I tend to be a very analytical type person, but the occasional grammar or punctuation error does not overly offend me. As long as the information intended to be conveyed by the grammar/punctuation is there and readily accessible, I’m fine with it.
Take for example Dal’s post, and Podkayne’s reaction to it. I had absolutely no trouble telling that Dal had started a new sentence because that information was given already by other cues than capitalization. He used a period to end the previous sentence, and there was a line break before the new sentence. That’s completely clear to me. I wonder what sentence Podkayne thought he was continuing.
Errors that obscure meaning do irritate me, and grammatical constructions that use other rules than what I’m used to cause irritation because of the added effort to parse them. But that’s a difference in experience, not correctness. One may be reasonably expected to post in a way that is readily understandable by the majority of its intended audience.
I neglected to quote the entire thing to cut down on space, but obviously that wasn’t clear enough. Here:
There is no linebreak, unless one fortuitously has one’s browser set at the right width. I missed the period the first time I read it. Maybe I read too fast. Maybe I should slow down. Maybe I should set my browser to a larger font. Then again, when words are capitalized properly, I don’t have this problem.
And thank you, PeeQueue, I will copy irresistable, irredeemable, and publicly into my copy book. “Arbitary” was just a typo. . . really. Spell checkers make my spelling worse, I think, because I can just click “okay” for whatever it suggests and not think about it.
Just to address the OP: for me, bad grammar is irritating because it tells me that the writer/speaker doesn’t care enough about his message to make sure it’s presented properly. It’s roughly analogous to creating a masterpiece movie, then projecting it on a bedsheet draped between two factories.
I make allowances for “trivial” messages and folks who aren’t native speakers/writers, but if you have something important to say and know the rules of the language, use them.
I’m in the “it’s hard to read and it implies laziness” camp.
Although I admit that the only thing worse than telling some guy “You’re the type of guy I’d love to have sex with” is having him condescendingly reply “I believe you mean ‘with whom I’d like to have sex’.”
As to the OP: It grates on my nerves terribly, too. I’m pretty bad at telling people they’re wrong. I feel I must educate them, or something. Usually they just look at me funny. Somebody stop me, please! It isn’t always the best thing to do. (They call me “The Dictionary” at work. :o)
Although I haven’t read the original thread I must agree with hazel-rah. At least some people I know are fanatical dictionary-thumpers. If a word (or an alternative spelling of a foreign place name or loan word, or an alternative flection of a verb) is not listed in the dictionary issued by the Swedish Academy (I’m Swedish) it simply cannot exist according to them and I keep saying that the dictionary is in no way normative. It only reflects the present majority usage and has been filtered by the editorial staff. You must always use your own common sense when dealing with languages.
For some reason some of these people get really mad at me when I tell them to think for themselves.
Having said that I must admit that I do have the same bad(?) habit as Dolores Claiborne.
Claiming that a “dictionary is documenting the slide of such-and-such-a-dialect into ignorance” says much more to me about the claimant than about the dictionary. The purpose of a dictionary is not to prescribe some sort of heightened use; its purpose is to report on the words that people use and how they use them. If your dictionary says one thing, and everyone else is doing another thing, your dictionary is more or less useless.
Yeah, yeah. I did intend the question to be taken tongue-in-cheek, though. I suppose the point is, you have to draw the line somewhere, but where?
I mean, who am I to judge? For all I know, dal_timgar could be the Jackson Pollock of grammatical usage.
Yup. Doesn’t that mean that if you’re not speaking it the way the people do, you’re wrong?
Churchill, having been berated by a civil service proof-reader about a speech in which he had ended a sentence with a preposition, memorably said “There are some ideas up with which I shall not put”. Perhaps the moral is to know when to break the rules. I’m much more likely to split infinitives these days (and be quite happy about it) than I used to be.
i find the comparison of clothes and grammar quite interesting.
i used to work in audio repair and wore jeans and T-shirt regularly.
i then switched to IBM and had to wear a suit. they announced that you no longer had to wear a suit on the night shift. i volunteered immediately. GUESS WHAT? the machines i repaired didn’t notice.
human beings put pressure on each other to conform to things that ARE NOT IMPORTANT. conformists expect everyone to be like them. one of the great things about the internet is being able to ignore people by simply scrolling past their posts. i use that ability regularly and assume others do too. i suppose there are some who feel they have to follow the entire thread.
i try to keep my posts short and pithy and actually i try to think that way too. people who use big words and complex sentence structure and correct capitalization but say very little after you analyze the garbage drive me up a wall.
don’t wear suits on current job. SURPRISE, SURPRISE!
is submisiveness to authority the same as respect?
Would it improve your opinion of the claimant slightly if she told you that she wasn’t entirely serious, and that she has a search form for m-w.com on her homepage?
Well, IMHO, grammar doesn’t need to be an all or nothing sticking point for most people. I cringe when someone egregiously mangles common syntax or completely disregards punctuation and capitalization. These are rules which affect the ease of communication directly, while bothersome regulations forbidding split infinitives, passive voice, or ending a sentence with a preposition are merely stylisitic preferences imposed by ancient grammarians with hard-ons for Latin.
For a setting as informal as this, an effort to use grade school level grammar is all that’s necessary to get your point across well. Anything less than this makes a poster look lazy or stupid. Additionally, complete disregard for the norms in any social setting is discourteous. Any extra attention paid to the ugliness of one’s writing is attention diverted from the message itself.
(Having said this, I have gone back to my own posts on occasion and spotted embarrasing errors that I would have caught had I used the preview option. But the only folks immune to that are either compulsive previewers or those posters who gleefully toss aside the rules.)
dal-timgar said:
This is quite ironic dal. I see your posts around GD frequently. I read them, but even when I find what you have to say somewhat interesting, I avoid responding, yet another way to ignore a poster. Simply put, your posts are ugly. I don’t generally respond to you or your ideas because I don’t want to read any more of your posts than I have to. Unless you post something very compelling, the experience is like having a conversation with someone who smells of bad body odor. While what is being said may be interesting, there is a powerful, annoying, and easily remedied distraction that makes the whole experience unpleasant.
you are the perfect example of the anal retentive pseudointellectuals i avoid. let me know when you pass the IQ test to get into mensa, my membership expired in '86.
i love annoying people who confuse erudition with intellect.
it was amazing how many IBMers only knew as much about computers as IBM told them and wouldn’t have considered buying a microcomputer.
the world is full of strange people Pthalis. you can look down your nose at them and they won’t give a damn.
Dal Timgar
p.s. and i doubt that you regard your opinion as humble, it is just proper form to say so. LOL!
Absolutely! As other have said, it is sometimes helps to consciously break the rules. However, in order to do so effectively, we must first master those rules.
i’ve written code in Z-80 machine language, assembler, COBOL, C, awk, d-base & foxbase.
the thing about computers is that they are REALLY STUPID but so FAST they can appear to be intelligent. that’s what makes machine and assembly programming a pain. it can be really tedious and a pain to debug. compilers that give GOOD error messages aren’t bad to work with. oh yeah, forgot FORTRAN.
i expect computers to be STUPID. i expect human beings to be INTELLIGENT. when human beings insist on acting like computers i say, “WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM.”
all i have done is not CAPITALIZE the beginning of my sentences. What is the BIG DEAL? doesn’t “Code” mean the same thing as “code”?
