So guys (spelling and grammar)

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ChipG said:
Dude!
EDIT: Sorry, people who correct people have no life. What's worse? People who complain or people who complain about peole who complain?
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I would rather have somebody correct my grammar as opposed to letting me go on looking like an idiot. So, if I slip up, and that does happen, and somebody does clue me in, I really do appreciate it because it actually helps me out. On the other hand, people who are unnecessarily harsh on others for making mistakes will only make people defensive and unlikely to hear the message. That certainly does not help anyone and helping people seems to be a persistent theme at this site. At least I'm on board with it.:thumbup:
 
Same can be said of any language. I get ticked when people screw up Spanish.

I guess English mistakes bother me more because if I, a Mexican, can get it up to a good level, why can't native speakers?
 
diego1235467 said:
Same can be said of any language. I get ticked when people screw up Spanish.
I guess English mistakes bother me more because if I, a Mexican, can get it up to a good level, why can't native speakers?
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LOL--Is that the $65,000.00 question or what?
To all the apathetic and egregious grammar violators out there, you have been spanked!
Cheers Diego! :beer:
 
n uh thouzand yeerz sum wun will b angree bekuz thay uzed dah rong grahmar ore spelling in ther post
 
n uh thouzand yeerz sum wun will b angree bekuz thay uzed dah rong grahmar ore spelling in ther post
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Evan,

True, in a thousand years it may not matter. But we do not live a thousand years. We live in the now. People have given you some good advice, which you were looking for, otherwise why pose the question?

The vast majority here have explained that it only reflects upon you and how you are perceived as a professional, well-educated individual. Personally, it's your choice whether or not you want to be looked at as a professional or not. Remember, it's the perception that you give that makes the first impression, and how many people have a less than professional perception of you now? I really haven't paid attention to your posts prior to this thread, so I have formed a first perception of you based on what you have said and how you have said it. Care to take a guess what it was?

True, this is just an "online forum" but one need to keep in mind, many of the people here know each other outside of this forum and work together in a collaborative fashion. Many members cross paths in the real world and they talk about things they have in common. There are many opportunities that can be gained by being a member in good standing here, if you choose to seek them. The first step, well, we have been discussing that here.

But for me, even if you meant it as a joke, I see that as a joke in poor taste considering the number of professional film-makers that have taken the time and given you good advice for free. I hope that one day you will see how valuable the advice that you were given actually was.
 
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Yup. I won't be around to toss people's resumes etc into the trash in one thousand years. But I can certainly sh*tcan every ineptly-written document that comes my way and spare myself having to deal with the people who perpetrated them, today.
 
Evan S said:
n uh thouzand yeerz sum wun will b angree bekuz thay uzed dah rong grahmar ore spelling in ther post
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I'm glad you brought that up.

Someone might not be angry, but they might be frustrated. It is the consistency within a language that makes it both viable, and translatable. Have you ever heard of the Rosetta stone? It is what allowed us to understand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics because it had an Egyptian passage with a Greek translation. If the author of that had been haphazard in that writing, interchanging the contemporary versions of their, there and they're, along with two, too, and to, or then and than, it would have been almost impossible to crack. Those words look similar to us, but they mean completely different things. And in another language, they don't look similar.

Languages are codes that allow us to access someone else's thoughts and intentions. If you miss a combination by a single digit, the lock doesn't open.

The question ultimately is, does it matter to you if you are understood? If the answer is yes, then language (and all that goes with it) is of ultimate importance.
 
Language is not a code. Language is raw communication. What's more, communications are meant to be efficient and understandable. The shorter, the better. The simpler, the better. Why say "I don't know," when you can say, "I dunno?" Unless you are writing something official or formal it shouldn't matter. The meaning is the same and it is just as understandable, yet it is faster and simpler.

Codes are designed to be difficult to understand. They are not designed to be simple or fast, in fact the whole point of a code is that it is the opposite.

That said, my writing just now was mostly grammatically correct and mostly followed standard English rules.
 
My father is an attorney and often gets majorly pissed at the young lawyers and clerks who say "like" all the time. That is understandable. Those lawyers are not simply performing a job, they are performing a "role," that of an educated, intelligent person, and must make a good impression on clients. But on an online forum who cares if this post wasn't, like, grammatically correct or whatever?
 
Language encodes information. You're using code in the strictly narrow sense of cryptography, which is not the only proper way to employ it.
 
Jester2138 said:
My father is an attorney and often gets majorly pissed at the young lawyers and clerks who say "like" all the time. That is understandable. Those lawyers are not simply performing a job, they are performing a "role," that of an educated, intelligent person, and must make a good impression on clients. But on an online forum who cares if this post wasn't, like, grammatically correct or whatever?
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"like" is noise. Phrases with "like" in them lower S/N ratio, and at some point a reader just gives up.
 
Every time I hear "like" used as filler, I regard it as a sort of neural hiccup. The brain is just tossing out a noise because there's no actual content being sent from cortex to larynx.
 
Sad Max said:
Every time I hear "like" used as filler, I regard it as a sort of neural hiccup. The brain is just tossing out a noise because there's no actual content being sent from cortex to larynx.
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Try editing a documentary about rappers, where every sentence ends with "know what I'm sayin..." I clearly remember one guy who said, "know what I'm sayin'...like...you know what I mean...like...wow...know what I'm sayin.'"
 
Jester2138 said:
Language is not a code. Language is raw communication. What's more, communications are meant to be efficient and understandable. The shorter, the better. The simpler, the better. Why say "I don't know," when you can say, "I dunno?" Unless you are writing something official or formal it shouldn't matter. The meaning is the same and it is just as understandable, yet it is faster and simpler.

Codes are designed to be difficult to understand. They are not designed to be simple or fast, in fact the whole point of a code is that it is the opposite.

That said, my writing just now was mostly grammatically correct and mostly followed standard English rules.
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Language is a code. As Sad Max pointed out you are referring to only one definition of the word. From dictionary.com:

Linguistics. a. the system of rules shared by the participants in an act of communication, making possible the transmission and interpretation of messages.

 As for the brevity of "dunno" vs " don't know" or more appropriately "do not know" since "don't know" is already a widely accepted form of truncating the initial phrase, "dunno" is shorter, but not necessarily simpler. Efficiency is about more than brevity, it also about being effective. If the person does not understand the meaning of the word, it isn't really more efficient. "Dunno" is a bastardization of the phrase that stems from an aural interpretation. They sound alike, but there are many words that not only sound alike, but sound identical, that have different meanings. In its written form "dunno" means nothing. I will grant you that many (most) people may understand what you mean. But that does not mean it is more effective.
 
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