is redundancy and words like "is & are" when a mistake is made the rest of the sentence can be used to reconstruct the true meaning.
If we don't follow the standard, then there is increased processing needed to interpret the communication, which is unfair to the recipient.
Yes, it does.
What a stupid question. Of course grammar matters, but the comparison is stupid. Tweets or chat messages are todays equivalent of verbal speech and the rules are relaxed there. In spoken conversations, people of a certain standing still look out for proper grammar and more, but for most people, spoken and written language are slightly different. That some written language now uses spoken language form does not change that. Business letters won't contain Twitter language for a while to come, and I wouldn't suggest trying to apply for a good job with SMS language.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
me donT caRe 4 grmmr. pnuctuatoin too. dont Worry abt seplling either. eef ewe kant git it eet ees yor prblem,.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I weren't no good at grammer and speling niether.
I'm a linguistically confused guy who grew up with a language with grammar (German) and moved to a country with a language where context is everything (Norwegian). Go ahead, criticize my English grammar (which btw. is borrowed/stolen from each and every one of the European languages... well, except finnish and hungarian).
Fun fact: for quite some versions, the Norwegian spellchecker in Microsoft products was written/maintained in Finland, and the quality was as you'd expect :)
Find what percentage of people arguing "grammar does not matter anymore" write perfectly formed full sentences with correct spelling and the percentage of people who defend the importance of grammar make typos and grammar mistakes.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
1) If you want to be understood. Can you imagine a judge issuing a decision in a case with bad grammar? It only inspires hundreds of unnecessary future cases, to litigate "what the judge really meant." Grammar represents the social rules of how literate people communicate. And, intentional violation of grammatical rules is the stuff of art: You represent the school teacher in a novel by giving their lines grammatical correctness; you represent the village idiot with the LACK of good grammar. Legal documents, professional publications, technical manuals are all most productive of positive outcomes when writter within the accepted grammatical rules of the language. See "Strunk & White." (And, yes, grammar changes over time, which is why so many people fail to appreciate Shakespeare in the original.) 2) If you want to be perceived as credible. Ah kin skribble to mah kin, but do you think those are the words of someone you'd trust to invest in? Business plans, project proposals, provocative ideas, scientific papers are rejected by readers if the authors' text is ungrammatical, because they project the writer's image as one with little reasoning power (with Mark Twain and WIll Rogers as credible exceptions, because of the obvious intentionality behind the text), and therefore render the entire text as unreliable. Imagine where Higgs' Boson would be if Einstein had--despite writing in other than his native tongue--written in poor grammatical form, Would it even have a name? So, argue against rules of grammar all you want, make fun of the grammatically accomplished...and live your life impoverished in the process. --Carol Anne
Until the following two lines have the same meaning, grammar will be important:
"I helped my Uncle Jack off a horse"
"I helped my Uncle jack off a horse"
Correct grammar is the difference between helping your uncle Jack off a horse, and helping your uncle jack off a horse.
& what U B saying 2 me B4 I care...
Blame Twitter twits...
Whether people think it is fair or not, I judge them by how they speak. Sloppy grammar implies a lack-of-concern for correctness, and possibly a sloppy education. I don't want such people working for me, so I don't hire them. I also don't do business with vendors who seem unprofessional, and the grammar their representatives use is part of my evaluation criteria.
I agree - grammar changes, new words appears and old words are slowly being forgotten. That's the evolution of language. The English we hear and speak today isn't the same as the English used in the 19th century - even though we would be able to communicate with a person from that era.
And with the language while other kinds of evolution of the language starts in closed groups that suddenly become mainstream some evolution comes by experimenting. (Intentionally messed up with Talk like Yoda.)
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
This is still one of my favorite fortunes when logging in...walked through it the first time to see if it made sense, now I just laugh when I see it...
"Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?"
Yes, my sense of humor is that simple...
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
If you want me to take you seriously.
C|N>K
Let me correct the "preposition at the end" problem for you - "...clarity of communications and the perception of competency, are..." - add on ", you fucking asswipe!". There - all better!
The point isn't that people make mistakes or spelling errors or whatever - it's that they don't recognize is grammatically wrong and when it's pointed out to them they either don't care or get angry that you pointed out their mistake. IOW they are not able to admit they made a mistake or unable or unwilling to correct it. And you're pretty sure future mistakes will also happen. They are "proud" of their ignorance and should properly be ridiculed.
Since when is "are" a preposition?
