9:55 a.m.
Way way OT:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i",
not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their
Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
want to know.
Sorry, this has been bugging me for ages and I had just had to get this
off my chest. Feel free to ignore.
poc
8:23 p.m.
On 02/02/2013 08:06 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 02/01/2013 08:16 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
> On 02/01/2013 04:52 PM, Craig White wrote:
>> It's clear that you want this e-mail list, informal as it is to respect
>> your sense of proper grammar.
>
> No, it's not "his sense of proper grammar," it's proper grammar as
> it's been taught in schools in every English speaking country for
> over a century now.
>
> As I see it, there are three reasons people's grammar on this list
> falls short. This is an international list and not all of the
> members have English as their first (or even second) language. My
> attitude is that they're doing the best they can and as long as I can
> work out what they originally meant, that's all that matters. Second,
> there are native English speakers who either were never taught
> properly in school (I have a friend who has trouble with homonyms,
> using "flue" for "flew" and other such errors because of problems
> when she was young.) And, of course, there are the people who were
> exposed to proper grammar, syntax and word usage but simply don't
> care. On some mailing lists, people in both of the latter two groups
> would be flamed for their errors. On this one, I keep my opinions to
> myself because I can't see any way it could possibly help and many
> ways it could end up making trouble for everybody.
Back in the days on some IETF lists we had a Japanese professor who's
English was phenomenally good and would flame native speakers on their
grammer. Of course the gentleman could not speak a clear word of
English (and still can't when I occationally meet up with him) which
we all put up with as his genius really fixed a number of protocols
that just were not going right. There are a number of protocols you
here use all the time that we would still be reving if he had not
gotten up in a meeting and said, "here is how we should do this".
>
> Now, of course, we're in a long, OT discussion of the issue and I
> think that if nothing else, it's let all of us who don't like bad
> grammar to air our opinions instead of bottling them up as we'd
> normally do. No, I don't expect this to result in any change, but
> who knows; somebody might decide to be more careful because they'd
> never realized how it looks to others.
Of myself I have been taught English and know the proper usage of both
the present and past-participles...(LoL!) But I find that I might make
an error here and there, and I don't always spell check, so they might
get through. I realize this is not an excuse to be lazy and rely on a
spell-checker to correct my English, but some people might have no
choice but to rely on it because their English is not their first
language. And I agree with you, as long as you can get the gist of what
the person is saying or asking, you should be polite enough to not
correct their every error.
EGO II
1:19 a.m.
On 01/31/2013 09:52 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
I know you could care less, but she sees your posts as being
indirectly critical of her, her background, and her education. I would tell you what she
said, but it doesn't translate well into English.
Yes, I could care less. I suspect that what you meant is "you couldn't
care less." As it is, I regret hearing that your wife feels that way;
please assure her that some of us, at least, were only writing about
native English speakers who mangle their own language.
1:14 a.m.
On 01/31/2013 08:42 PM, Tim wrote:
The misuse of "loose" and "lose" bugs me the
most, second is probably
"dose" instead of "does." But seeing someone type in all-caps tends
to
be far more annoying that someone posting in all-lower-case.
Let us not forget the people who can't be bothered to learn the
difference between there, their and they're and simply use thier for all
of them.
I've got a little list.
They never will be missed.
12:29 a.m.
On 02/01/2013 01:44 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 01.02.2013 01:35, schrieb Patrick O'Callaghan:
> Reading is not done letter by letter or word by
> word, but in larger units, and every time I see 'i'
> instead of 'I', it interrupts my train of comprehension
well, that is your personal problem
in fact here in german speaking countries there are
way more words which are normally not written lowercase
at all but nobody has a problem these days read sms, email
and so on without a single uppercase letter
Harald, you're in error. Many German speaking people consider style of
writing you are using here, to be rude, disrespectful and childish - I
am one of these.
Sure, it's tolerated in private SMS correspondence, but no so in written
correspondence.
Ralf
11:58 p.m.
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 13:38 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
I will probably ask my wife to start typing all of my queries and
replies. She is Chinese. Chinese doesn't have upper/lower case. As
such, she often doesn't capitalize "correctly". And, her grammar is
probably not up to your standards.
My comments are in no way directed at non-native English speakers. Most
of the examples I'm thinking of do not fall into this category. In fact
many non-native speakers seem to write more correct English than the
rest of us.
This list is better off without the grammar, spelling, and style
police. If you can't figure out what someone is saying then "you"
should not feel obliged to read it or answer it.
You seem to be taking this way too seriously.
poc
11:57 p.m.
New subject: OT: Was -what's with the 'i'? Now = Get Real Please move this off list, it's boring.
On 02/01/2013 04:52 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 02/01/2013 01:38 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
> She is Chinese. Chinese doesn't have upper/lower case. As such, she often
doesn't capitalize "correctly". And, her grammar is probably not up to
your standards.
Ooopsss... My wife just hit me over the head.... Of course she is Taiwanese.
She also wanted me to inform the public that her spelling is awful as well. And spell
check doesn't always help her that much, with English not being her native language.
I know you could care less, but she sees your posts as being indirectly critical of her,
her background, and her education. I would tell you what she said, but it doesn't
translate well into English.
Hey, let's now enter into a tangent about how to properly characterize someone's
ethnic background.
11:52 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 01:38 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
She is Chinese. Chinese doesn't have upper/lower case. As such,
she often doesn't capitalize "correctly". And, her grammar is probably not
up to your standards.
Ooopsss... My wife just hit me over the head.... Of course she is Taiwanese.
She also wanted me to inform the public that her spelling is awful as well. And spell
check doesn't always help her that much, with English not being her native language.
I know you could care less, but she sees your posts as being indirectly critical of her,
her background, and her education. I would tell you what she said, but it doesn't
translate well into English.
Hey, let's now enter into a tangent about how to properly characterize someone's
ethnic background.
--
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better
idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far,
the Universe is winning. -- Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled
11:43 p.m.
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 16:07 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
My copy of this is back in the mid-90s:
Vy Knot?
George Bernard Shaw left money in his will to promote the
rationalization of English spelling, but to no avail. One of his
well-known examples was the word ghoti:
gh as in enough
o as in women
ti as in station
giving us the pronunciation "fish".
Rules of grammar and spelling are about convention, not logic. Breaking
the convention makes things harder to understand. That's really my only
point.
poc
11:38 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 01:24 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 08:50 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> Besides, haven't you indicated that people should trim posts so as not
> to waste bandwidth? Do you really think this thread is worthy of the
> bandwidth and the disk space it is taking up?
As I've said, it's clearly OT so no-one should feel obliged to read it.
Quoting long messages without trimming in a reply to an on-topic thread
is an entirely different thing.
It still gets sent over the network, and it still takes up disk space. And it is petty.
I will probably ask my wife to start typing all of my queries and replies. She is
Chinese. Chinese doesn't have upper/lower case. As such, she often doesn't
capitalize "correctly". And, her grammar is probably not up to your standards.
This list is better off without the grammar, spelling, and style police. If you can't
figure out what someone is saying then "you" should not feel obliged to read it
or answer it.
--
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better
idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far,
the Universe is winning. -- Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled
11:32 p.m.
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 15:12 +1030, Tim wrote:
The misuse of "loose" and "lose" bugs me the
most, second is probably
"dose" instead of "does."
I'm with you there. Also the confusion between "choose" and
"chose".
But seeing someone type in all-caps tends to
be far more annoying that someone posting in all-lower-case.
