Wat happened to the English language?
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I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
You're sounding a bit like your semi-name-sake, George Bernard Shaw, per Pygmalion.
John R. Shaw wrote:
echnically; I do not speak English, I speak American,
When I read this, I was certain of some hidden genetic connection. However - it's quite true that the ignoramus' are getting the upper hand. The implication is that, with the passage of time (and I do not mean much time) their versioning will become the correct version. As I often do, I'll blame the Dumb Phone generation for hurrying this all along. An awful lot of posters think that the abbreviations in text-messages are, in fact, correct (or are too lazy to give a damn). You can see a bunch of it in Q&A - and for that matter, the primary clergyman in my house of worship, a man who's mastered multiple languages, uses these atrocities in his emails. "U no what I mean". On TV they have their idiocy at two levels. One is improper English or even use of the wrong word. This is exacerbated by the fact that they now rely upon talking heads for (by way of example) the news broadcasts. Once upon a time they actually hired people with a grasp on what's going on. Now they'll sit a pair together - who always watch one another speak - and mutually admire one another when found to be ignorant or incapable of some grade-school level computations/contemplation. The misrepresentation of science? That would really get me started. The language will evolve - that's for certain. Alas, we have allocated the control and direction to those least capable of administering the changes. Most likely, this is business as usual for our species.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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I blame TxtSpk - it encourages people to get it wrong bcos its qikr bt u no wat i syng And punctuation is for losers! The Militant Wing of the Apostrophe Protection Society shall hear of this! :laugh:
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
OriginalGriff wrote:
And punctuation is for losers!
??????????????????
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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This is part of world digitalization. The target nowadays is to get the information transmitted quickly, disregarding the formatting. If I tell you that your smart, you got the message, even though I used your instead of your're. Grammar is eventually only important to those who consider it important, and fact is that it is not important to transmit content. Do not get me wrong, I enjoy reading a text free of mistakes, but it is because I am an old fart whom it was taught that writing correctly was as important as the content of the message itself. This is not true anymore : in no times there will be nobody anymore shocked by texts full of mistakes - the checkers will be as ignorant as the writers.
Rage wrote:
his is not true anymore : in no times there will be nobody anymore shocked by texts full of mistakes - the checkers will be as ignorant as the writers.
That ship has already sailed.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Hate to brag*, but I'm a published author. Before I handed in a chapter to my editor I double checked if everything was correct. My editor barely made any corrections, and when he did make a suggestion it was often something weird like "maybe you can explain what 'x' is or maybe not, your call." At one point I got another editor and he read the already edited chapters as well, still no corrections. When my book was published and I got the physical copy I was proud. I opened my book on a random page and the first thing I noticed was a #@$&#!@^&^&! TYPO! :mad: :laugh: This was written and double checked by me, two editors, a technical editor and finally someone who does a final check on spelling and grammar. What I think is happening here is that everyone thinks the next person is going to fix it, but that person thinks the same. That sort of behavior happens everywhere. For example, the piles under my house were too short and my house started to sink into the ground (during construction, luckily). The piling(?) company, the construction company, local authorities, some overarching builders group, and I think three more parties looked at a plan to fix it and came to an agreement. The plan failed and in hindsight it never could've worked. Seven(!) parties did no do their job and an entire row of houses had to be demolished in order to get good piles into the ground (they went from 6 m to 21 m, so go figure). If that happens to a row of houses it could sure as hell happen to some book or article that may or may not be read. OK, I love it, but I'm obliged to say that if I don't want to sound like a douche ;p
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Migrating Applications to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
Sander Rossel wrote:
What I think is happening here is that everyone thinks the next person is going to fix it, but that person thinks the same.
