This is completely off-topic, but I came across this quote the other day, and thought I’d relay it to the group as it applies to some members of our community:
“When writing email, spelling and grammar are important. Lots of folks like to think they aren’t. They’re wrong. Email is a written environment, and how you write something is at least as important as what you say. Bad spelling and bad grammar are signs of laziness. If someone is that lazy and doesn’t care about their message enough to make it as good as they can, why should the recipients care either?”
Food for thought, anyway. And you know who you are…
I dunno 'bout this.
Seems to me some tolerance is needed
when you consider that not every person on this listserv is a native-born English speaker.
“Paul T. Brown” wrote:
Hi all,
This is completely off-topic, but I came across this quote the other day, and thought I’d relay it to the group as it applies to some members of our community:
“When writing email, spelling and grammar are important. Lots of folks like to think they aren’t. They’re wrong. Email is a written environment, and how you write something is at least as important as what you say. Bad spelling and bad grammar are signs of laziness. If someone is that lazy and doesn’t care about their message enough to make it as good as they can, why should the recipients care either?”
Food for thought, anyway. And you know who you are…
Yes, one member pointed this out in a private message, which is something I hadn’t thought of. I’ve never had a problem with people whose first language is not English. I used to work for Business Objects, a French company with workers in its ranks who come from and work on literally every continent (except Antarctica, I suppose), and I got used to dealing with it on a regular basis.
There is a difference between the ability to write clean, correct grammar and the unwillingness to do so, and the inability to do so for whatever reason.
Anyway, as I said, it’s just food for thought. No need to take up a large amount of bandwidth on an off-topic thread.
I dunno 'bout this.
Seems to me some tolerance is needed
when you consider that not every person on this listserv is a native-born
English
speaker.
Anyway, as I said, it’s just food for thought. No need to take up a large
amount of bandwidth on an off-topic thread.
My 2 cents. Considering that I neglected to spellcheck prior to hastily submitting a response to one participant’s desperate post regarding a glossary of ANACRONYMS, I feel I am uniquely qualified to address the topic first hand.
Bad spelling and bad grammar are signs of laziness…
I imagine that a review of the work of some of the world’s great novelists would reveal errors of punctuation, grammar, and spelling. Although many of Dave Rathbun’s submissions are quite voluminous ;-), most of our posts could scarcely be considered novel quality. We are all working under constraints of time and we compose messages with thought of little else than solving the problem at hand. Although important, I don’t think we should dwell as much on the format of a message as on it’s content. So I admit to my spelling error, but humbly doubt that the phrase “Cindy Clayton” and the word “lazy” have ever been used simultaneously within a single sentence
and it might interest everyone to note that a spellcheck of THIS message failed on the word SPELLCHECK
Cindy Clayton - Business Objects Consultant AT&T
336.698.2144
In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
Paul
Du hast vllig recht. Auch ich bin ein Verfechter von sauber geschrieben e-mails. Ungl¸cklicherweise sprechen und schreiben aber nicht alle Menschen Englisch so wie ein native speaker. Ich bin gerne bereit meine Beitrge zu dieser Liste in sauberem Deutsch zu verfassen.
Viel Gl¸ck damit, und hoffentlich hast Du auch einen Ðbersetzer zur Hand.
Walter
“Paul T. Brown” schrieb:
Hi all,
This is completely off-topic, but I came across this quote the other day, and thought I’d relay it to the group as it applies to some members of our community:
“When writing email, spelling and grammar are important. Lots of folks like to think they aren’t. They’re wrong. Email is a written environment, and how you write something is at least as important as what you say. Bad spelling and bad grammar are signs of laziness. If someone is that lazy and doesn’t care about their message enough to make it as good as they can, why should the recipients care either?”
Food for thought, anyway. And you know who you are…
Paul
–
DI Walter Muellner
Leiter Bereich Consulting
Delphi Software GmbH, Vivenotgasse 48, A-1120 Vienna / Austria Tel: +43-1-8151456-12, Fax: +43-1-8151456-450 e-mail: w.muellner@delphi.at, WEB: http://www.delphi.at