Indeed, but at least the ALL CAPS transgression is widely recognized and
condemned. There's no controversy about it as far as I'm aware.
poc
11:24 p.m.
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 08:50 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
Besides, haven't you indicated that people should trim posts so
as not
to waste bandwidth? Do you really think this thread is worthy of the
bandwidth and the disk space it is taking up?
As I've said, it's clearly OT so no-one should feel obliged to read it.
Quoting long messages without trimming in a reply to an on-topic thread
is an entirely different thing.
poc
10:42 p.m.
Allegedly, on or about 31 January 2013, Patrick O'Callaghan sent:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
"i",
Any of - they don't know better, they don't care in the first place,
they don't care about correcting typing errors, they didn't notice,
they're typing one-handed, they're so used to spelling correctors
auto-correcting their typing for them...
The misuse of "loose" and "lose" bugs me the most, second is probably
"dose" instead of "does." But seeing someone type in all-caps tends
to
be far more annoying that someone posting in all-lower-case.
Usually I gloss over the occasional one, but some messages require an
awful lot of interpretation trying to figure out what they meant, thanks
to their complete lack of structure.
--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.6.11-5.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Jan 8 21:40:51 UTC 2013 x86_64
All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point
trying to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the
public lists.
10:22 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 04:07 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 01/31/2013 03:38 PM, Craig White wrote:
> On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 15:55 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>> Way way OT:
>>
>> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
"i",
>> not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their
>> Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
>> cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
>> minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
>> expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
>> teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
>> want to know.
>>
>> Sorry, this has been bugging me for ages and I had just had to get this
>> off my chest. Feel free to ignore.
> ----
> better get used to it and other language simplifications encouraged by
> SMS/tweeting/etc. It's only going to increase. There's younger
> generations that simply aren't likely to feel bound your rules.
>
> Grammar snobbery is just going to turn you into an unhappy PITA.
My copy of this is back in the mid-90s:
Vy Knot?
Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways
of improving efficiency in communications between Government
departments.
European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
unnecessarily difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough,
through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme
of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of
course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by
participating nations.
In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's'
instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities
would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced
by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this
klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters
kould be made with one less letter.
There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was
announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'.
This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter in print.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are
possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double leters
whish have always been a deterent to akurate speling. We would al
agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful.
Therefor we kould drop them and kontinu to read and writ as though
nothing had hapend.
By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would
be reseptiv to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze
funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a
'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o' kould be dropd from vords
kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer
kombinations of leters. Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud
eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no
mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud find it ezi tu understand ech
ozer. Ze drems of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.
OMG!...this is HILARIOUS!>....I LOVE it!...LoL!
EGO II
7:48 p.m.
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 05:41:58PM -0800, Gary Kline wrote:
my first/last two pennies: "very early on", typesetters
had
difficulty telling the difference between "i" and "j" since
manuscripts were written in longhand.
I heard this in grade school, tho, so it may have been made up
to keep students quiet.
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/7986/why-should-the-first-pers...
--
Matthew Miller ☁☁☁ Fedora Cloud Architect ☁☁☁ <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
7:35 p.m.
On Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:50:09 +0800
Ed Greshko <Ed.Greshko(a)greshko.com> wrote:
On 02/01/2013 08:28 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> As far as I'm aware, this is the only time the subject has come up
> in all the years I've been on this list. And I clearly flagged it
> as OT, so don't feel you need to read it.
I've always felt the OT was meant to indicate a computer related
question which may not directly relate to Fedora. I didn't think it
was a catch all to be used to start a discussion on one's personal
pet peeves.
Well, technically, the OP might argue that this topic is related to the
netiquette of the mailing list postings in general, etc., and therefore
in an OT-way still related to this mailing list...
But I think it's just "that time of the month", so to speak. ;-) We
didn't have the regular king-sized-off-topic-troll-party-thread for
quite some time now, so it is only natural that one such appears sooner
than later. Actually, AFAIK this is the very first such thread in 2013,
so I feel kind of enthusiastic about it... :-D
Best, :-)
Marko
7:12 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 07:12 PM, Mark LaPierre wrote:
On 01/31/2013 10:55 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>
Another irritating colloquial "figure of speech" is the use of the
word "and" in place of the word "to" in association with the word
"try".
Example, I will try and work that out.
Is the speaker going to try that out, or is the speaker going to work
that out, or is the speaker planning on both? What I assume is the
speaker meant that the speaker will try to work that out.
Are you perhaps familiar with the word "idiom?"
--doug
6:50 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 08:28 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
As far as I'm aware, this is the only time the subject has come
up in
all the years I've been on this list. And I clearly flagged it as OT, so
don't feel you need to read it.
I've always felt the OT was meant to indicate a computer related question which may
not directly relate to Fedora. I didn't think it was a catch all to be used to start
a discussion on one's personal pet peeves.
Heck, if your post is to be encourage then why not start post about "gun rights"
or "Tibet" or .... pick your poison. Just as the follow-on has shown the
tangents to be endless and the opinions to be endless and .....
Besides, haven't you indicated that people should trim posts so as not to waste
bandwidth? Do you really think this thread is worthy of the bandwidth and the disk space
it is taking up?
--
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better
idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far,
the Universe is winning. -- Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled
6:44 p.m.
Am 01.02.2013 01:35, schrieb Patrick O'Callaghan:
Reading is not done letter by letter or word by
word, but in larger units, and every time I see 'i'
instead of 'I', it interrupts my train of comprehension
well, that is your personal problem
in fact here in german speaking countries there are
way more words which are normally not written lowercase
at all but nobody has a problem these days read sms, email
and so on without a single uppercase letter
6:35 p.m.
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 13:44 -0700, Craig White wrote:
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 15:07 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> On 01/31/2013 12:52 PM, Frank Murphy wrote:
> > On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
> > Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Way way OT:
> >>
> >> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
> >> "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules
when
> >> 1) their Shift key is clearly not broken,
> > Could be various reasons.
> > It's a multi-cultural list.
> > English as 2nd or 3rd language.
> > users may not have a western-style keyboard.
> > Maybe dyslexic (in rare case spell-check could complicate matters)
>
> I **AM** dyslexic and live and die by my speel ckecher.
----
my oldest brother is probably the smartest person I know - and he was
dyslexic too. He is also a graduate chemical engineer, former union
organizer, economics professor (masters degree) and it's obvious that
while spelling and grammar checkers are a must for people with these
problems, the truth is that it's about effective communication and I
don't have much patience for those who want to insist on rules of
communication rather than just appreciate the communication.
If it were either/or, I would agree with you, but that's a straw man and
a false dichotomy. With the exception of dyslexics (who AFAIK tend to be
of above-average intelligence), it's not a question of either you
communicate effectively or you follow grammar rules. Grammar rules exist
in order to make communication more effective by reducing the amount of
cognitive dissonance. Reading is not done letter by letter or word by
word, but in larger units, and every time I see 'i' instead of 'I', it
interrupts my train of comprehension, even for a a few milliseconds.
What's good about that?
poc
6:28 p.m.
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 16:44 -0700, Craig White wrote:
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 23:27 +0000, David G.Miller wrote:
> Joe Zeff <joe <at> zeff.us> writes:
>
> >
> > On 01/31/2013 08:34 AM, Andras Simon wrote:
> > > I'd think it's the coolness thing.
> >
> > What's cool about looking like an ignoramus?
> I just go with these are the same people who aren't intelligent enough to
> operate a baseball cap so they end up wearing it backwards.
----
anyone who rides a motorcycle needs no explanation of why wearing a
baseball cap backwards is a good thing.
