[Rant] Grammar!

Okay, let me start by saying that this board is great, and the people on here are intelligent and are actually able to communicate. My issue is with other boards I poke around. I actually haven't seen too many problems with this here, unless the poster is rushed, exhausted, and/or drunk. Even then, their writing is generally clearer than on other boards.

Now, I was an English major. I work in communications. I taught 4-8th graders at a private school for a while, and worked with them on writing.

I understand this is the internet, and it's generally pretty informal. I don't get worked up about people writing with simple spelling mistakes, slang, or improper punctuation. I care about being able to communicate clearly. If you make a simple spelling error, I can still understand what you have said.

Grammar is different.

Grammar is the basic form of language. There are rules about pronouns, and modifiers; subjects and verbs. Agreement between all of those. Even if you are speaking colloquially, your language needs to follow a certain basic structure, otherwise you will completely change the meaning of what you say.

If you have butchered your grammar, and changed the meaning of your sentence from what you meant to communicate, you have failed to communicate. I can not understand you. I will make my best guess, but chances are good I will misinterpret your words. If I care about what's being talked about, I'll probably try to get you to clarify. Or I'll point out the absurdity of what you said. I'm not doing this to be an shiny happy person, I'm doing this because I didn't understand. My stupid question might actually be serious.

It is the responsibility of the writer to communicate their point. The reader should not have to work to decipher a garbled meaning based on information that only occurred in the writer's head. Grammar is the basic structure of meaning. It is your fault if you fail to communicate because you are unable to follow basic rules.

You taught a quantity of four eighth graders?

You must be tired.

JmfnB wrote: You taught a quantity of four eighth graders? You must be tired.

Your grammar powers are weak, my young apprentice. Your gambit may have worked had I used a comma, but by using a dash, I have outmaneuvered you before you even struck.

what you mean by that.

Do you mean to say his power is weak, or his powers are weak?

Oooh, grammar fight!

What most people don't realize is that, in the absence of any other factors, you are judged online by the quality of your writing. If you write like a child or someone with poor education, you will treated as such. You might have something really useful to say - this happens a lot on automotive boards, where the real gurus might not have much book learnin' - but it won't be taken as seriously as if it were well delivered.

I usually rush through posts because if I'm on a message board, chances are I should be doing something else.

I know I'm not alone because I notice there seems to be more posts during business hours.

Keith wrote: Oooh, grammar fight!

Watch your step. I think I see a dangling participle!

The inspiration for this was on the tech portion of a local drift board. Someone was trying to troubleshoot a problem and one of the responses was contradictory to itself:

"if an axel is broken though it will spin1 wheel but wont have any power."

Apparently I'm an shiny happy person for voicing my confusion over what the poster was trying to say.

I can has grammar slapfight?

Perfect grammar is not a foolproof guard against miscommunication. It helps, of course.

Legalese is the result of the attempt to communicate perfectly.

An overly long attempt at accurate communication often results in no communication. Why? Because everyone gets bored and stops reading..

I try to remember that language is always fluid, always an experiment, and was spoken and useful before rules were applied.

These are now useful tools for internet communication: Because it's sometimes hard to tell the motive behind what is written.

-James

Both of my grammers passed away sometime ago. I miss them.

If they were still here they wouldn't post in a tech section of a drifitng board though.

You should meet one guy on the my local car boards...His grammar's not that bad (as Caribbean grammar goes) but his spelling and punctuation are horrendous. I know that he's old enough to drive a car.

Me: Can't you learn to write a little better?

Him: cant u lurn tuh reed a lil bettuh

Guess who got laughed at.

In fact let me post some of his works:

u gine show up in sain moe manly?

(Are you going to show up in something more manly)

In a post about a guy who's been banned for 2 years for no reason (typical...):

Listen bro, aroun here, the mods doan care bout yuh! If they can ban you they do and that's that. dat one swami ban me from streetz supposedly for a week because i ask bout a car i see on the road. I still pun ban all now and that was all in november i think. (snip) everyone with a lil power is quick to exercise it and clammering for more. and to each other, they can do no wrong. the only mod i have ever seen chastise another mod was crackhead. an i respect him for that. but u will realise that while he is still a mod...de chumminess towards him is not there like one time. he is now an outkast.

The strangest thing is that I just found this in the classifieds section:

I need the transmission only. Car was imported and transmission is damaged. Need this asap. Again, it's the tiptronic transmission from the 2ZZ Runx / Celica that I require.

jamscal wrote: Perfect grammar is not a foolproof guard against miscommunication. It helps, of course. I try to remember that language is always fluid, always an experiment, and was spoken and useful before rules were applied.

I completely agree.

I should make a distinction between little 'g' grammar, and big 'G' Grammar. I'm talking about big 'G' Grammar here, which is the core structure of the language: Subject-Verb-Object stuff. Who is doing what to whom. If you throw in a modifier, what it modifies. If you use a pronoun, what it refers to.

The basic structure of our language really doesn't change much.

The little 'g' grammar is the usage and details. Those things do evolve with the language, pretty constantly.

Salanis wrote:

JmfnB wrote: You taught a quantity of four eighth graders? You must be tired.