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
The folks who say "what you mean is what matters, not how you say it" are of the same crowd as the "all religions are true" sillies. Grammar and syntax always matter; and the proof can be found in other disciplines besides ordinary language that employ grammar/syntax (music's a big one, another is, um, coding). One side benefit of attention to grammar, spelling, and syntax: it inspires thought and review of one's work, which can in turn inspire reflection and prevent hitting the Send button when it would mean "Send invitation to disaster/embarrassment/major conflict". That point made, the writer's reminder (in the CBS article) about not calling a person out in public about grammatical errors also applies to the well-known grammar trolls of the online world. When I see such a problem in an online posting, I look for a way to DM or otherwise privately contact the author rather than pollute the comments bin with some gotcha nonsense. People shouldn't be attacked, humiliated, or even blamed for poor grammar: it isn't very well taught because it isn't very well valued in the culture. And that's the fault neither of email, texting, or smartphones. Grammar can be very easy and attractive to teach if there is commitment and if it's done the right way; there are many models to hold up, especially for kids. Some of the soundest writing, both technically and artistically (they do go together) can be found in the works of J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter). Years ago I applied for a job in the NYC Public Schools and offered exactly that as my pitch to them: teach grammar and syntax for an entire term straight from the Potteriad. They weren't interested.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
First an example from AI (gramatically correct I think):
And next a story by a mr. Howard L. Chace, you can get the whole story here: http://www.justanyone.com/allanguish.html
Ladle Rat Rotten Hut
WANTS PAWN TERM DARE WORSTED LADLE GULL HOE LIFT wetter murder inner ladle cordage honor itch offer lodge, dock, florist. Disk ladle gull orphan worry Putty ladle rat cluck wetter ladle rat hut, an fur disk raisin pimple colder Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.
Wan moaning Ladle Rat Rotten Hut's murder colder inset.
"Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, heresy ladle basking winsome burden barter an shirker cockles. Tick disk ladle basking tutor cordage offer groin-murder hoe lifts honor udder site offer florist. (...)
It's marvellous. Cave lupus, though (or whatever is the imperativus form of lupus; lupem?).
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I just want to ask if anyone else cringes when "verbiage" is used when the intent was "wording"?
I'm frequently asked to "insert the following verbiage..." for web sites, letters etc for customers.
I doubt they'd appreciate someone describing there wording as verbal garbage.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And they all under the veil of Anonymous Coward.
New Economic Perspectives
Apple has at least 20 years of prior art to fall back on here. While it didn't always work exceedingly well, I clearly remember telling the Mac in my high school library's material office (where us helper rats did things like laminate posters for teachers) things like "Marie, run Myst," and a minute later, hearing the opening theme play.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
The only reasonable reply to this would be something along the lines of:
I am most contrite, good sir, but I know no soul that one may name N. E. the First. Perchance you may bestow further minutiae to aid into attaining your objective?
If someone is lazy enough not to learn how to correctly form a proper sentence, they are likely lazy enough to do a crappy job at their other responsibilities. As a hiring manager for a global company, I check grammar in resumes and applications as well as speech during interviews. I don't want to have an employee unable to properly communicate with other regional offices or any publicly-facing entity as a representative of the company.
Grammar seems to have become a lost art to an entire generation. Good luck to them, but I'm not hiring any of them.
"There *IS* no patch for stupidity" -www.sqlsecurity.com
IE8 (forced to use it at work) has no built-in spell checker; every other browser I use does. Microsoft, heal thyself.
Yes, but only to the educated.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Unless I know the person and they're rushing because it's not important, bad grammar and spelling = unintelligent person and nothing will change that. I'm only 25 years old too so it's not exactly an old opinion to have developed.
Yes.
For a simple and short email without much importance, this can be ok and therefore in such message, you can accept some mistakes, as long as it does not distract too much.
However, for a report on something important, I expect the writer to review the text, by preference on paper (given that some types of issues are less obvious on screen). He should reread it to see if he did not forget things, to check if his line of reasoning is clearly explained, if results are correctly represented, figures are printed as they should, etc, ...
If he is doing that work, it is only a small additional step to also correct the spelling and grammar errors. I never see reports which are excellent, apart from grammar and spelling. The reports with a lot of grammatical errors always also show other problems.
There is only one exception to the rule above: reports written in English by non-native speakers.
The only people that want to think it doesn't matter are either illiterates or Republican who think schools should be funded from pennies out of a water fountain.
There is nothing wrong with making a mistake in tweets or comments on forums but for a business having mistakes on their sites. It just makes me think you cut corners and don't care about quality fullstop.
For example: http://www.google.com/nexus/#/galaxy/features
A little over half way down is a heading that says "People everywere". It' been that way since the site launched and it's been talked about on the web and yet Google can't be fucked to fix it.