The endless meta chatter on this topic is rather pointless.
As far as I'm aware, this is the only time the subject has come up in
all the years I've been on this list. And I clearly flagged it as OT, so
don't feel you need to read it.
If the point of the OP was to make non-native English speakers
uncomfortable so they won't post for fear of being attacked, then we
really don't need to support that effort.
Well, since the predicate doesn't apply, we can safely ignore the
conclusion. And several of the most visible proponents do not appear to
be non-native English speakers.
poc
6:27 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 07:55 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
Way way OT:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i",
not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their
Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
want to know.
Sorry, this has been bugging me for ages and I had just had to get this
off my chest. Feel free to ignore.
poc
Maybe Apple started it? ;)
6:12 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 10:55 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
Way way OT:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i",
not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their
Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
want to know.
Sorry, this has been bugging me for ages and I had just had to get this
off my chest. Feel free to ignore.
poc
Another irritating colloquial "figure of speech" is the use of the word
"and" in place of the word "to" in association with the word
"try".
Example, I will try and work that out.
Is the speaker going to try that out, or is the speaker going to work
that out, or is the speaker planning on both? What I assume is the
speaker meant that the speaker will try to work that out.
--
_
°v°
/(_)\
^ ^ Mark LaPierre
Registered Linux user No #267004
https://linuxcounter.net/
****
5:54 p.m.
The reason I was taught was the transition from the Old English equivalent
"ich." When the word dropped from three letters to one letter, it was
capitalized to point out that it was a separate word rather than a typographical error.
This doesn't make a lot of sense in modern typography, but I can see where that might
be the case in hand-written scripts, sort of like the ampersand.
Here's a reference that says the same thing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03wwln-guestsafire-t.html?_r=0
billo
On Fri, 1 Feb 2013, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
> "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1)
> their Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet
> e.e. cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
> minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
> expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
> teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
> want to know.
Speaking of that, I never understood why is the "I" capitalized in
English?
Or, to rephrase it in your words, what's with the "I"? ;-)
To begin with, I don't know of any other language which capitalizes
this word. Also, while my English teachers were always very
explicit that the "I" should always be capitalized, none of them has
ever managed to give me a reasonable answer _why_ this is so.
While I agree with you that correct spelling is something worth taking
care of in e-mail communication, I was always wondering about the
completely "randomized" spelling rules in English language. Or rather
the utter absence of any real rules. In other languages, those
rules often actually make sense, and make the language easier to read
and write.
For example, the concept of "spelling competitions" in elementary
schools was completely foreign to me until I heard about it from English
schoolchildren. In most other languages, knowing how to properly spell
words does not need any advanced knowledge, and basically is not
considered to be a skill worth competing over.
But English spelling is soooo contrived that people had to invent
spell-checkers to deal with it. :-D
And let's not even start with the even more contrived problem of the
proper *pronunciation* of the written English. ;-)
Best, :-)
Marko
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5:44 p.m.
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 23:27 +0000, David G.Miller wrote:
Joe Zeff <joe <at> zeff.us> writes:
>
> On 01/31/2013 08:34 AM, Andras Simon wrote:
> > I'd think it's the coolness thing.
>
> What's cool about looking like an ignoramus?
I just go with these are the same people who aren't intelligent enough to
operate a baseball cap so they end up wearing it backwards.
----
anyone who rides a motorcycle needs no explanation of why wearing a
baseball cap backwards is a good thing.
The endless meta chatter on this topic is rather pointless.
If the point of the OP was to make non-native English speakers
uncomfortable so they won't post for fear of being attacked, then we
really don't need to support that effort.
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
5:37 p.m.
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
"i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1)
their Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet
e.e. cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
want to know.
Speaking of that, I never understood why is the "I" capitalized in
English?
Or, to rephrase it in your words, what's with the "I"? ;-)
To begin with, I don't know of any other language which capitalizes
this word. Also, while my English teachers were always very
explicit that the "I" should always be capitalized, none of them has
ever managed to give me a reasonable answer _why_ this is so.
While I agree with you that correct spelling is something worth taking
care of in e-mail communication, I was always wondering about the
completely "randomized" spelling rules in English language. Or rather
the utter absence of any real rules. In other languages, those
rules often actually make sense, and make the language easier to read
and write.
For example, the concept of "spelling competitions" in elementary
schools was completely foreign to me until I heard about it from English
schoolchildren. In most other languages, knowing how to properly spell
words does not need any advanced knowledge, and basically is not
considered to be a skill worth competing over.
But English spelling is soooo contrived that people had to invent
spell-checkers to deal with it. :-D
And let's not even start with the even more contrived problem of the
proper *pronunciation* of the written English. ;-)
Best, :-)
Marko
5:27 p.m.
Joe Zeff <joe <at> zeff.us> writes:
On 01/31/2013 08:34 AM, Andras Simon wrote:
> I'd think it's the coolness thing.
What's cool about looking like an ignoramus?
I just go with these are the same
people who aren't intelligent enough to
operate a baseball cap so they end up wearing it backwards.
(Not original. Don't recall who the comedian was that used this in a monologue).
Cheers,
Dave
3:37 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 12:20 PM, Eddie G. O'Connor Jr. wrote:
To answer....look at society: Sarah Palin.....Mit Romney.......Lance
Armstrong....Kanye West.....the Kardashians!....LoL! Are they not the
very pinnacle...nay the epitome of "Cool"?...
As far as Sarah Palin goes, my impression was that people liked her
because she wasn't ashamed of her opinions and she never pretended to be
anything except what she was. Calling Mit Romney an ignoramus only
shows that you didn't like his political opinions and think that that
makes it OK to call him names. That tells me more about you than of him
but I'm going to drop the subject RIGHT NOW because I don't consider it
OK to do that and I prefer to live up to my principles.
No, I don't consider anybody on that list "the epitome of cool," because
I remember when there were people like Kookie, who really were cool.
3:07 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 03:38 PM, Craig White wrote:
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 15:55 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Way way OT:
>
> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i",
> not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their
> Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
> cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
> minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
> expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
> teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
> want to know.
>
> Sorry, this has been bugging me for ages and I had just had to get this
> off my chest. Feel free to ignore.
----
better get used to it and other language simplifications encouraged by
SMS/tweeting/etc. It's only going to increase. There's younger
generations that simply aren't likely to feel bound your rules.
Grammar snobbery is just going to turn you into an unhappy PITA.
My copy of this is back in the mid-90s:
Vy Knot?
Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways
of improving efficiency in communications between Government
departments.
European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
unnecessarily difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough,
through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme
of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of
course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by
participating nations.
In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's'
instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities
would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced
by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this
klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters
kould be made with one less letter.
There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was
announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'.
This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter in print.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are
possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double leters
whish have always been a deterent to akurate speling. We would al
agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful.
Therefor we kould drop them and kontinu to read and writ as though
nothing had hapend.
By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would
be reseptiv to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze
funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a
'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o' kould be dropd from vords
kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer
kombinations of leters. Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud
eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no
mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud find it ezi tu understand ech
ozer. Ze drems of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.
2:48 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 12:07 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>
I **AM** dyslexic and live and die by my speel ckecher.
Oops.
Really, without 4th grade remedial speach and reading (back in '59) I
don't know where I would be today.