I used the above concept - and this was decades ago - in order to get the following phrase through and into (comparatively internal) publication: "This will necessitate the application of judicious empiricism." which was just another way of saying "Take an educated guess". Another one I did, for publication in refereed literature, was to put in deliberate mistakes like "the the" so that the upper echelons had something to correct and not attempt to put their ill-equipped minds to commenting on the technical content about which they were basically clueless. This gave them an opportunity to "spray their territory". When I got it back, except for fixing deliberate typos, I ignored their nonsense and submitted it intact - let real scientist vet the content. This was in the middle 80's through early 90's. So not much has really changed in how these things are done. Sigh.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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I don't think some things are evolution (like, specifically, "could of"). Evolution is a refinement, a honing, of something. The use of "could of" is an illogical regression in that it unnecessarily creates a new meaning for the word "of" that has no logical etymology other than "sounding a bit like" a contraction of another word. It breaks well-established rules about grammar, tense, verb forms and contractions. It makes the sense of a sentence harder, not easier, to understand. It's just foul and those who use it should be summarily put out of their misery. Not that I've got strong feelings about it of course. :laugh:
Misuse of words? That was part of an early "political correctness" effort which, even at the time, I knew would come to no good end. It was referred to as Ebonics [^] (or Eubonics) - as a way to accept and excuse badly spoken English by some minority groups. Supposedly their culture. Note that the example may not be safe for all workplaces. The real point is that misuse of an corruption of the spoken language were immediately transformed into a cultural right. Well - yes - you can speak any way you wish. Just don't expect everyone else to say that it's just fine. Now, ignorance is quite acceptable, even coveted. People make fun of nerds and geeks. Probably so that they don't have to accept their own wasted existence. (hows that for extremism ! ? !)
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
There are lots of causes and they are piling up on each other now. It seems to me that using horrendous grammar has become stylish. It's become so bad that dictionaries are now adding ridiculous words and alternative definitions. For example, literally is now a synonym for figuratively. WTF?
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
I agree.
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I agree with you completely. I've been a grammar and spelling nerd since birth pretty much. (My English teacher used to have me stand at front of class and would say "Tell them about apostrophes" or something, and disappear for a fag for 20 minutes). Partly, yes of course it's technology. TXT speak, predictive text and all the rest encourages laziness and re-inforces incorrect usage. Partly, of course, languages evolve and I have no real problem with the introduction of new words and the partial loss of others. What winds me up, though, is the use of words that are simply wrong and either give an incorrect message or an ambiguous one. I cannot understand how people routinely make statements that make no sense whatsoever - nor can I understand how people manage to correctly interpret it a lot of the time! One thing I've noticed is that people, now in their 60s, who used to speak correctly are now adopting the ridiculous use of "of" when they mean "have": "I could of broken lockdown". It makes no sense, it doesn't save any time, and I can't see how or why it arose. Maybe people have either damaged their hearing so much, or are just so lazy when listening to others, that they've mis-heard "could've" as "could of" and assumed that "of" has another meaning. When this started, I assumed it was just a pronunciation issue, but of course it rapidly spread into writing as well. Now we're bombarded online and on TV with ads for "Grammarly" - based on the supposition that grammar and spelling are "hard" and take so much effort that you need software to do it for you. However if people just applied some thought to the language they used, plus maybe learned a few simple rules, it should come pretty naturally. Misuse of language particularly irks me when used by the media (especially the BBC) - these are professional communicators, and part of their role (in my opinion) is not only to communicate effectively and accurately, but to act as a role model in communication. (I also get annoyed by full-time professional drivers, e.g. cabbies and lorry drivers, who make the most basic and annoying errors - such as middle-lane hogging and failing to indicate). Perhaps the root cause is the speed with which society moves these days; when replying to a letter, a response wasn't expected for a couple of days (remember when the postman called several times a day?) but with text and WhatsApp there is an expectation of instant reply to everything. We arguably write more than we ever have done, but have less time to do it
As I read through your list of things you see out of your window, I received the impression that you are in southeast Texas. When we travel to Corpus Christi, we see almost all of those items.