It just reminds me of all those Android bugs that lasted between numerous version. For a bunch of people that are supposedly the smartest of the smart, they do a pretty shoddy job, imo. So that's why I don't buy Android goods and more and I am transitioning off their web products. I can only assume if quality matters so little elsewhere then who knows how god their web security is. I'm not going to risk it.
The following is a question asked on a forum I watch;
plzz explain.....what is d dieffrence between both of this statement.....
public static List method(List input)
public static List method(List input)
wats d difference btwn both of dem(part before method(List input))......if anyone know.....please explain....
The writer had to work to write this poorly and a reader will have to work to decode it. In the end, all it did was agitate forum members and the writer's question was never answered. If you want help then do not make me work needlessly to help you. By the way, this was is not from a hacker site.
To me it is a matter of respect. Does the writer respect himself enough to write his thoughts and questions clearly and concisely and respect the reader enough to simplify his job? The above writer fails on both points.
Reading these replies is like viewing engrish.com with lynx.
Without grammar *of some sort* our ability to communicate would be hobbled. You'd be able to point to a mammoth and say "big!", but nobody could be absolutely sure whether you meant "The girls back at the cave will be impressed when we bring that home!" or "Better pass on this one, he'll kick our ass!"
Most of what we call "ungrammatical" is just non-standard grammar; it is neither consistently better nor consistently worse than standard grammar. African American Vernacular English has a "habitual be" construct missing in Standard American English: "He be taking her to the Friday dance," doesn't mean the same thing as "He *is* taking her to the Friday dance," it means that "He takes her to the Friday dance every week." Oddly enough, SAE while lacking a present tense habitual mood has a *past tense* habitual mood: "He used to take her to the Friday dance."
Their are two reasons to write in standard or prestige dialect. The first is to demonstrate your education, as in a job application cover letter. The second is that sometimes the standard usage is more clear.Consider, "Mary loved Ted more than me." This sets of a lot of muddle headed argument about whether "than" is a preposition and thus takes the objective pronoun ("me"), or a conjunction and thus requires a subject pronoun ("... than I", is short for "... than I do."). In the dictionary "than" is classified as both a conjunction and a preposition -- along with many other words. The problem with this sentence is ambiguity. It's not clear whether Mary loves Ted more than she loves *me*, or whether Mary loves Ted more than *I* love Ted. In the latter case I should write, "Mary loves Ted more than I."
There's no good solution for saying "Mary loves Ted more than she loves me," in a more compact form, because informal speech uses "me" both ways. You have to figure it out from context. I tend to think that "Mary loves Ted more than me," compares her feelings for Ted and for me, but few people would parse the sentence "Mary drinks more Diet Coke than me," the same way. Humans use grammar plus context to understand what's being said.
So, write so that your meaning is as precise as possible without sounding strange. Most often applying the rules of standard grammar will result in more precise writing, although there are times where you'll prefer commonplace grammar that's less precise. Writing fictional dialog is one example. It's more important to make people sound spontaneous than to make them sound correct.
Also be aware that grammatical rules are subject to misapplication. For example the rules say you can't end a sentence with a preposition, and "over" is a preposition, but the sentence "When I read the promotion list I discovered that I'd been passed over," is perfectly grammatical. The reason is that "over" doesn't function as a preposition, it's part of the phrasal verb "passed over". Nonetheless, many misguided grammar prigs would correct that sentence.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The English language is currently suffering from far greater problems with its grammar, and since its spelling has always been somewhat arbitrarily related to its pronunciation, anyway, it's far more malleable, and not so much of a problem, as the more fundamental problem(s) we currently have with the language as a whole.
We have a FAR more fundamental problem underpinning everything else within the English language (at least):
The (most) basic rule(s) of English grammar are not even fully recognised and understood in the first place. If the STUDY of (our) language is not fully consistent with its USE, that is then used as the basis of its TEACHING - how can we expect people to use it consistently if not being taught any better?
Since the most basic rule of English grammar forms the basis and context for everything else - (from parts of speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speech) to punctuation, tense and plurality etc.) - to exist, without understanding this, we're merely causing more problems instead of solving them.
The reason for the problem is extremely simple - we're basing our perception and understanding of (this) language upon its study - the act of studying it - rather than its use - (the act of using it).
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DarrenTomlyn/20110311/6174/Contents_NEW.php
'Stupidity is an often fatal disease' - R. A. Heinlein
What I don't get is that Word is a horrible spellchecker. I don't know how many time I try to respell something multiple times just to try and get word to catch it, give up, type it in Google, and have it say "Do you mean..." and get it first try.