I'm not dyslexic, but my 4th grade teacher (in '59, IIRC) had a method
of teaching spelling that ensured that if you ever fell behind you'd
never catch up. (By the end of the term, the best students were
learning 35 new works a week; the worst, 5.) I wasn't among the worst,
but fell behind enough that the only thing that's "taught" me spelling
is having the same words corrected over and over, and even then there
are some I can't remember. At least you and I use our spelling checkers
and pay attention to them. Those who can't spell and won't use them
have no excuse IMAO.
2:44 p.m.
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 15:07 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 01/31/2013 12:52 PM, Frank Murphy wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
> Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Way way OT:
>>
>> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
>> "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when
>> 1) their Shift key is clearly not broken,
> Could be various reasons.
> It's a multi-cultural list.
> English as 2nd or 3rd language.
> users may not have a western-style keyboard.
> Maybe dyslexic (in rare case spell-check could complicate matters)
I **AM** dyslexic and live and die by my speel ckecher.
----
my oldest brother is probably the smartest person I know - and he was
dyslexic too. He is also a graduate chemical engineer, former union
organizer, economics professor (masters degree) and it's obvious that
while spelling and grammar checkers are a must for people with these
problems, the truth is that it's about effective communication and I
don't have much patience for those who want to insist on rules of
communication rather than just appreciate the communication.
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
2:38 p.m.
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 15:55 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
Way way OT:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i",
not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their
Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
want to know.
Sorry, this has been bugging me for ages and I had just had to get this
off my chest. Feel free to ignore.
----
better get used to it and other language simplifications encouraged by
SMS/tweeting/etc. It's only going to increase. There's younger
generations that simply aren't likely to feel bound your rules.
Grammar snobbery is just going to turn you into an unhappy PITA.
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
2:20 p.m.
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 11:16:28AM -0800, Joe Zeff wrote:
>I'd think it's the coolness thing.
What's cool about looking like an ignoramus?
Well, traditionally, actually, it's pretty high up there in the defining
factors.
--
Matthew Miller ☁☁☁ Fedora Cloud Architect ☁☁☁ <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
2:20 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 02:16 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 01/31/2013 08:34 AM, Andras Simon wrote:
> I'd think it's the coolness thing.
What's cool about looking like an ignoramus?
To answer....look at society: Sarah Palin.....Mit Romney.......Lance
Armstrong....Kanye West.....the Kardashians!....LoL! Are they not the
very pinnacle...nay the epitome of "Cool"?...
EGO II
2:07 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 12:52 PM, Frank Murphy wrote:
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Way way OT:
>
> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
> "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when
> 1) their Shift key is clearly not broken,
Could be various reasons.
It's a multi-cultural list.
English as 2nd or 3rd language.
users may not have a western-style keyboard.
Maybe dyslexic (in rare case spell-check could complicate matters)
I **AM** dyslexic and live and die by my speel ckecher.
Oops.
Really, without 4th grade remedial speach and reading (back in '59) I
don't know where I would be today.
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
I am that too.
Eyesight not corrected to 20/20.
or just don't give a fiddlers.
1:54 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 04:55 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
Way way OT:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i",
not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their
Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort?
At least in Germany, often your last sentence applies.
In German, nouns are written with a capital letter at the beginning.
This means, sentences usually contain many capital letters. When asking
people about it, the usual answer is "too much effort".
It's worse on phones and tablets, were switching between upper and
lower case can mean some "finger acrobatics".
Ralf
1:06 p.m.
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 05:17:15PM +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> I'd think it's the coolness thing. But highly
intelligent people do it
> occasionally, so I have no clue either.
Yes, some of the Bell Labs people including none other than Ken Thompson
were known for doing this, but ken gets a pass for obvious reasons :-)
Back in the anything-goes days when e-mail was young, there was considerable
experimentation with neglecting the conventional rules of punctuation in the
new medium. Everyone you might converse with was part of a relatively small
tech-savvy group, and everyone was part of building something new and
exciting. (Please pause for a second here to imagine something cyberpunk, in
its early-80s form.)
As the Internet grew, things changed. After the Eternal September, there was
a new supply of people who weren't trying a new medium so much as they were
actually unable to form coherent sentences in the first place, making doing
so as an affectation considerably less cool. (Now image the movie
"Hackers".) But also, the scope of activity depending on e-mail grew --
including, very serious business. With that, it turns out that the
old-fashioned techniques of communicating coherently weren't so bad after
all.
On the other hand, some of the new conventions did stick, like using an
extra blank line as a paragraph marker rather than indenting the first line.
Also, smilies.
And now back to our regularly scheduled Fedora list?
--
Matthew Miller ☁☁☁ Fedora Cloud Architect ☁☁☁ <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
12:50 p.m.
On 01/31/2013 12:17 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 17:34 +0100, Andras Simon wrote:
>> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
> "i",
>> not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1)
> their
>> Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
>> cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
>> minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
>> expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
>> teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
>> want to know.
> I'd think it's the coolness thing. But highly intelligent people do it
> occasionally, so I have no clue either.
Yes, some of the Bell Labs people including none other than Ken Thompson
were known for doing this, but ken gets a pass for obvious reasons :-)
poc
I believe I have read that English is the only language that capitalizes the
first person. German capitalizes the second person formal, both
singular and plural. (Sie.) I think Dutch also capitalizes the second
person
(U.)
--doug
11:52 a.m.
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Way way OT:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
"i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when
1) their Shift key is clearly not broken,
Could be various reasons.
It's a multi-cultural list.
English as 2nd or 3rd language.
users may not have a western-style keyboard.
Maybe dyslexic (in rare case spell-check could complicate matters)
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
Eyesight not corrected to 20/20.
or just don't give a fiddlers.
--
Regards,
Frank
http//www.frankly3d.com
11:17 a.m.
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 17:34 +0100, Andras Simon wrote:
> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent
word
"i",
> not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1)
their
> Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
> cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
> minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
> expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
> teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
> want to know.
I'd think it's the coolness thing. But highly intelligent people do it
occasionally, so I have no clue either.
Yes, some of the Bell Labs people including none other than Ken Thompson
were known for doing this, but ken gets a pass for obvious reasons :-)
poc
11:15 a.m.
On 01/31/2013 10:55 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
Way way OT:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i",
not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their
Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
want to know.
Sorry, this has been bugging me for ages and I had just had to get this
off my chest. Feel free to ignore.
The expect their grammer checker to automagically fix this for them.
Their smartphones SMS messaging does this, so why not their email client?
Some people did not learn on a Royal Typewriter to get exposed to proper
typing techniques. I BARELY made it to 40wpm to pass that class back in
'64!
And I hated reading e.e cummings back then. Robert Frost was more my speed.
"I have miles to go before I sleep."
10:34 a.m.
2013/1/31, Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com>:
Way way OT:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i",
not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their
Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
want to know.
I'd think it's the coolness thing. But highly intelligent people do it
occasionally, so I have no clue either. One such person I know of was
Erik Naggum, though I can't find an example here
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum. But Usenet is full of them.
A funny one:
"you have been evaluated. you have a negative reference count. prepare
to be garbage collected. persistence is futile."
http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3150641
439642768(a)naggum.no.html
Andras
7 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: jdow(a)earthlink.net
Sent: Sat, 02 Feb 2013 12:58:53 -0800
To: users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
Subject: Re: OT: what's with the 'i'?
On 2013/02/02 10:39, Joe Zeff wrote:
> On 02/02/2013 07:33 AM, Lailah wrote:
>>
>> I never see that in my life. People, I know is fun to make jokes with
>> TV series and movies and the like, but think that this is an
>> international list. The Whole World hasn't any due to know all of your
>> stuff.