Referring to the list of words eliminated from the Oxford Junior Dictionary, it appears to me that the authors are removing the words needed to describe an outdoor experience. I believe they are pandering to the urban and dense suburban families with limited opportunities for outdoor exploration. Too many modern children have the idea that being outdoors means visiting the local vest-pocket park for some highly supervised "outdoor play."
This has the very unfortunate side-effect of denigrating the importance of:
- National and state parks, national forests, and other wild spaces
- Unstructured play and exploration for children
- Outdoor play for children
- The interconnection of ecological spheres — i.e.: how does one animal or one plant fit into the local ecology? Or, how can you preserve one animal without preserving the animals and plants it depends upon and whom depend upon it? More fundamentally, why should we preserve wild spaces and wild animals?
- The self-confidence gained from unexpected and novel interactions the world around us.
- The ability to describe and categorize our experiences beyond "where the sidewalk ends." (George Strait song: Where the Sidewalk Ends)
This is just a continuing effort to indoctrinate "Manifest Destiny" concepts into our children. If we cannot accurately describe something, we are very limited in our ability to share and to appreciate it. Thus, we are teaching – by omission – our children to fear it. As humans, we have a long track record of trying to destroy what we fear or what we do not understand.
__________________ Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now. © 2009, Rex Hammock
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You're sounding a bit like your semi-name-sake, George Bernard Shaw, per Pygmalion.
John R. Shaw wrote:
echnically; I do not speak English, I speak American,
When I read this, I was certain of some hidden genetic connection. However - it's quite true that the ignoramus' are getting the upper hand. The implication is that, with the passage of time (and I do not mean much time) their versioning will become the correct version. As I often do, I'll blame the Dumb Phone generation for hurrying this all along. An awful lot of posters think that the abbreviations in text-messages are, in fact, correct (or are too lazy to give a damn). You can see a bunch of it in Q&A - and for that matter, the primary clergyman in my house of worship, a man who's mastered multiple languages, uses these atrocities in his emails. "U no what I mean". On TV they have their idiocy at two levels. One is improper English or even use of the wrong word. This is exacerbated by the fact that they now rely upon talking heads for (by way of example) the news broadcasts. Once upon a time they actually hired people with a grasp on what's going on. Now they'll sit a pair together - who always watch one another speak - and mutually admire one another when found to be ignorant or incapable of some grade-school level computations/contemplation. The misrepresentation of science? That would really get me started. The language will evolve - that's for certain. Alas, we have allocated the control and direction to those least capable of administering the changes. Most likely, this is business as usual for our species.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote:
On TV they have their idiocy at two levels. One is improper English or even use of the wrong word. This is exacerbated by the fact that they now rely upon talking heads for (by way of example) the news broadcasts. Once upon a time they actually hired people with a grasp on what's going on.
This is why I am ecstatic that Ms. Norah O'Donnell was promoted to "Uncle Walter's" Chair of Journalism. Finally, one of the major networks has promoted someone of Walter Cronkite's caliber to the pinnacle of their broadcast news.
__________________ Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now. © 2009, Rex Hammock
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote:
On TV they have their idiocy at two levels. One is improper English or even use of the wrong word. This is exacerbated by the fact that they now rely upon talking heads for (by way of example) the news broadcasts. Once upon a time they actually hired people with a grasp on what's going on.
This is why I am ecstatic that Ms. Norah O'Donnell was promoted to "Uncle Walter's" Chair of Journalism. Finally, one of the major networks has promoted someone of Walter Cronkite's caliber to the pinnacle of their broadcast news.
__________________ Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now. © 2009, Rex Hammock
Funny you should say that. I realize it's the scripts given her, but the CBS network news became too much "mommy" news - by which I mean a combination of excess human interest and comments that were poor. Of course, it might not be the writers. I moved over to NBC Network News (Lester Holt). He's being embarrassingly used for prolonged teasers and commentary in the preceding half-hours local news. So I stream.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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John R. Shaw wrote:
what we writwrote makes sense.
