PROJECT BLACKHAT

Craig White craig at tobyhouse.com
Mon Nov 26 18:08:31 UTC 2007


On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 12:01 -0600, Dave Ihnat wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 10:30:02AM -0700, Craig White wrote:
> > there is a whole generation coming up that uses text messaging as a
> > primary means of communication. Text messaging eschews
> > spelling/punctuation/grammar as functionally unimportant to
> > communications.
> 
> And there are entire regions of the US where colloquial English doesn't
> sound like something someone from another region can understand.
> (It's even worse in England--try understanding someone with a thick
> Cockney accent.)  Not that there's anything wrong with that--EXCEPT when
> you want to compete and participate in the common community.
> 
> > If we were talking about writing papers for school, there might be a
> > valid point for raising issues about spelling, punctuation and grammar.
> 
> No--there's never any excuse for sloppiness.  Sloppy expression indicates
> either an inability or an unwillingness to spend the time and effort on
> detail.  This translates to carelessness in other areas of effort.
> 
> > If the self appointed school marms would find some other place to
> > practice their craft, it would be appreciated...it's not needed here.
> 
> For what it's worth--I have thrown resumes on the scrap heap if they
> aren't intelligible.  I didn't read more than a couple of lines into the
> original post because it looked like rambling garble.  If you can't reach
> the target audience--be it volunteers for a project, a client, or an
> employer--you've failed in your mission.
> 
> People, you can argue all you want about the lack of need for proper
> communication, but it's an old and losing proposition.  I went to IIT in
> the '70s, and the engineers almost bragged about their inability to write.
> They found that attitude a hindrance on graduation.
> 
> I'd thought we'd gotten rid of that by the late '70s, but then there
> were a whole generation of posters on the early USENET who tried to push
> "phonetic English", deliberately misspelling words and using alternate
> grammar, claiming--as has been claimed in this thread--that 'proper'
> English isn't needed.  That died out (thankfully!).
> 
> I can't use a developer or field engineer who can't communicate clearly
> and concisely in either written or spoken language.  Someone may be the
> hottest jock on the block, but there are a lot of other hot jocks who
> CAN speak and write in a manner that doesn't alienate or confuse clients.
> 
> Feel free to espouse your view, but also be prepared to lose a job or
> contract opportunity, or to be ignored.
> 
> Now let's get back to topics more central to Fedora.
----
great

we now have Gene, Frank and Dave as list moms.

knock yourselves out guys, you will really be performing a valuable
service to the fedora-list by making sure that those who misspell,
grammatically fracture the language, etc. are summarily dismissed - even
banished from the list if necessary.

Craig




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