>
> That, in fact, was exactly what I was demonstrating: for most of the
> people on
> this list, that was long before they were born. For me, however, it's
> the type
> of reference I'd recognize, and I tend to forget sometimes that my
> audience
> isn't old enough to share those experiences.
Of course some people use j instead of i when dealing with complex
numbers. j am one of them.
{O,o} I guess that makes me irrational?
No, you'd need a number like 2, 3, 5 or any prime inside of the square root! to be
irrational :) The j and k we could use with vectors and hamiltonians :)
--
If we want instead of using "I" or "i", let's just use
$\sqrt{-1}$
and we'd be better off! At least internationally it is accepted worldwide!
Best Regards,
Antonio
____________________________________________________________
FREE 3D EARTH SCREENSAVER - Watch the Earth right on your desktop!
Check it out at http://www.inbox.com/earth
8:32 a.m.
El sáb, 02-02-2013 a las 18:49 +0000, David G.Miller escribió:
Antonio Olivares <wingators <at> inbox.com> writes:
> > And, on a more international note, if somebody just mentions "the
war,"
> > which war do you think of first?
> War between the States!(Civil War)
I used to work with a gentleman who grew up in northern Virginia. He said it
wasn't until he was in high school that he realized that the "Civil War"
and
"The War of Northern Aggression" were two different names for the same event.
I'd swear that one of the most valuable contributions I make to any project I
work on is making sure that all of the people involved have the same
understanding of what we're doing and how we're going about doing it (frequently
that even entails me changing my view of what that is). My vote is for anything
that promotes clear communication and solidly against anything that makes clear
communication more difficult.
Cheers,
Dave
I'm with you David. Communication has to be as clear as we can.
Especially because this is an international list. There's no culture or
mother language as a common base.
Cheers,
Lailah
7:49 p.m.
On 02/02/2013 08:38 PM, Ian Malone wrote:
On 3 February 2013 01:13, Robert Moskowitz
<rgm(a)htt-consult.com> wrote:
> On 02/02/2013 05:04 AM, Frank Murphy wrote:
>> On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 02:02:18 -0800
>> Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
>>
>>> On 02/02/2013 01:51 AM, Craig White wrote:
>>>> There's your challenge... show me that you're not just making a
>>>> vacuous point.
>>> You're the one asserting, without evidence or any attempt at proof
>>> that my point is vacuous. It's not up to me to refute your
>>> baseless claim it's up to you to establish it.
>> I,m dyslexic, also have brain problems.
>
> And fortunately for this dyslexic, in 7th grade English we REALLY learned
> grammer. We did sentence grammer trees; something that none of my children
> ever benefited from. Actually that visualization of grammer can make all
> the difference to a dyslexic (read "The Gift of Dyslexia" by Ron Burns);
we
> think visually and have to translate back and forth to linear language.
Dyslexia is quite a specific thing that shouldn't prevent anyone from
further learning (unfortunately it does due to the integral part
reading plays in early education and, until fairly recently, poor
recognition). Proust and the Squid is another interesting book that
touches on this topic, and learning written English in general.
There was another post somewhere complaining about "Eats, Shoots and
Leaves" which seems to have missed that it's meant to be funny (the
clue is in the title).
Read it. Loved it.
7:38 p.m.
On 3 February 2013 01:13, Robert Moskowitz <rgm(a)htt-consult.com> wrote:
On 02/02/2013 05:04 AM, Frank Murphy wrote:
>
> On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 02:02:18 -0800
> Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
>
>> On 02/02/2013 01:51 AM, Craig White wrote:
>>>
>>> There's your challenge... show me that you're not just making a
>>> vacuous point.
>>
>> You're the one asserting, without evidence or any attempt at proof
>> that my point is vacuous. It's not up to me to refute your
>> baseless claim it's up to you to establish it.
>
> I,m dyslexic, also have brain problems.
And fortunately for this dyslexic, in 7th grade English we REALLY learned
grammer. We did sentence grammer trees; something that none of my children
ever benefited from. Actually that visualization of grammer can make all
the difference to a dyslexic (read "The Gift of Dyslexia" by Ron Burns); we
think visually and have to translate back and forth to linear language.
Dyslexia is quite a specific thing that shouldn't prevent anyone from
further learning (unfortunately it does due to the integral part
reading plays in early education and, until fairly recently, poor
recognition). Proust and the Squid is another interesting book that
touches on this topic, and learning written English in general.
There was another post somewhere complaining about "Eats, Shoots and
Leaves" which seems to have missed that it's meant to be funny (the
clue is in the title).
--
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk
7:13 p.m.
On 02/02/2013 05:04 AM, Frank Murphy wrote:
On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 02:02:18 -0800
Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
> On 02/02/2013 01:51 AM, Craig White wrote:
>> There's your challenge... show me that you're not just making a
>> vacuous point.
> You're the one asserting, without evidence or any attempt at proof
> that my point is vacuous. It's not up to me to refute your
> baseless claim it's up to you to establish it.
I,m dyslexic, also have brain problems.
And fortunately for this dyslexic, in 7th grade English we REALLY
learned grammer. We did sentence grammer trees; something that none of
my children ever benefited from. Actually that visualization of grammer
can make all the difference to a dyslexic (read "The Gift of Dyslexia"
by Ron Burns); we think visually and have to translate back and forth to
linear language.
7:11 p.m.
On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 12:58:53 -0800
jdow <jdow(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
Of course some people use j instead of i when dealing with complex
numbers. j am one of them.
{O,o} I guess that makes me irrational?
I think you wanted to ask "J guess that makes me irrational?". Note
the use of j instead of i.
Either way, it makes you imaginary, not irrational... ;-)
Best, :-)
Marko
7:08 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 08:19 PM, doug wrote:
On 02/01/2013 07:52 PM, Craig White wrote:
/snip/
> Reminds me of a book that I bought that looked interesting... "Eats
> Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss." It was about the need for things like
> punctuation to clarify the intent of something. In the end, the
> author includes a number of self adhesive commas, apostrophes,
> periods, semi-colons and colons so one can fix the world's signage
> guerrilla style. Yes, it's that absurd. It doesn't matter.
I edit a small newsletter with about 1000 subscribers, and we get
input from a variety of sources.
For some of them, I have promised to ship a barrel of commas, to be
used liberally!
In IEEE 802 document editing we use them liberally. It is EXTREMELY
important that a later reader, who is not native to English MUST be able
to read the document and implement the chip design and code correctly.
We seem to debate endlessly the proper grammer and comma placement. But
then we have been burned badly in times past and know it is important to
get it right.
7:06 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 08:16 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 02/01/2013 04:52 PM, Craig White wrote:
> It's clear that you want this e-mail list, informal as it is to respect
> your sense of proper grammar.
No, it's not "his sense of proper grammar," it's proper grammar as
it's been taught in schools in every English speaking country for over
a century now.
As I see it, there are three reasons people's grammar on this list
falls short. This is an international list and not all of the members
have English as their first (or even second) language. My attitude is
that they're doing the best they can and as long as I can work out
what they originally meant, that's all that matters. Second, there are
native English speakers who either were never taught properly in
school (I have a friend who has trouble with homonyms, using "flue"
for "flew" and other such errors because of problems when she was
young.) And, of course, there are the people who were exposed to
proper grammar, syntax and word usage but simply don't care. On some
mailing lists, people in both of the latter two groups would be flamed
for their errors. On this one, I keep my opinions to myself because I
can't see any way it could possibly help and many ways it could end up
making trouble for everybody.
