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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?"
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
This discussion is about grammar. Pedantry is three doors down, on the left.
Is that my left or your left?