As far as spell checking goes I think Google has Microsoft beat easy. In fact I would bet in the future (may exist now, I don't use Google Docs much) that all spell checking will be done using online search tools and not a built in stand alone dictionary... Hell there are plenty of words that just don't exist in the standard Word dictionary, and you have to learn it, unless you have a new install or a different PC, etc and then you have to start all over again.
So yeah if I was Google I would slap Microsoft across its dirty face for such a comment...
"Albeit an rather long example of one"
it makes you look like an idiot.
You know what else you won't find in a 30-year-old paper dictionary? "Ninja." I know this because I tried to play that word in scrabble against my grandmother a while back. Oddly, she knew enough to ask, "You mean like those turtles?" but she refused to believe it was an actual word, and her dictionary failed to back me up.
Quite possibly the dictionary would actually be pushing 50 these days, now that I think about it, because that may have been a couple of decades ago, and it was old then.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
If the rules of language didn't matter, then it'd be complete chaos. I could just commencer à parler en français à la place de l'anglais si ça me chante. Pourquoi pas?
What a ridiculous notion. Stop being dumb and lazy and learn (most of) the rules of your first language, at the very least, please.
I'm not such a grammar nazi that I'll ridicule you and stop listening to you if you break even the most unnoticeable, obscure and confusing rules... But if you mix up your and you're, you will just vanish from my perception of reality altogether. You are the weakest link, goodbye!
Does it matter in what way? Rest assured that (Fo sho) the grammar coming out of the CEO of Barclay's Bank is still of the finest order (hot shit). Because those with the most to win or lose always make themselves as "acceptable" as possible (wrap themselves in a pretty package)(project a finished persona). Which is why politicians move away from newsies when they wanna vent their real feelings.
Those who are engaged in (is dishin) looser or informal conversation (da shiznit) can relax a bit (hang loose).
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
A favorite diatribe of mine by Stephen Fry, regarding grammar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY
In Google we trust.
Simple as that!
As far as I know, there are more European languages that don't have gendered nouns than just English. For example, Finnish doesn't have gendered nouns (even pronouns don't have gender and that is why Finns often forget that in English you have to choose between "he" or "she").
And at least for me, German language has seemed always easier than English, although my English skills are much better as I don't have that much need for German language skills. German language seems to be more regular, mapping between writing and pronunciation is quite regular and as a Finn, I am not afraid of long compound words as we have them too.
Most of the time when people point out "incorrect grammar" on the internet they're actually pointing out incorrect punctuation.
For example:
"Your holding it wrong" = incorrect punctuation (i.e. read it out loud, it's still 'makes sense');
vs.
"She run home" = incorrect grammar (i.e. read out loud and it's obviously wrong).
So when you think you're being a "Grammar Nazi" on the internet, you're probably, actually trying to be a Punctuation Nazi. Don't mistake the wood for the trees; the metaphor for the message and orthography rules for the language rules. It's actually the other way around.
And that is the difference between a CEO and a loser?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yes. End of discussion.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
Anything that can be said, can be said clearly. There are still a few who care about the difference
between "your" and "you're", (and yes, I put my comma AFTER the quotation mark).
What is it about Americans and their incessant need to appear (if not actually be) stupid? Students
in so many other countries grab every chance they get to improve themselves and learn, yet here
having a smart phone seems to be an adequate substitute for a good education.
Let's hope that our decline isn't sped along by laziness, apathy and ignorance. Embrace learning, not
for political correctness, but simply so that your message may be understood without question.
Example.. This person sent the following to the entire company. "Hello my name is Xxxxxx Xxxx and I work in the lab and was wondering if u knew n e 1 that's selling a car because my transmititon went out on me and I have a 14 month old lil girl and we're new to Iowa and not too familure with the town. So if u can please help I would appreciate it thank u"
its strange he used 'k' in 'knew'. and 'be' before 'cause. I do appreciate his/her usage of 'u' instead of 'you'. It shows this person is embracing the new english language options we are all in the process of making. The sooner written language reflects a phonetic version of speech... the sooner we will begin to benefit from the massively parallel mind that is online collaboration.
ME GORAK. ME USE NO GRAMMAR.
Your sig is dangerously thought-provoking.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Is that an issue of grammar or punctuation?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Did you come up with that yourself?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Strunk and White is full of arbitrary rules dreamed up to sell the book itself. Should a self-appointed arbiter be abided by?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
my Grammar is sadly long gone, soon after my Grampar. I miss them both.
I like my spaghetti with source.
I think that would be a better title for this article.
"If you don't bother to read your emails, why should I?"
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.