As one of the professors quoted in the article says, if you don't know how to spell, how will you know if your spellcheck or auto-correct are doing the right thing? So many people absolve...
As one of the professors quoted in the article says, if you don't know how to spell, how will you know if your spellcheck or auto-correct are doing the right thing?
So many people absolve themselves of responsibility for their own writing by blaming their auto-correct - but that just reveals their own laziness in choosing not to check what they wrote before pressing 'save', or their own illiteracy in not knowing that the auto-correct chose the wrong word.
Then some of them respond by saying "Well, you knew what I meant."
"Ah, but does it matter, so long as we get the gist?" they ask, as if saying something original and profound. "Is conveying a gist the highest aim of language?" I ask (sometimes a bit emotionally). "Correct me if I'm wrong, but cavemen pointing and grunting got the bloody gist!"
Yes. Yes. Yes. I am in IT and review, edit and approve statements of work, project scopes, etc. It's SAD how poorly they are written. Not just grammar, but spelling. If you're making $50kUS or...
Yes. Yes. Yes.
I am in IT and review, edit and approve statements of work, project scopes, etc. It's SAD how poorly they are written. Not just grammar, but spelling.
If you're making $50kUS or more a year, you need to know basic English and spelling. Lack of it will be noticed, mostly because it makes more work for people downstream of you, and it makes your employer look bad to clients.
Lastly, never trust auto-correct. Seriously. Especially Apple's. It's maybe 80% accurate.
My personal bane in email is accidentally leaving out a word..."Please send me to review it" - that sort of stuff. I have to double check each email before sending (and then six times after sending).
My personal bane in email is accidentally leaving out a word..."Please send me to review it" - that sort of stuff. I have to double check each email before sending (and then six times after sending).
I have a English degree and another degree in Journalism and I often find myself just typing an approximation of a word into Google, because it's just so darn good at figuring out what I mean. I...
I have a English degree and another degree in Journalism and I often find myself just typing an approximation of a word into Google, because it's just so darn good at figuring out what I mean. I rarely use correct punctuation in IM or text messaging... I find that my older coworkers are very meticulous in their IMs, which seems like wasted effort to me. I'm not sure how I feel though about the idea that spelling overall is unimportant - if it hinders communication then it's a problem.
Just like spoken language, written language has registers. Fatfingering stuff and taking shortcuts is okay when typing IMs b/c it is a conversation with a pragmatic context and live interaction,...
Just like spoken language, written language has registers. Fatfingering stuff and taking shortcuts is okay when typing IMs b/c it is a conversation with a pragmatic context and live interaction, but writing an article with proper spelling and orthography is important because otherwise it hinders the communication given there is no way to instantly correct misunderstandings or explain upon vague or ambiguous bits.
I agree wholeheartedly. We're blessed to live in a time of nearly instantaneous, always-on communications. Written language evolved as a way to convey messages in a low-ambiguity, low-error...
I agree wholeheartedly. We're blessed to live in a time of nearly instantaneous, always-on communications. Written language evolved as a way to convey messages in a low-ambiguity, low-error manner, across great distances and long time lapses, when you couldn't easily ask, "Did you mean...?".
Just because we can ask for clarification quickly now, doesn't mean that we've ceased to need precise, accurate communications methods.
I supervise an engineer whose technical skills are indisputable, but his spelling and punctuation are so poor that I can't trust his business writing will be intelligible enough for customer interaction without review. [He's tried to compensate with Grammarly, but doesn't always take the time to recognize when it's gone astray, with sometimes hilarious results.]
Just yesterday, the spouse and I were speaking about one of his clients, who uses scare quotes without apparent semantic rhyme or reason. It's impossible to tell whether they're being sarcastic, serious, ignorant, or intentionally annoying.
So yes, it's helpful to know the basics until AI is actually good enough to provide semantic context for auto-correction.
I worked at a company that used mostly email to communicate with clients for a very long time. Then we got a client that was comfortable being available via IM. Then I would watch coworkers...
I worked at a company that used mostly email to communicate with clients for a very long time. Then we got a client that was comfortable being available via IM. Then I would watch coworkers meticulously compose a message, ask someone else to read it, then send it.
Took awhile to get them to understand that the context is different. Just send it, if there is a lack of clarity they'll let you know in a few seconds.
I'm guilty of annoying writing tics myself, including overuse of scare quotes and ellipses. They're just invisible to me until I go back and re-read a week later. At that point, it's face-palm and...
I'm guilty of annoying writing tics myself, including overuse of scare quotes and ellipses. They're just invisible to me until I go back and re-read a week later. At that point, it's face-palm and move on; the embarrassment is eventually forgotten and I do it again.
I'm not inside my readers' heads. The complaints I hear professionally are usually versions of "that was too technical" or "you used vocabulary I'm not familiar with", not "I didn't understand what you meant because the comma was misplaced". I'm working on keeping my sentences shorter, so people don't have to exert themselves to parse nested or dependent concepts - the "readable code" equivalent for English writing style.
To shed some light on why some people (particularly those north of 40) use meticulous language in texts... it's just plain easier. To do otherwise would be to essentially learn a whole new syntax.
To shed some light on why some people (particularly those north of 40) use meticulous language in texts... it's just plain easier. To do otherwise would be to essentially learn a whole new syntax.
Exactly. I'm having to learn whole new languages as I spend time on the internet and using text-based communication channels - and I find I just can't be bothered with some of them. I've learned...
