The importance of good writing skills

^^ Little has changed then. The only way to encourage better communication is to ignore noise.

 

I constantly notice the lack of typography and writing skills. Who first made the rules of writing (now keyboarding)? Guttenberg in 1455 CE. You don't underline (use italic or bold instead for emphasis). So many of us learned on a typewriter, there is a trend to continue to use typewriter rules (that violate the rules of typography). You see errors in the best of writing. It appears K-12 students are not taught grammar or typography, largely because the teachers never learned. One of the worst offenders is MLA (tied to typewriter standards). Whenever someone says we should teach and work to standards, I agree, but then most are unfamiliar with current standards.

Solution: The Mac is Not a Typewriter, The PC Is Not a Typewriter. These are small primers that make a large difference in writing. We have many editors, academic and commercial, that are not aware of current standards and encourage bizarre writing.

"Such a printer, said Goudy, will steal sheep." Time is overdue for us to dismantle the pens, release the sheep, and write to current standards.

 

I remember this gem. It was written in the same prose as Eats, shoots, and leaves.

 

Grumpy, that newt thing should wear off in a couple of days or so. If not, you'll have to visit the government clinic.

 

anyone with children in public schools in the last 30-40 years, knows that the teachers are close to illiterate and spelling, grammer and punctuation have been eschewed as necessary to basic education in the name of 'creativity'. same goes for math. please excuse my lack of capitalization, i'm in a hurry.

p.s., some of the best scammers over the years have been the best dressed, groomed, most well spoken individuals. and their grammer is probably impeccable. because they know people will assume they are legit and won't run them through a 'government agency'.

 

Thank you, R.V.!

Unfortunately, in addition to poor writing habits by so many, another problem is close-mindedness. This email thread is 'preaching to the choir' because people with poor writing skills won't read it. Just like conservatives won't read posts about liberal ideas and vice versa. So people tend to reinforce their own ideas and habits, rather than learning.

Having also had job applicants show up with torn jeans and flip flops, one has to ask how anyone could be so socially isolated and poorly read as to not know it was a problem. Sigh.

 

Well seeing as middle English is almost as foreign to current English grammar (being either US or English)....I would think the original Guttenberg language would be even more untranslatable for anyone who isn't fluent in both English and German (my aunt who lives in Vienna and was an Opera singer is the only person I know who might be able to do this). Guttenberg was the first to invent a printer, but writing conventions existed well before that. I do rue the day that it's accepted that formal writing includes internet acronyms and emoticons. It will be really telling if it includes lack of punctuation and capitalization...right now that's the main thing that irks me from some e-mails I get (where the person never capitalizes or puncuates anything). That and using cute abbreviations might be good for texting....but if you're writing from a full keyboard...I think it reflects poorly on you. I never do such stuff with a current client, let alone some potential client I'm bidding for.

 

and that's another thing. have you been to a college campus lately? torn jeans, flip flops, pajamas in class. anything goes. and no one tells them that when they graduate, things may be different. they all think they're going to work at google and play foosball all day. when my son started medical school, the administration actually had to tell the entering class that they wouldn't be able to work in a hospital dressed like that and they might as well get used to it now. and these are our best and brightest?

 

Which medical school is it? I've noticed every medical school is a little different about when they start cracking down on formalities: especially when to actually flunk those that deserve it!

 

I don't think it has much to do with it. The computer keyboard is the same as the typewriter. The increase in speed should have made us all poets. Writing by hand is like coding by hand, useless. It just makes the task last longer. I would say the only detrimental change between the typewriter and keyboard/pc combo is that now you don't have to think before you write. Make a mistake with the typewriter and you have to white it out, or start over. That's a pretty good incentive to get it right the first time.

From one of my favourite engineering joke pages (I believe this is close to 15yrs old now...):

RISK
Engineers hate risk. They try to eliminate it whenever they can. This is understandable, given that when an engineer makes one little mistake, the media will treat it like it's a big deal or something.
EXAMPLES OF BAD PRESS FOR ENGINEERS
* Hindenberg.
* Space Shuttle Challenger.
* SPANet(tm)
* Hubble space telescope.
* Apollo 13.
* Titanic.
* Ford Pinto.
* Corvair.
The risk/reward calculation for engineers looks something like this:
RISK: Public humiliation and the death of thousands of innocent people.
REWARD: A certificate of appreciation in a handsome plastic frame.

There is nobody in my office that wears a tie. Some people wear button shirts, most people wear tshirts and jeans. The guy in the cube across from me wears sandals and usually some sort of death-metal tshirt. We come and go as we please, there are no set hours for working. If there is a meeting everyone who is attending picks a mutual time and you show up then. Otherwise it is perfectly acceptable to show up when you want, and leave when you want. There are at least 2 people that take 2.5 hours breaks in the afternoon to play racketball. We work hard, but they know that happy employees are productive employees. One big difference is my company has a total of 2 non-engineers in the office. The secretary, and a part time assembler. Everyone else, is an engineer. Every satellite office as well as the main office is like this. Even the CEOs and VPs are engineers with doctorates. No marketing or business majors needed. But these jobs do exist, and I love it. If I stay up late playing my rival on an online battle of BF1943 on the PS3, I can just show up around 11am and nobody cares. Similarly when I have things to do I can just leave, finish them, and come back later.

Now, I am not sure how many of the L.A.S. graduates will ever have this privilege, but it does seem to be more common. My roommate at another engineering firm in-town wears tshirts and jeans but doesn't have the same freedom of time. He does work with time sensitive radiation, so that may be part of it!

 

Okay, now we're just griping about the next generation. That's a rite of passage for every older generation since time immemorial. Somehow the next generation grows up, gets work done, makes money and raises families just like we did.

My son is taught how to write and spell in school, and it's just a normal public school. There are people my age who can't spell to save their lives (including my cousin, who's a very successful web designer and does better than I). Spelling is important, grammar is important, dressing properly is important, but so is being able to do the job.

When I started work, dressing up with a shirt and tie was just exiting the workplace for engineers, and I am always thankful I never had to do that. I can think much better in jeans and a polo shirt. If I need to meet customers, then I dress up. But I always take the time to write fairly proper sentences and spell things correctly, even in a quick e-mail, just helps that much more to make sure I'm understood correctly.

Regarding the spammers, most don't bother to use proper capitalization or spelling. If they do, then they're con artists, not spammers.

 

Sounds a lot like the running argument in M*A*S*H, between Hawkeye Pierce and Charles Emerson Winchester, III (I'm not sure if I should be impressed I remembered that?). When was that made? Oh yeah, 30 years ago.

Writing "a lot" reminds me of one of my big pet peeves - people who mistakenly write "allot" because the spell checker tells them "alot" is not right, LOL. Another is writing "I should of", when obviously it's "I should have". Then there's "mute point" instead of "moot point", "a tough road to hoe" instead of a "tough row to hoe". People giving respect that they're "do", not "due", etc.

But I know these people can still be intelligent people. Still bugs the heck out of me though.

 

This is worth a repost.

 

Meet the Alot.

 

These get to me: loose and lose, affect and effect, regardless and irregardless, break and brake, they're and their and also peddle and pedal. The spell checker fails on these too.

I'm sure there are many more, but these appear all to frequently.

 

And the one that baffled me at first - Does and dose. Yes it's on this forum more than once or should that be wunse?

 

I see break and brake all too frequently on the Prius forums. How about chose and choose, to and too, your and you're, principal and principle. Now I'm wondering if our language is overly complicated.

 

Or some brains are not?