John R. Shaw wrote:
Have fun taringtearing apart the above
Pots and Kettles... To answer your rant, most publishers no longer employ editors or proofreaders. They rely on the spelling correction and grammar in word processors, which -as long as English is not replaced by LOGLAN - will never be perfect.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
I think he just bringing home his point in a cringe-worthy fashion, just like in the title of the thread.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Thats sad ;p I don't think it's laziness though. This 'lazy' generation is always busy with looking good on Instagram or Twitch, which is probably a lot more effort than writing an apostrophe :laugh: I think it's just that people think other things are more important. Or maybe it once started as a way to distinguish oneself. Back in the day, when MSN was still a thing, I also wrote liek dis bcus that was cool :D Nowadays it's all gg lol ftw g2g! All because those precious keystrokes are worth points in online games. You could even say they optimized language so they have more time to play their games ;)
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Migrating Applications to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
What can I say! Took humanity a few thousand years to go from hieroglyphs and pictogram to alphabets and written words and now in a few short years we move back to hieroglyphs (called emojis now). How come for hundreds of years people have been able to express their thoughts and sentiments using words and now, all of a sudden we go back to signs scribbled on a cave wall.
Mircea
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Exactly so, and the problem is just compounded by the fact that non-English speaking children, like you, get taught the rules. I used to support our European teams, both remotely and via customer visits in my last job. I was always impressed with the standards of spoken and written English. And when someone was not sure how to use the correct word or phrase, they would always ask first.
That reminds me of my German teacher; she said she had to teach us English before she could teach us German.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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John R. Shaw wrote:
Have fun taring apart the above
:laugh: I assume that you put that in just to see if anyone was taking notice
I was expecting some feathers to go along with the tar. ;)
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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John R. Shaw wrote:
what we writwrote makes sense.
John R. Shaw wrote:
Have fun taringtearing apart the above
Pots and Kettles... To answer your rant, most publishers no longer employ editors or proofreaders. They rely on the spelling correction and grammar in word processors, which -as long as English is not replaced by LOGLAN - will never be perfect.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
Congratulations; you appear to be the first person to catch the 'writ' error. :-D
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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They're, their, there, it's so simple :^) One thing I sometimes struggle with is "it's" instead of "its". For example: Sander's/Sanders book is awesome That's because in Dutch it's "Sander's" while in English it's "Sanders". However, when you say: Chris' website is awesome, you do use that apostrophe and it's the same as in Dutch. Sanders presidential campaign (that would be my presidential campaign) vs. Sanders' presidential campaign (Bernie's campaign). Or in Dutch, Sander's presidential campaign and Sanders' presidential campaign. It's not just an English phenomenon though. Dutch language skills are deteriorating as well. Especially the dreaded "dt" rule (singular second person is singular first person + T). "Ik vind" (I find) and "Hij vindt" (He finds). You see stuff like "Ik vindt" (horribly wrong) and "Hij vind" (less wrong, but still wrong). I must admit I sometimes do it wrong too and I still struggle with the past particle of some words (does it end with a D or a T?) :laugh: Hard to explain to a non-Dutch I guess ;) Let's just say I find such grammar errors in business emails, even the more formal ones.