Exactly. I'm having to learn whole new languages as I spend time on the internet and using text-based communication channels - and I find I just can't be bothered with some of them.
I've learned some l33t, I've learned txting, I've learned LOLing, and I've even learned basic emoji. But I can't be bothered learning GIFian or memese or advanced emoji (why is an eggplant the symbol for a penis?).
Somewhere along the way, I decided it just wasn't worth the effort. How multilingual do I really want do be?
I typically have spellcheck turned on, but autocorrect turned off, so I can get alerted if I'm spelling a word wrong but I still have to fix it myself. Neither will help in cases where you...
I typically have spellcheck turned on, but autocorrect turned off, so I can get alerted if I'm spelling a word wrong but I still have to fix it myself.
Neither will help in cases where you misspell the word in such a way as to make it a different word that the dictionary recognizes.
As one of the professors quoted in the article says, if you don't know how to spell, how will you know if your spellcheck or auto-correct are doing the right thing?
So many people absolve themselves of responsibility for their own writing by blaming their auto-correct - but that just reveals their own laziness in choosing not to check what they wrote before pressing 'save', or their own illiteracy in not knowing that the auto-correct chose the wrong word.
Then some of them respond by saying "Well, you knew what I meant."
I like Lynne Truss's take on this (she of 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' fame):
Love that quote!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
I am in IT and review, edit and approve statements of work, project scopes, etc. It's SAD how poorly they are written. Not just grammar, but spelling.
If you're making $50kUS or more a year, you need to know basic English and spelling. Lack of it will be noticed, mostly because it makes more work for people downstream of you, and it makes your employer look bad to clients.
Lastly, never trust auto-correct. Seriously. Especially Apple's. It's maybe 80% accurate.
My personal bane in email is accidentally leaving out a word..."Please send me to review it" - that sort of stuff. I have to double check each email before sending (and then six times after sending).
I have a English degree and another degree in Journalism and I often find myself just typing an approximation of a word into Google, because it's just so darn good at figuring out what I mean. I rarely use correct punctuation in IM or text messaging... I find that my older coworkers are very meticulous in their IMs, which seems like wasted effort to me. I'm not sure how I feel though about the idea that spelling overall is unimportant - if it hinders communication then it's a problem.
Just like spoken language, written language has registers. Fatfingering stuff and taking shortcuts is okay when typing IMs b/c it is a conversation with a pragmatic context and live interaction, but writing an article with proper spelling and orthography is important because otherwise it hinders the communication given there is no way to instantly correct misunderstandings or explain upon vague or ambiguous bits.
I agree wholeheartedly. We're blessed to live in a time of nearly instantaneous, always-on communications. Written language evolved as a way to convey messages in a low-ambiguity, low-error manner, across great distances and long time lapses, when you couldn't easily ask, "Did you mean...?".
Just because we can ask for clarification quickly now, doesn't mean that we've ceased to need precise, accurate communications methods.
I supervise an engineer whose technical skills are indisputable, but his spelling and punctuation are so poor that I can't trust his business writing will be intelligible enough for customer interaction without review. [He's tried to compensate with Grammarly, but doesn't always take the time to recognize when it's gone astray, with sometimes hilarious results.]
Just yesterday, the spouse and I were speaking about one of his clients, who uses scare quotes without apparent semantic rhyme or reason. It's impossible to tell whether they're being sarcastic, serious, ignorant, or intentionally annoying.
So yes, it's helpful to know the basics until AI is actually good enough to provide semantic context for auto-correction.
I worked at a company that used mostly email to communicate with clients for a very long time. Then we got a client that was comfortable being available via IM. Then I would watch coworkers meticulously compose a message, ask someone else to read it, then send it.
Took awhile to get them to understand that the context is different. Just send it, if there is a lack of clarity they'll let you know in a few seconds.
Ha! I work with a woman who probably hasn't written a sentence in her whole life that didn't end in ellipsis...
I'm guilty of annoying writing tics myself, including overuse of scare quotes and ellipses. They're just invisible to me until I go back and re-read a week later. At that point, it's face-palm and move on; the embarrassment is eventually forgotten and I do it again.
I'm not inside my readers' heads. The complaints I hear professionally are usually versions of "that was too technical" or "you used vocabulary I'm not familiar with", not "I didn't understand what you meant because the comma was misplaced". I'm working on keeping my sentences shorter, so people don't have to exert themselves to parse nested or dependent concepts - the "readable code" equivalent for English writing style.
To shed some light on why some people (particularly those north of 40) use meticulous language in texts... it's just plain easier. To do otherwise would be to essentially learn a whole new syntax.
Exactly. I'm having to learn whole new languages as I spend time on the internet and using text-based communication channels - and I find I just can't be bothered with some of them.
I've learned some l33t, I've learned txting, I've learned LOLing, and I've even learned basic emoji. But I can't be bothered learning GIFian or memese or advanced emoji (why is an eggplant the symbol for a penis?).
Somewhere along the way, I decided it just wasn't worth the effort. How multilingual do I really want do be?
Something I hadn't considered. Thank you!
i would say that grammar is far more important than spelling.
I typically have spellcheck turned on, but autocorrect turned off, so I can get alerted if I'm spelling a word wrong but I still have to fix it myself.
Neither will help in cases where you misspell the word in such a way as to make it a different word that the dictionary recognizes.