I have encountered self made millionaires who were absolute boneheads in grammar, math, history, etc. back in high school. Go figure........
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I wrote about a similar issue here with the word integrated: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/is-the-word-integrated-that-hard-to-spell |
I once found on a boutique microphone manufacturer's website, the misspelling of "base", and wrote them a semi-sarcastic email about it (attempting humor). The company owner was not amused, and proceeded to list me his extensive credentials in the audio industry, to win my respect I suppose. It was a bit over-the-top response to my simply pointing out that he misused the word base for bass when describing the characteristics of his $1500 microphone. He did fix the webpage that day though! |
Part of the problem is that texting teaches bad habits, and another part is the reliance on spell checking software and simply accepting that it will know best which homonym you would want to use without you having to think about it. When legal matters can have millions of bucks determined by a misplaced comma, the upcoming generations' refrain of "Well, you know what I meant" just isn't going to cut it. |
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dweller, I'd heard about abandoning cursive writing.... As someone who the nuns attempted to beat proper Palmer Method Cursive into and still failed to conform, I'm of mixed mind. My personal handwriting would best serve a pharmacist...and we'd have a quieter world for it. I gave up long ago and generally print the rare message and note. Like most, my signature is a scrawled tangle of lines with a vague attempt at some sort of 'form following function' (maybe it should look kinda like the letters it mimics...). Cursive is going to follow calligraphy into the 'arts & crafts'....most will not miss it.. When all that's left is emoji, will we have come full circle to pictography as in Chinese or Japanese? |
I hear school district are going to stop teaching cursive writing as it is just "too difficult" for modern youngsters to learn. Don't tell this to the kids attending "The Latin School" in Chicago. They learn Latin language as most will be doctors and lawyers. Quoting Judge Smails: "The world needs ditch diggers too.". |
+1 teo_audio. I always thought that emails were the biggest enemy of true communication until texting came along. Probably why they invented emoji to try to add clarity of intent to an otherwise easily misinterpreted written comment stripped of inflection and verbal cues for the sake of minimal effort. Are we really that busy with matters of importance that a phone call is too ponderous in order to ensure the meeting of the minds? Dave |
Regarding misuse of apostrophes I of course agree, but on occasion I (and perhaps others) have chosen to take a bit of poetic license and do that intentionally, in order to avoid possible confusion as to whether the "s" is part of a tube type designation or model name which precedes it. But to add to the commonly seen incorrect word substitutions that have been mentioned, on a percentage basis I would have to say that among the leaders are requests for or offerings of "advise" instead of "advice." And of course "your" instead of "you’re." Regards, -- Al |
I had to interview job candidates for my company not long ago. And writing is involved - being able to describe the products on the website for potential buyers. As part of the interview I gave all candidates a 10 word spelling exam, nothing too difficult, words like "dimensions", "beautiful", "large", "pictures", etc. If memory serves, 90%+ of the candidates were recent ASU graduates in non-engineering disciplines. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that if you saw the results, you'd think the spelling test had been administered to a group of non-English-speaking Albanian exchange students. It was like that comedy movie "Idiocracy" happening right there in the interviews. My biggest person online pet peeve is the word "lose", as in the opposite of "to find". Somewhere along the way, that word gained an extra "o" and if you don't win you're a "looser". |
I've seen college kids text using no caps or punctuation of any kind except maybe, a period along with many mis-spelled words. But then my grammar is far from perfect. The reason you are seeing this is they spent their youth, or rather came up through their youth..via texting. Texting keyboards require far too much effort for most to bother to punctuate properly. It's a dead giveaway (when reading a text of mine) that I was an adult when texting became mainstream, as I do the extra work of punctuation and use all the extra characters that are on the second layer beyond the basic qwerty. I admit that having to do things correctly stops me from texting at all. I won't willingly misspell and use punctuation incorrectly and I don't want the extra effort of dealing with this micro miniature keyboard crap, so I simply don't text. The first company to address this issue in a simple easily utilized and intuitive way, will probably win the next bout of smart phone sales wars. Perhaps some company already has. I don't like 'dumbing down' phones, so I stay away from them. I talk with people. I call them. I speak with them in person. I sit at computers and compose emails. |
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