Your grammar powers are weak, my young apprentice. Your gambit may have worked had I used a comma, but by using a dash, I have outmaneuvered you before you even struck.

I understand what you mean to convey, but "4-8th graders" looks like a type of road construction machine size or a fractional measurement, and not what is is: an inclusive range of ordinals, i.e., fourth-through-eighth-grade students. It would be clearer to write "4th-8th."

Also, I think you meant to write, "Your gambit might have worked..." The word "may" refers to permission, whereas "might" refers to possibility or uncertainty.

I have a customer from Antigua, a small Caribbean island. His e-mails are almost unintellegible because his grammer and spelling are so bad, You would think he is an uneducated fool. He came to Ft. Lauderdale two weeks ago and seemed quite intelligent and well spoken. To read his stuff you would think he never got past the fourth grade. He spent a ton of money with us, so he's a really great guy to us now. Funny how that works.

Salanis wrote:

JmfnB wrote: You taught a quantity of four eighth graders? You must be tired.

Your grammar powers are weak, my young apprentice. Your gambit may have worked had I used a comma, but by using a dash, I have outmaneuvered you before you even struck.

I don't mean to be a style Nazi, but you asked for it. You used a hyphen, not a dash. The most stylistically correct punctuation would have been an en-dash (as distinguished from an em-dash). I'll let you off with a warning this time, mainly because I don't know how to make an en-dash on this board.

I know how bad form it is to quote yourself but:

Salanis wrote: I understand this is the internet, and it's generally pretty informal. I don't get worked up about people writing with simple spelling mistakes, slang, or improper punctuation. I care about being able to communicate clearly. If you make a simple spelling error, I can still understand what you have said.

I'm still using the Grammar of the English language, even if I'm lapsing in the precision of my grammar.

But, I did open my mouth and open the door for y'all to take shots at me. So, go ahead.

Oh, and there were actually only 2 8th graders one year when I taught there, and none the next year. It was a small Montessori school, and the grade levels would get combined for subjects.

derekshannon wrote: I couldn't resist calling him out on it either. I mean if you're going to bash a guy for something, make damn sure you don't in turn do it even worser!

I won't bash someone for poor spelling and punctuation. Unless it's truly atrocious, like not using any punctuation. Although I'm fine turning little mistakes into jokes.

But, let's say you write something like. "I paint the blued transmission." I don't know if you already painted something, or if you're going to paint it. Is the transmission blue? Are you painting it blue? Or is the transmission blown, and you're taking the opportunity to paint it, while it's removed?

And if you do write something that is nonsensical, don't be offended when someone doesn't understand what you're saying.

jamscal wrote: Perfect grammar is not a foolproof guard against miscommunication. It helps, of course. Legalese is the result of the attempt to communicate perfectly.

Legalese is mostly an attempt by lawyers to sound smarter than everyone else. There's also a dash of refusal to change for tradition's sake.

The legal writing gurus have begun to push people towards writing as plain a meaning as possible (somehow it hasn't gotten through to the people writing statutes yet). Generally, though, judges don't like too long and too wordy any more than anyone else.

psteav wrote: Legalese is mostly an attempt by lawyers to sound smarter than everyone else. There's also a dash of refusal to change for tradition's sake.

My understanding was that legalese is the epitome of precise and controlled formal language. That it uses specific terms that have single specific meanings to be sure that there is not room for ambiguity. It is tested to be sure that everything is very specific logically.

Whether you're using formal or informal language, the basic Grammar structure of our language doesn't change.

"Yo dude. I know yer trippin over the E36 M3 talk, but chill." Has the same structure as. "Dear sir, my client has filed suit that you should desist from your current course of action."

I know exactly what you mean. There is one particular E30 forum where one particular jack ass "attempts" to diss on others and even my own grammar.

Thankfully I have called out his egotistical ass numerous times to the point he doesn't try anymore because he realizes he is dealing with someone who just left a job as a Technical Writer and Editor for a multi-million dollar marine company and am now a Tech Writer and Editor for a multi-million dollar defense contractor.

I mean I'm not going to try to get into a discussion about the Oxford comma or something of that nature. I find it frighteningly disturbing that people have such a hard time communicating.

I had someone use "unsubstained" vs "unsubstantiated" in a debate on a local forum a week ago or so. Just really, really sad.

I remember when one particular guy showed up on my board with the worst grammar, punctuation and spelling anyone there had ever seen. It was really hard to tell what he was saying at all, and people gave him a lot of grief about it for awhile. Then they found out he had recently suffered a massive stroke and was only beginning to recover. Kinda put a different light on things.

I can forgive poor grammar to some extent, because not everyone enjoys reading as much as I do, and it has not rubbed off on their writing as much as it has on mine.

However, what I cannot forgive is failure to proofread.

I've lost count of the times I've read things that mean the exact opposite of the intention, because the writer forgot a critical word such as "not" in their sentence. I realize this is only teh interwebz, but for criminy's sake: if it was worth taking the 2 minutes to post it, it's worth taking the extra 30 seconds to reread it and confirm it says what you meant.

I ain't even gettin' caught up in dis E36 M3, yo. Obviously da dude meant that the Vtek was not going to kick in if yo' axle was busted.