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Study Says People Who Continually Point Out Typos Are 'Jerks'
HughPickens.com writes: Sophie Kleeman, writes at Gizmodo that according to a study at the University of Michigan people who are more sensitive to written typos and grammatical errors are indeed the kinds of 'Type A assholes' everyone already suspects them to be. Researchers gathered 83 people and had them read emails that either contained typos ("mkae" or "abuot"), grammar errors (to/too, it's/its or your/you're), or no spelling mistakes at all. Participants were asked at the end of the experiment whether or not they'd spotted any grammatical errors or typos in the emails, and, if so, how much it had bothered them. The researchers then asked the participants to complete a Big Five personality assessment -- which rates where they are on a scale of openness, agreeableness, extraversion/introversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness -- as well as answer questions about their age, background, and attitude towards language. People who tested as being more conscientious but less open were more sensitive to typos, while those with less agreeable personalities got more upset by grammatical errors. "Less agreeable participants showed more sensitivity to 'grammos' than participants high in agreeability," the researchers said, "perhaps because less agreeable people are less tolerant of deviations from convention."
Is something stupid people do to hedge their bets
- Rick
Nothing more annoying than someone who cannot handle a simple typo - as the old saying goes, consistant spelling is the hallmark of a weak mind.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For obvious reasons :)
Is it April 1st already somewhere on the planet? Crap.
I don't respond to or upvote ACs
Misuse of to/too, there/their/they're, your/you're, etc is ignorance. There's a difference.
How's that for pointing out errors?
That's weird, I always thought of myself as "Type B". I point out typos to help educate. I'll be damned if I put ending punctuation inside parentheses though (example: suck it).
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
If these conclusions rest upon the Big Five personality test, then they rest upon unfounded, unscientific cultural assumptions. Big Five axiomatically assumes extraversion = healthy and introversion = pathological.
So, I call bullshit on this whole deal.
The only reason someone would even do this study is because they have some personal issue having their spelling corrected. Nobody else would even think of it much less care to spend time on it.
I knew a guy with colon cancer who ended up in a comma.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
They may be perceived as "disagreeable assholes" by the illiterate, but they are still right.
And no, I don't think, a study mixing typos (like "mkae" instead of "make") with illiteracy ("your" instead of "you're") is actually valid.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I suspect this has to do with personalities that tend to favor order, logic, and organization, something that's obviously beneficial to programming or engineering, but could be a hindrance when dealing with messy and unpredictable human interpersonal relationships. As a programmer myself, seeing typos and grammatical errors tends to trigger something in my brain that screams "that's not correct - it needs fixing!" in the same way a crookedly hung painting will irritate people who strive to create a sense of order in their environment.
Of course, general social awareness prevents me from reacting too negatively to things like simple typos, but there are some people who simply don't have those sort of brain-to-mouth social filters. If you've never worked with someone like that, you know how awkward or unpleasant it can be unless you've got an *extremely* tolerant personality - which I'd admit I probably don't have.
I'd imagine our brains have evolved to recognize patterns and draw our attention to things that break those patterns, because in nature such a thing has a high probability of being either be interesting or dangerous. I think this could theoretically explain why bugs on streaming videos (logos overlaid in the corner of the video screen) tend to bother me more than most people - my brain recognizes it as something "different" and so it constantly draws my attention away from the content of the video.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
So I'm an asshole because it irritates me to no end that some people can't even be bothered to learn the difference between there, their, and they're? Typos ar one thign, even I makes thme, but when a 'typo' is really pure, unadulterated ignorance, is it really the readers fault that they're bothered by it? The English language is complex and full of silly rules, but there are some things so basic and so often called out that there really is no excuse to continually make those errors past grade school.
The article implies that this is a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with getting shit done and doing it right the first time.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Let me get this straight -- people who care about correctness and doing things right are assholes?
I completely disagree. Yes, people who constantly correct others in a rude way can come across as arrogant condescending assholes. They also can come across as Insufferable Know-it-alls.
But you know what? I consider people who don't care about being correct to be assholes, and if they bitch when corrected, I consider them to be coddled unique snowflake assholes. I guess that makes me an asshole.
So to the author of this study and all the lemmings who will parrot its findings for the next thousand years, I have to say "My god, it's full of assholes!"
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Dear people who type in all lowercase,
We are the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.
Sincerely,
Capital Letters.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I'll admit that my respect for academia in general is iffy, but there are certainly ladders to building a more accurate truth that can only occur through testing, refining, testing more, refining.
I think the general Slashdot population is fine with the scientific method as long as its applied to classically science based disciplines. Having a study reaffirming one's own suspicions about human nature is just as much a scientific study than testing the effects of varying light bandwidths on different plants. The important facet is that they're repeatable and have adequate controls to reduce unknown variances (or at least document them). There are hundreds, thousands, millions? of redundant seemingly obvious scientific studies to reaffirm what we as a group conscious believed to be true and nobody bats an eye. When the humanities apply it: "Academics are wasting time testing obvious things" is the rallying cry.. oh well.
Bye!
Because calling somebody a jerk is somehow nicer than helping people improve their spelling?
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The difference between an asshole and an educator is the style with which they deliver their correction. A good educator can tear down your whole world and have you thank them for their service. An asshole only bolsters their own ego at your expense.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Making spelling mistakes online: First, an indicator your correspondent may be poorly educated. Second, proof they have failed to properly use a spelling checker. Third, a virtual guarantee that at least some of their audience will not read for content. Fourth, sufficient provocation that some of those individuals may disrupt the conversation in turn.
Language is a key means for communicating ideas. How well we use it directly affects how well our communications are received. It is, in fact, an art, like painting. However, also like painting, one can paint ideas like a master or finger-paint them like an addled child. Which do you think will be better received?
Learn to write coherently and correctly. It is well worth it. Knowledge is power. Communications skills are tools to exercise that power.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.