A wonderful read!

http://www.baltimoreexaminer.com/opinion...ge_English.html

may also be a reminder for some SZoners.

I taught 8th grade English for 33 years, so I'm very familiar with much of that style of writing. And to think I got a B in a grad class because I disagreed with the prof and argued that standard spellings are important.

I can't open this, but the lack of writing skills is evident everywhere.

Even here, posters who claim to have extensive writing experience sometimes produce copy with tense problems, bad punctuation, incomplete sentences and more.

Maby we're all just rushing. Maby the volume of communication today has convinced us that quantity of production is more important than literacy or even content.

I used to work with electrical engineers who graduated at the top 10% of their classes. Most couldn't even spell their names. I believe that, over time, the technical requirements for a degree increased, and requirements for completing humanity classes, including writing and English, were gradually reduced or eliminated to keep the program within a four year time-frame. These were bright young people, but you wouldn't know it when you read what they wrote.

One thing we could all do (including me, particularly) is review what we write and do a quick edit for clarity and literacy before we hit that "send" button.


Russ (picky old communication professor) Lay

Oh I don't think their is no problem with the way we rite or spill neither one cause I have a spill checkers on this hear PC and it can't even find nothing wrong with most of my stuff. I guess it didn't have know good book learning like me & I also don't like the weigh people waist so much space with all them knew paragraphs and periodicals and comas neither and I have too go spend another knight tinkling on them keys now because drunk people knead loving two.

Ewe no its me sew eye won't sine DonM

Must of miss spilled DonM cause Mr. spill checker spit it back too mi self and not nothing else

Language habits (including writing) are developed early and are heavily influenced by the parents (or home environment). The children of college-educated parents are likely to be much more articulate and possess better language skills than their counterparts (with non-college educated parents) even with relatively equal educational exposure outside the home. No surprise there but that's not to say that this handicap cannot be overcome. First, one must actually CARE how their written presentation comes across. Since this is usually the only exposure we have to our 'cyber' friends, you'd think one would want to put their best linguistic foot forward, but apparently not.

Long run-on sentences with NO punctuation are torture to read, and leaves one wondering about the intellect of the writer. In most cases, I think it's just a case of the writer's brain racing ahead of his fingers (although many times the opposite is true ). Anyhoo, where's that 'spellcheck' button. I was just thinking; too bad there isn't a 'music-check' button we could push before we posted some of our musical offerings. Just a thought.

chas

Don, I call Chas an "in your face" smartass occasionally, and really enjoy some of his stuff.

You, om the other hand, will be known as "gentleman smartass" from now on.

Man, I bet you were a "killer" when you were in the publishing business.

Against you, Andy Rooney wouldn't have a shot.


Russ (fellow smartass) Lay

Russ, when I resigned from a big oil company, for which I edited the employee publications, I prepared and printed my own exit interview.
It was pretty good!
DonM