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Re: This is revolting
Otherone at aol_com wrote:
> I usually quit taking anyone seriously on a list
> when one of their main focal points is somebodies spelling. Usually you have
That's "somebody's" ;)
> the capability to grasp what the meaning is or make the cognitive grammatical
> corrections in your head. It seems pretty anal to expect people to proofread
> and correct a posting on a list as if it were a term paper or something.
> Everyone doesn't have that time.
I have to take Annie's side on this one. I don't expect every post to be
proofread or perfect, but I don't see why an email should be littered
with misspellings and grammatical errors. Why should this medium be held
to lower standards than a hand-written letter, or a published text for
that matter. I understand that emails are usually written quickly and
not everybody has time to check every sentence for the slightest error,
but c'mon, how hard is it to use the 'backspace' key. That's one of the
nice things about computers -- you can make all the mistakes you want
and easily clean them up before posting.
I realize typos are common and not always avoidable (I know it's easy to
type 'teh' and not notice you did it), but grammar and usage errors show
a lack of intelligence, as far as I'm concerned (argue all you want
about physicists being poor writers). I just see to many instances on
this list (and elsewhere) where people use "your" instead of "you're,"
"it's" instead of "its," and my all-time fav, using apostrophe "s" to
indicate a plural. This is stuff we all learned in first grade!
Email is one of the new standards for communication. I just think people
should present themselves as if they were addressing the people on the
list face-to-face. I shouldn't have to "make the cognitive grammatical
corrections in [my] head" -- that's your job.
dave
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