Re: Yahoo has no staff tech writers
I'm not QUITE prepared to make poor grammar a capital offence, but it's right up there.
My first reaction, upon encountering fractured grammar and spelling in technical or business documents, is a provisional downgrade of my estimation of the writer, the document content, and the company that let this happen.
You say that people shouldn't obsess over grammar. Yet I can't help thinking that this reaction is, in itself obsessive (although I admit that I share something of the same attitude).
As I've said before, modern English speakers have a grammatical neurosis. The prime symptom of this neurosis is a greater concern with grammatical correctness than with content.
I suspect that the reason for this neurosis is that, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the ability to speak and write Standard English (that is, English as spoken by the upper classes around London, and, later, at the great English universities) became a mark of education and social status.
Nowadays, most of us probably don't think of using Standard English as a mark of social rank. However, we do usually think of it as demonstrating our education. We also feel a small smirk of superiority when we catch a mistake, and tend to dismiss what somebody has to say if its grammar isn't up to our standards.
Since I've been educated in these standards, I often find myself reacting in these ways, but I am trying to put grammar in its proper place in my mental map.
For example, I am not very worried about George Bush's pronounication of "nuclear." It's a very common deviation from Standard English, and widely enough used that I know what he means. In fact, he may even use it consciously to cultivate a sense that he is one of the people.
I'm far more concerned with the fact that he frequently ends his sentences with a different thought than he started with. Instead of being a largely cosmetic error as his pronounication of "nuclear" is, this habit directly suggests a lack of organized thought. In other words, it's the contents,not the presentation that I think we should worry about.
--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7177
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield
"Down, set down your liquor and your girl from off your knee;
For the wind has come to say, 'You must take me while you may,
If you'd go to Mother Carey (Walk her round to Mother Carey!)
We're bound to Mother Carey where she feeds her chicks at sea!'"
- Rudyard Kipling, "Anchor Song"
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References:
Re: Yahoo has no staff tech writers: From: Jeff Hanvey
Re: Yahoo has no staff tech writers: From: Kevin McLauchlan
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