Back in the days on some IETF lists we had a Japanese professor who's
English was phenomenally good and would flame native speakers on their
grammer. Of course the gentleman could not speak a clear word of
English (and still can't when I occationally meet up with him) which we
all put up with as his genius really fixed a number of protocols that
just were not going right. There are a number of protocols you here use
all the time that we would still be reving if he had not gotten up in a
meeting and said, "here is how we should do this".
Now, of course, we're in a long, OT discussion of the issue and I
think that if nothing else, it's let all of us who don't like bad
grammar to air our opinions instead of bottling them up as we'd
normally do. No, I don't expect this to result in any change, but who
knows; somebody might decide to be more careful because they'd never
realized how it looks to others.
5:46 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 03:32 PM, David G. Miller wrote:
Yes and now I have the d**n jingle from the show going through my
head.... "but
they're cousins, identical cousins..."
Just to make it even more fun, the Wikpedia article mentions that there
was a third one: a distant cousin from Georgia that showed up in one
episode in the second season.
3:15 p.m.
On 02/02/2013 03:58 PM, jdow wrote:
On 2013/02/02 10:39, Joe Zeff wrote:
> On 02/02/2013 07:33 AM, Lailah wrote:
>>
>> I never see that in my life. People, I know is fun to make jokes with
>> TV series and movies and the like, but think that this is an
>> international list. The Whole World hasn't any due to know all of your
>> stuff.
>
> That, in fact, was exactly what I was demonstrating: for most of the
> people on
> this list, that was long before they were born. For me, however,
> it's the type
> of reference I'd recognize, and I tend to forget sometimes that my
> audience
> isn't old enough to share those experiences.
I'm getting tired of this
thread, but before I go, I will say that I am
definitely old
enough to have seen the TV show if I were dumb enough to watch sitcoms!
--doug
2:58 p.m.
On 2013/02/02 10:39, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 02/02/2013 07:33 AM, Lailah wrote:
>
> I never see that in my life. People, I know is fun to make jokes with
> TV series and movies and the like, but think that this is an
> international list. The Whole World hasn't any due to know all of your
> stuff.
That, in fact, was exactly what I was demonstrating: for most of the people on
this list, that was long before they were born. For me, however, it's the type
of reference I'd recognize, and I tend to forget sometimes that my audience
isn't old enough to share those experiences.
Of course some people use j instead of i when dealing with complex
numbers. j am one of them.
{O,o} I guess that makes me irrational?
12:49 p.m.
Antonio Olivares <wingators <at> inbox.com> writes:
> And, on a more international note, if somebody just mentions
"the war,"
> which war do you think of first?
War between the States!(Civil War)
I used to work with a gentleman who grew up in northern Virginia. He said it
wasn't until he was in high school that he realized that the "Civil War"
and
"The War of Northern Aggression" were two different names for the same event.
I'd swear that one of the most valuable contributions I make to any project I
work on is making sure that all of the people involved have the same
understanding of what we're doing and how we're going about doing it (frequently
that even entails me changing my view of what that is). My vote is for anything
that promotes clear communication and solidly against anything that makes clear
communication more difficult.
Cheers,
Dave
12:39 p.m.
On 02/02/2013 07:33 AM, Lailah wrote:
I never see that in my life. People, I know is fun to make jokes with
TV series and movies and the like, but think that this is an
international list. The Whole World hasn't any due to know all of your
stuff.
That, in fact, was exactly what I was demonstrating: for most of the
people on this list, that was long before they were born. For me,
however, it's the type of reference I'd recognize, and I tend to forget
sometimes that my audience isn't old enough to share those experiences.
9:51 a.m.
El vie, 01-02-2013 a las 14:41 -0800, Antonio Olivares escribió:
> And, on a more international note, if somebody just mentions
"the war,"
> which war do you think of first?
War on Drugs!
War between the States!(Civil War)
War of 1812!
Spanish American War(1898--??)
War (WWI, WW2), Korea(which was not a war BTW), VietNam(also not a war), Iraq(1990, ...),
Afghanistan, ..., etc
There are many ``wars'', the war on Open Source, the ``war against Gnome
3'', the ``war against Unity'', the war against the U.S. Constitution.
The war of ``Good'' vs ``Bad'' or ``Evil''.
There are many wars. and some to come to, North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey,
Iran, ... it never finishes :(
I wish we could all be little kids and like each other regardless of ethnicity, country,
and play and get along well not to repeat the mistakes that have been made throughout
history, but life is sadly not like that :(
Some students tell others that there is no "i" in TEAM, but there is in TIM if
its misspelled to suit their needs. And as has been mentioned, it is[(it's) vs its],
[your vs you're, which corresponds to you are] plus others metioned by Marko V. The
dotless i, the o with the dots ö, there are many things that change depending on the area
one is in. Pena is not the same as Peña, and Trevino is not the same as Treviño, and ...
Best Regards,
Antonio
____________________________________________________________
Very true.
Lailah
9:46 a.m.
El vie, 01-02-2013 a las 13:45 -0800, Joe Zeff escribió:
On 02/01/2013 01:32 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> I see you are prey to the misconception that I am familiar with the
> history of US sitcoms. While I've seen several of them, not being
> American myself I can't say I know this one.
I wasn't aware that you aren't an American, and I don't know how much
foreign exposure the show had. Still, you can see why it's highly
unlikely that anybody of what you and I would call "the younger
generation" would have any more of an idea what I was talking about than
you did.
And, on a more international note, if somebody just mentions "the war,"
which war do you think of first? I think that for most people it
depends on their age because they'll think of either the first one in
their lifetime or the first one they learned about when they were young.
I'm a 'Nam vet, but to me, the first war I'll always think of is going
to be WW II because its after effects were still big when I was a child.
Yes, there was Korea when I was small, but it didn't have any impact
on me, especially when compared to WW II.
Hello!
In my country, Uruguay (between Argentine and Brazil),
teachers used to teach us History saying "The Great War" (La Gran
Guerra) to talk about World War I, and "The World War" (La Guerra
Mundial) to talk about World War II. So, to me, to say "The War"
means nothing. I had the bad luck to been born in an age full of
wars :-S
Regards from south,
Lailah
9:20 a.m.
El vie, 01-02-2013 a las 12:26 -0800, Joe Zeff escribió:
On 02/01/2013 11:13 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>
> As the ox ploughs IIRC (or plows if you prefer). I don't know if there
> are any examples of the Romans using that, and the Greeks only did it
> sometimes, probably to annoy people on mailing lists :-)
Very good! And yes, AFAIK the Romans didn't copy that. Please
understand, BTW, that I don't do things like that simply to see if
anybody understands it. I do it because I assume that a fair number of
you will recognize what I'm saying and won't have to ask.
Wandering even farther off-topic for a moment, I often have a problem
when talking to younger people: I like to make pop culture references,
and tend to forget that what I'm referring to was way before anybody
else in the conversation was born. As an example, does anybody reading
this know what I mean by "an identical cousin?"
Nope
9:33 a.m.
El vie, 01-02-2013 a las 13:19 -0800, Joe Zeff escribió:
On 02/01/2013 01:05 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>
> On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 8:26 PM, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us
> <mailto:joe@zeff.us>> wrote:
>
> As an example, does anybody reading this know what I mean by "an
> identical cousin?"
>
>
> Not I, but then I'm only 63.
>
> poc
So am I. Follow this link and try not to kick yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Duke_Show
I never see that in my life. People, I know is fun to make jokes with
TV series and movies and the like, but think that this is an
international list. The Whole World hasn't any due to know all of your
stuff.
