Hackers, Spelling, and Grammar? 2360
Strom Carlson asks: "Over the last few years, I've noticed that a surprisingly large number of native English speakers, who are otherwise very technically competent, seem to lack strong English skills. Mostly, this seems to manifest itself as varying degrees of poor spelling and grammar: 'definately' instead of 'definitely'; 'should of' instead of 'should have'; and I even see the names of products and companies misspelled from time to time. It baffles me that a culture so obsessed with technical knowledge and accuracy can demonstrate such little attention to detail when it comes to communicating that knowledge with others, and it baffles me even more that many people become enraged when you attempt to help them correct and learn from their mistakes. Do hackers and geeks just not care about communicating effectively? Do they not realize that a mediocre command of written English makes them appear less intelligent? Am I missing something here?"
yes (Score:5, Funny)
Definately.
Man! (Score:5, Funny)
Engineers are bad spellers (Score:5, Funny)
omg! (Score:2, Funny)
th3Ms f1ght1n w0rds 4r0und h3r3!
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Revenge of the Spelling Nazi and Grammar Troll (Score:2, Funny)
Oh snap! I'ma hafta remember dat, yo.
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Revenge of the Spelling Nazi and Grammar Troll (Score:3, Funny)
Talk English, dude!
Re:Revenge of the Spelling Nazi and Grammar Troll (Score:5, Funny)
So they're just like computer geeks, but of the english language?
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
The above sentence made me cry.
Re:Man! (Score:1, Funny)
Man, talk about you're flamebate...
Re:Man! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You are so wrong, grammer is not important. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:MOD STORY INSIGHTFUL! (Score:2, Funny)
Geeze, have a little chip on your shoulder, don't we?
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:2, Funny)
So if your sentences are only a little difficult to understand then you'd rather that nobody corrects you until the accumulation of bad practices over a number of years makes half of what you say gibberish?
Correcting innocent typos is pointless, and rather impolite. Correcting persistent errors (like Cmdr Taco's "than" and "then" confusion) should aid future communication.
Mark Twain on spelling problems (Score:2, Funny)
by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Missing capitalization (Score:3, Funny)
What I hate the most is the missing capitalization in more and more emails I receive. Most of the slashdot readers are speaking english, but capitalization really counts in the german language. It is extremely difficult to read all-lower-case emails.
Capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse.." and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.." [bash.org]
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
But... but if we proofread how will we get FP?!
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:2, Funny)
So, like, right now?
Re:grammar nazis get their fp story (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:4, Funny)
Just wanted to emphasizes this point, as I'm something of a closet grammar nazi myself. I'm always more forgiving to those who don't sound like native speakers, except for when the change is particularly amusing.
Eg:
A Russian coder that I used to work with once wrote some C code that would generate SQL queries dynamically. In his comments inside the code, he described this as "Building SQL queries on a fly" which had me giggling quite a bit when I first read it.
Lebalebanon (Score:3, Funny)
That's H4X0rs and g33ks you insensitive clod. Besides if the leader of the free world can invent new countries like Lebalebanon, who am I to judge?
Re:Perspective from a linguist (Score:2, Funny)
Get back to finishing Perl 6.
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
"I dislike the French because because they do not speak English, but I abhor the Americans because they speak English badly."
-Winston Churchill.
Re:Obligatory Tom Stoppard Quote (Score:5, Funny)
Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is "not." Death isn't. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no... What you've been is not on boats.
-Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:4, Funny)
Stuck pixel? STUCK PIXEL? My GOD, man! This is Slashdot! It's more like someone took a freaking 12 gauge shotgun to my poor 21" SyncMaster!
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Engineers are bad spellers (Score:3, Funny)
ObGetShorty (Score:5, Funny)
Bullshit! That's short for "ergo"!
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:4, Funny)
You forgot the apostrophe in "don't".
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Problem in America... BUT (Score:3, Funny)
Have you heard a scottish person talk? Maybe they have good grammar, but who can tell?
Second, geeks and such are often a bit autistic-- if not actually clinically suffering from autism, then at least they exhibit symptoms by virtue of being so underexposed to other humans. As a result of this, good grammar or not, they just can't communicate.
As an aside:
The funny/sad thing is when an American will gripe about a foreigner verbally mangling English... yet that same American most likely can't even speak a 2nd language... let alone speak it fluently. Bah.
I'd say it's funny/sad when Europeans try to condemn Americans for having less exposure to the cultures of other countries. Sure, it's easy to become familiar with other countries when you're so tiny that you can't ride a train for more than 2 hours without leaving the country.
To go back to your original point, size alone can explain part of the reason Americans mangle English so badly: the larger an area you're encompassing, the more dialects will emerge. After all, most of europe really just speaks what are essentially dialects of one of two languages: Latin and German.
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Pax tecum.
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:2, Funny)
Don't use the "it's illogical" defense! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:3, Funny)
of who your English teacher was
whom
who is nominative case. of who simply does not work in the English language.
Re:2x3 (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm a worshipper of Bacchus, you insensitive clod!
J.
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:3, Funny)
My favourite is "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes". It adds a dash of passion to something that's usually only adequate.
Re:Wow! What a question to ask on Slashdot... (Score:3, Funny)
"company for cleaning commission members' cars' tax declaration deadline"
What kind of freakin' tax structure do you have in your country?
Emulating Speech (Score:2, Funny)
I've always wondered why it is that people write as poorly as they do, when it comes to writing online.
My guess is that it's because they want to express themselves in the same way, and at the same speed as they would if they were talking to you. This, of course, mostly applies to emails and IMs and irc and such.
I know I'm not a great speller, but I do tend to get my grammar correctly. Also, what my brain doesn't catch, the spellchecker usually does.