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Migrating Applications to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
Those business emails are a pain. Someone often responses before I do, because I am still trying to correct my mistakes and wording. For some reason; I find it easier to spot my mistakes after sending the response.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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To be fair, I doubt that any editor would "skip over" an error assuming a later editor would fix it. It's more likely that having skim read the proof and found it to be generally good that they don't bother with a proper proof-read. The other issue is that it's actually really hard to proof-read your own work. Of course you'll find many issues, but when reading it a lot of the time you're really just "re-playing" in your head what you intended to write, rather than reading the characters on the page. A service I provide is proof reading websites (including checking for consistent terminology, consistent capitalisation etc) and I frequently find errors which the authors are really embarrassed about, having read, re-read and read again looking for - and missing - typos. I'm aware that having set myself up as a "proof reader" I am very much at risk when making changes to my own website! This is quite a thread now and I'm wondering whether the OP really intended the typo in the subject line... (though I'm fairly sure that's a typing error rather than a language error, if it wasn't deliberate)
I was wondering when someone would mention that error. You are correct, that was a typing error. I agree with everything you said about editors; as well proof reading your own work. We often read what we thought we wrote; missing the fact that what we actually wrote was not what we thought. It reminds me of the stuttering problem I use to have, and occasionally still have. It is like a short circuit; my mouth is trying to speak the first word and my brain is already on the fifth word. When writing, we sometimes, unintentionally, fail to type a word (or letter) because we are already passed the point in our own heads.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
One factor to consider is survivorship bias. That is, you are exposed to a select sampling of formal writing from a century ago. There may also be a bias in the material. When I read biographical material or histories, there are plenty of examples of bad grammar and spelling in the actual diaries and/or letters of people. Another factor is confirmation bias. There are plenty of examples of bad grammar and spelling in news reports from a century ago (though I suspect there is a correlation between time-to-publish and errors. In other words, newspapers would have more errors than magazines, which would have more errors than books.)
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I agree with you completely. I've been a grammar and spelling nerd since birth pretty much. (My English teacher used to have me stand at front of class and would say "Tell them about apostrophes" or something, and disappear for a fag for 20 minutes). Partly, yes of course it's technology. TXT speak, predictive text and all the rest encourages laziness and re-inforces incorrect usage. Partly, of course, languages evolve and I have no real problem with the introduction of new words and the partial loss of others. What winds me up, though, is the use of words that are simply wrong and either give an incorrect message or an ambiguous one. I cannot understand how people routinely make statements that make no sense whatsoever - nor can I understand how people manage to correctly interpret it a lot of the time! One thing I've noticed is that people, now in their 60s, who used to speak correctly are now adopting the ridiculous use of "of" when they mean "have": "I could of broken lockdown". It makes no sense, it doesn't save any time, and I can't see how or why it arose. Maybe people have either damaged their hearing so much, or are just so lazy when listening to others, that they've mis-heard "could've" as "could of" and assumed that "of" has another meaning. When this started, I assumed it was just a pronunciation issue, but of course it rapidly spread into writing as well. Now we're bombarded online and on TV with ads for "Grammarly" - based on the supposition that grammar and spelling are "hard" and take so much effort that you need software to do it for you. However if people just applied some thought to the language they used, plus maybe learned a few simple rules, it should come pretty naturally. Misuse of language particularly irks me when used by the media (especially the BBC) - these are professional communicators, and part of their role (in my opinion) is not only to communicate effectively and accurately, but to act as a role model in communication. (I also get annoyed by full-time professional drivers, e.g. cabbies and lorry drivers, who make the most basic and annoying errors - such as middle-lane hogging and failing to indicate). Perhaps the root cause is the speed with which society moves these days; when replying to a letter, a response wasn't expected for a couple of days (remember when the postman called several times a day?) but with text and WhatsApp there is an expectation of instant reply to everything. We arguably write more than we ever have done, but have less time to do it
I have always struggled with words and grammar. I can write a word a hundred times a day and then, one day, I can't even remember how to spell it. :doh: It always amazes me when I reread a paper I wrote in the past and discover how good it really was. I use to write a lot of papers, because I knew that I would not be at the level of knowledge on the subject again and will have to look it up, again. You know your getting old, when you realize that all those old fogeys were telling you the truth about forgetting more than you know. That is, you have reach a point in your life were you know you knew it but can't quite remember what you knew. I discovered, some time ago, that if you just start typing on a given subject, then you can surprise yourself with what you remember.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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There are lots of causes and they are piling up on each other now. It seems to me that using horrendous grammar has become stylish. It's become so bad that dictionaries are now adding ridiculous words and alternative definitions. For example, literally is now a synonym for figuratively. WTF?
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
OK, it is official; the world has figuativelyliterally gone nuts.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
