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Termyn8or -> RE: New rule! If you cannot spell it..... (11/26/2006 7:29:58 AM)
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Nothing like that. What I was saying os that a well crafted article is easier to read.
Now I realize that many posting in these fora are sitting there with a cig/joint in one hand and as coffee/beer in the other. This is indeed on the informal end of writing in general, and many things are acceptable (or is it exceptable) in such a venue.
Even more flies in a real time chatroom. Any private individual can be brilliant and not know how to spell well, or could simply not give a shit. Trying to get the message out, the fingers fly, and hopefully the errors do not obscure the original idea.
The thing that gets me though, are errors in documents that should not have errors.
For example; owner's manuals, instruction manuals, service manuals, GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS. They talk about bilingual ballots, but some of the people anvolved can't even write decent English. I got a legal notice years ago from a court, it stated that if I did not comply they were going to "issue a statewide warrant for you arrest" . Not your arrest, you arrest.
People in positions of authority should not be hard to understand. I don't just mean the gov, authority can mean different things. Authority can also mean knowledge, like when I work on an exceedingly overcomplicated piece of electronic equipment. More and more I find the schematics and service literature to be repleat with errors. I thought this stuff was important ! I thought that someone who knows how to read should proof such things.
Errors in certain things, like documentation for devices that use high voltages and complex circuitry, should be clear. It becomes a safety issue if it gets bad enough. And the English isn't all there is to it either. Technical errors of a substantial nature are all over the place. I see them all the time. Part of my job is to educate others, and the first thing they have to learn is to think when reading the print. You MUST know what you're doing or you are lost.
I have lost count of how many times I have seen a schematic indicated that there was 12 volts here and 130 volts there, but these are ends of a piece of wire. Am I to assume that they built the prototype and this wire just burned off and the unit started working ? Then of course someone simply forgot to delete the wire from the print I guess.
Consider the following; Congadulations on you purchase of the model 212 breeder reactor. If you do proper mainenance you reactor will operate for many year without much danger of nuclear fallout. Read please the section on carbon rod usages and the entire manual for you safety.
The big thing to remember about operating a breeder reactor is atennshun to detail. Remember you can never put to much water in reactor, always remember thid. Too much water in reactor is happen not. You customers will be happy to be not dead, very much.
Also remember to never run reactor at 100% capacitie. Reactor is only designed to operate at 33-82% capacitie. ( I get the idea when I measure a 2X4, they seem ro get smaller every few years). If you run reactor on over 82% customer may not be happy from not being alive.
Also remember to dismantle and popery dispose of reactor after 25 years, if not, unhappy, not alive customer may result.
This 2,016 page manaul must read before operate reactor. It was painstaking translat from Leobnese by 100 chimpanzees because important it is for you, in Engrish.
Remember, you CANNOT have to mutch water in reactor.
_______
OK the fingers fly and shit happens. But there are things more important than a paper for school. Any degreed individuals around at the moment ? Imagine your dissertation looking like the manual for the old 212. Forget about the grade, a dissertation speaks of what you have learned, and at best, how you have exceeded what you have learned.
There are good reasons to try to keep the grammar and spelling straight, first of all it is good practice. Second of all is that you will be understood more clearly. Last but not least, even with the cloak of semi-anonmyity, anybody on the internet can read these posts. I think of these things as presentations. And they are. A casual viewer will make judgements as to our general level of intelligence based on first impressions mainly.
This is almost funny. I've been in a few fora in which someone's grammar and spelling were so bad that it was very difficult to decipher their meaning. One case in particular it turned out the poster is Russian. Well, OK, I can understand that. But then this guy made a mistake of having a website in Russian and another Russian popped into the forum and informed us that this guy's Russian sucks as well. I guess things are rough all over.
I have learned, in spades, not to judge a person's raw intelligence by their grammar. Others do though, and that is my point. Put it this way, why do you type all this stuff and post it ? So someone will read it right ? Well someone will, and that person could be from anywhere and from any background.
I pride myself on trying to do things right the first time. I have no innate desire for this, but I don't want to go back and correct errors. Like in the remodeling business, think first, work once. I remember talking to a customer once and he said something like "Maybe there's too much thinking going on and not enough working", to which I replied, pointing to a very very serious mistake made by a previous contractor "This is what you get when you work before you think". They had removed a load bearing wall and the floor upstairs was described as a trampoline. Seriously if they got too many people up there they were in danger of starting to come through the diningroom ceiling.
But then for about 30 years I couldn't spell the word original. I spelled it origional. It looked right, it really did. The relevation actually came when I went to use the word origion. Doesn't look so right. I felt like going back to everything I'd ever written and correcting it, but that is impossible.
Perhaps my reasoning is different, and who I am today I say I would always try to improve my usage of the English, albeit American, language. Some of the forum/blog things in which I participate have members who are highly formally educated. In such fora you need the respect of the respondents, or they will not respond. They need to have a bit of faith that you indeed will contribute answers rather than just take. There are also very complicated technical issues to present, so proficient composition is of the essence.
So even if we agree that those standards do not apply here, I see no reason not to put one's best foot forward.
T
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