Regards from south,
Lailah
9:22 a.m.
On Sat, 2013-02-02 at 02:02 -0800, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 02/02/2013 01:51 AM, Craig White wrote:
> There's your challenge... show me that you're not just making a vacuous
> point.
You're the one asserting, without evidence or any attempt at proof that
my point is vacuous. It's not up to me to refute your baseless claim
it's up to you to establish it.
----
I haven't the slightest clue on how to prove that there isn't a problem.
I didn't claim there is a problem on this list - I said quite the
opposite... there isn't a problem.
Thus I never made a claim of a problem and can't reasonably be expected
to prove something that doesn't exist.
On the other hand, you are claiming there is a grammar problem on the
list and I requested that you offer proof rather than trying to score a
vacuous point. Perhaps that is your point though, bombastically scoring
meaningless points.
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
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8:24 a.m.
On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 1:49 AM, Craig White <craigwhite(a)azapple.com> wrote:
Probably in another form, another time and space (and medium), you
and
Patrick and I might become best of friends but I gotta tell you, get
over yourself and your opinions and focus on something that actually
matters.
Craig and Joe
I think we should just end this. It's leading nowhere and I suspect any
valid point on either side has already been aired. I do not regret
bringing up the grammar issue in the first place because I think
communication matters and we should all try to do it as best we can
(arguments about irrelevance of grammatical rules notwithstanding). If it
makes some people review their posts before hitting Send, then fine. If it
causes some not to post for fear of criticism, then that was never the idea
and I hope they don't feel inhibited.
All the best.
poc
4:04 a.m.
On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 02:02:18 -0800
Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
On 02/02/2013 01:51 AM, Craig White wrote:
> There's your challenge... show me that you're not just making a
> vacuous point.
You're the one asserting, without evidence or any attempt at proof
that my point is vacuous. It's not up to me to refute your
baseless claim it's up to you to establish it.
I,m dyslexic, also have brain problems.
--
Regards,
Frank
http//www.frankly3d.com
4:02 a.m.
On 02/02/2013 01:51 AM, Craig White wrote:
There's your challenge... show me that you're not just making
a vacuous
point.
You're the one asserting, without evidence or any attempt at proof that
my point is vacuous. It's not up to me to refute your baseless claim
it's up to you to establish it.
3:51 a.m.
On Sat, 2013-02-02 at 01:36 -0800, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 02/01/2013 05:49 PM, Craig White wrote:
> good grammar is actually a useful endeavor.
The purpose of this list is communication. Good grammar facilitates it
while bad grammar impedes it.
----
but you are making a vacuous point and I would suggest that if you
wanted to give it validity, you only need to show us a message on this
list that lacking all reasonable excuses [1] someone's faulty grammar
impeded their communication.
There's your challenge... show me that you're not just making a vacuous
point.
[1] Many reasons have already been given such as dyslexia, English is
not their first language, small device usage makes typing accurately
much more difficult, etc.
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
3:19 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 01:05 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 8:26 PM, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us
<mailto:joe@zeff.us>> wrote:
As an example, does anybody reading this know what I mean by "an
identical cousin?"
Not I, but then I'm only 63.
poc
So am I. Follow this link and try not to kick yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Duke_Show
7:19 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 07:52 PM, Craig White wrote:
/snip/
Reminds me of a book that I bought that looked interesting...
"Eats
Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss." It was about the need for things like
punctuation to clarify the intent of something. In the end, the author
includes a number of self adhesive commas, apostrophes, periods,
semi-colons and colons so one can fix the world's signage guerrilla
style. Yes, it's that absurd. It doesn't matter.
I edit a small newsletter
with about 1000 subscribers, and we get input
from a variety of sources.
For some of them, I have promised to ship a barrel of commas, to be used
liberally!
--doug
--
Blessed are the peacemakers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A. M. Greeley
7:16 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 04:52 PM, Craig White wrote:
It's clear that you want this e-mail list, informal as it is to
respect
your sense of proper grammar.
No, it's not "his sense of proper grammar," it's proper grammar as
it's
been taught in schools in every English speaking country for over a
century now.
As I see it, there are three reasons people's grammar on this list falls
short. This is an international list and not all of the members have
English as their first (or even second) language. My attitude is that
they're doing the best they can and as long as I can work out what they
originally meant, that's all that matters. Second, there are native
English speakers who either were never taught properly in school (I have
a friend who has trouble with homonyms, using "flue" for "flew" and
other such errors because of problems when she was young.) And, of
course, there are the people who were exposed to proper grammar, syntax
and word usage but simply don't care. On some mailing lists, people in
both of the latter two groups would be flamed for their errors. On this
one, I keep my opinions to myself because I can't see any way it could
possibly help and many ways it could end up making trouble for everybody.
Now, of course, we're in a long, OT discussion of the issue and I think
that if nothing else, it's let all of us who don't like bad grammar to
air our opinions instead of bottling them up as we'd normally do. No, I
don't expect this to result in any change, but who knows; somebody might
decide to be more careful because they'd never realized how it looks to
others.
6:55 p.m.
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 05:58 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> This list is better off without the grammar, spelling, and
style
> police. If you can't figure out what someone is saying then "you"
> should not feel obliged to read it or answer it.
You seem to be taking this way too seriously.
----
no - the list doesn't need grammar, spelling and style police.
Craig
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6:52 p.m.
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 00:35 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 13:44 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 15:07 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> > On 01/31/2013 12:52 PM, Frank Murphy wrote:
> > > On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
> > > Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Way way OT:
> > >>
> > >> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
> > >> "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules
when
> > >> 1) their Shift key is clearly not broken,
> > > Could be various reasons.
> > > It's a multi-cultural list.
> > > English as 2nd or 3rd language.
> > > users may not have a western-style keyboard.
> > > Maybe dyslexic (in rare case spell-check could complicate matters)
> >
> > I **AM** dyslexic and live and die by my speel ckecher.
> ----
> my oldest brother is probably the smartest person I know - and he was
> dyslexic too. He is also a graduate chemical engineer, former union
> organizer, economics professor (masters degree) and it's obvious that
> while spelling and grammar checkers are a must for people with these
> problems, the truth is that it's about effective communication and I
> don't have much patience for those who want to insist on rules of
> communication rather than just appreciate the communication.
If it were either/or, I would agree with you, but that's a straw man and
a false dichotomy. With the exception of dyslexics (who AFAIK tend to be
of above-average intelligence), it's not a question of either you
communicate effectively or you follow grammar rules. Grammar rules exist
in order to make communication more effective by reducing the amount of
cognitive dissonance. Reading is not done letter by letter or word by
word, but in larger units, and every time I see 'i' instead of 'I', it
interrupts my train of comprehension, even for a a few milliseconds.
What's good about that?
----
It's clear that you want this e-mail list, informal as it is to respect
your sense of proper grammar. It won't and your diatribes won't change
that but might scare people away.
My wife (Chinese - been here 2 1/2 years) speaks better English than
many Americans. Some people are lazy, sloppy and probably know better
but just don't care. Some people are dyslexic. Some are merely adopting
fast/informal methods of other communication methods. Some just simply
struggle with English. There's no straw man argument... but - if it makes
you happy, we can just declare the "Patrick O'Callaghan" rule by getting
it added to the Fedora Users Mailing List Guidelines so you have a fully
loaded weapon to attack with. Sheesh
Reminds me of a book that I bought that looked interesting... "Eats
Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss." It was about the need for things like
punctuation to clarify the intent of something. In the end, the author
includes a number of self adhesive commas, apostrophes, periods,
semi-colons and colons so one can fix the world's signage guerrilla
style. Yes, it's that absurd.
It doesn't matter.
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
5:32 p.m.
Joe Zeff <joe <at> zeff.us> writes:
As an example, does anybody reading
this know what I mean by "an identical cousin?"
Yes and now I have the d**n jingle from the show going through my head.... "but
they're cousins, identical cousins..."
AAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cheers,
Dave
4:41 p.m.
And, on a more international note, if somebody just mentions
"the war,"
which war do you think of first?
War on Drugs!
War between the States!(Civil War)
War of 1812!
Spanish American War(1898--??)
War (WWI, WW2), Korea(which was not a war BTW), VietNam(also not a war), Iraq(1990, ...),
Afghanistan, ..., etc
There are many ``wars'', the war on Open Source, the ``war against Gnome
3'', the ``war against Unity'', the war against the U.S. Constitution.
The war of ``Good'' vs ``Bad'' or ``Evil''.
There are many wars. and some to come to, North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey,
Iran, ... it never finishes :(
I wish we could all be little kids and like each other regardless of ethnicity, country,
and play and get along well not to repeat the mistakes that have been made throughout
history, but life is sadly not like that :(
Some students tell others that there is no "i" in TEAM, but there is in TIM if
its misspelled to suit their needs. And as has been mentioned, it is[(it's) vs its],
[your vs you're, which corresponds to you are] plus others metioned by Marko V. The
dotless i, the o with the dots ö, there are many things that change depending on the area
one is in. Pena is not the same as Peña, and Trevino is not the same as Treviño, and ...
Best Regards,
Antonio
____________________________________________________________
FREE 3D EARTH SCREENSAVER - Watch the Earth right on your desktop!
Check it out at http://www.inbox.com/earth
3:51 p.m.
On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 9:45 PM, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
And, on a more international note, if somebody just mentions
"the war,"
which war do you think of first? I think that for most people it depends
on their age because they'll think of either the first one in their
lifetime or the first one they learned about when they were young. I'm a
'Nam vet, but to me, the first war I'll always think of is going to be WW
II because its after effects were still big when I was a child. Yes, there
was Korea when I was small, but it didn't have any impact on me, especially
when compared to WW II.
I think it's also a cultural thing. In the UK, despite a number of more
recent conflicts which were certainly wars and are even called as such (the
Falklands war for example), *the* war means WWII.
poc
3:45 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 01:32 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
I see you are prey to the misconception that I am familiar with the
history of US sitcoms. While I've seen several of them, not being
American myself I can't say I know this one.
I wasn't aware that you aren't an American, and I don't know how much
foreign exposure the show had. Still, you can see why it's highly
unlikely that anybody of what you and I would call "the younger
generation" would have any more of an idea what I was talking about than
you did.
And, on a more international note, if somebody just mentions "the war,"
which war do you think of first? I think that for most people it
depends on their age because they'll think of either the first one in
their lifetime or the first one they learned about when they were young.
I'm a 'Nam vet, but to me, the first war I'll always think of is going
to be WW II because its after effects were still big when I was a child.
Yes, there was Korea when I was small, but it didn't have any impact
on me, especially when compared to WW II.
3:41 p.m.
I do!....LoL!
On Feb 1, 2013 3:26 PM, "Joe Zeff" <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
On 02/01/2013 11:13 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>
> As the ox ploughs IIRC (or plows if you prefer). I don't know if there
> are any examples of the Romans using that, and the Greeks only did it
> sometimes, probably to annoy people on mailing lists :-)
>
Very good! And yes, AFAIK the Romans didn't copy that. Please
understand, BTW, that I don't do things like that simply to see if anybody
understands it. I do it because I assume that a fair number of you will
recognize what I'm saying and won't have to ask.
Wandering even farther off-topic for a moment, I often have a problem when
talking to younger people: I like to make pop culture references, and tend
to forget that what I'm referring to was way before anybody else in the
conversation was born. As an example, does anybody reading this know what
I mean by "an identical cousin?"
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3:32 p.m.
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 13:19 -0800, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 02/01/2013 01:05 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>
> On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 8:26 PM, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us
> <mailto:joe@zeff.us>> wrote:
>
> As an example, does anybody reading this know what I mean by "an
> identical cousin?"
>
>
> Not I, but then I'm only 63.
>
> poc
So am I. Follow this link and try not to kick yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Duke_Show
I see you are prey to the misconception that I am familiar with the
history of US sitcoms. While I've seen several of them, not being
American myself I can't say I know this one.
That and knowing virtually nothing about basketball, baseball and
American football, can make the NY Times crossword puzzle more difficult
than strictly necessary. I can remember two common answers, ORR and OTT,
but can never distinguish between them.
poc
2:48 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 11:18 AM, Doug wrote:
I don't think people liked Sarah Palin. I think if McCain had
picked
someone that wasn't perceived as a bimbo, he would have won the
election. As it was, not only were the people afraid of him
dying and leaving her in charge, but it also reflected on his judgment.
You might be right; in fact, if you substitute "Democrats" for
"people,"
you probably are, but that's just a matter of partisan politics. There
were people who liked her enough to get her elected as Governor of
Alaska, and my impression was that she had a small following
nation-wide. I was writing about what those people liked about her, not
why (or if) she was liked by a large percentage of the populace.
2:26 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 11:13 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
As the ox ploughs IIRC (or plows if you prefer). I don't know if there
are any examples of the Romans using that, and the Greeks only did it
sometimes, probably to annoy people on mailing lists :-)
Very good! And yes, AFAIK the Romans didn't copy that. Please
understand, BTW, that I don't do things like that simply to see if
anybody understands it. I do it because I assume that a fair number of
you will recognize what I'm saying and won't have to ask.
Wandering even farther off-topic for a moment, I often have a problem
when talking to younger people: I like to make pop culture references,
and tend to forget that what I'm referring to was way before anybody
else in the conversation was born. As an example, does anybody reading
this know what I mean by "an identical cousin?"
2:05 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 10:14 AM, Eddie O'Connor wrote:
I do hope you realize I was being sarcastic?....I was trying to
point
out that some people's definition of "cool" was whatever and whomever
was in the lime light at the moment....sorry if you took it
seriously.....t'wasnt my intention....
It's often hard to judge a person's "tone of typer," but it's not
really
important. You gave a list of examples and I gave you my own opinion of
them.
1:18 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 01:14 PM, Eddie O'Connor wrote:
/snip/
As far as Sarah Palin goes, my impression was that people liked
her because she wasn't ashamed of her opinions and she never
pretended to be anything except what she was. Calling Mit Romney
an ignoramus only shows that you didn't like his political
opinions and think that that makes it OK to call him names. That
tells me more about you than of him but I'm going to drop the
subject RIGHT NOW because I don't consider it OK to do that and I
prefer to live up to my principles.
/snip/
I don't think people liked Sarah Palin. I think if McCain had picked
someone that wasn't perceived as a bimbo, he would have won the
election. As it was, not only were the people afraid of him
dying and leaving her in charge, but it also reflected on his judgment.
Just my 2¢ --doug
1:13 p.m.
On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 6:21 PM, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
On 02/01/2013 05:48 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> What's the problem? I merely used the conventions of ancient Greek and
> Roman writing (though strictly speaking I should have put it all in
> upper case), and you clearly understood it. Isn't the content more
> important than the style?
>
If you really wanted to follow the conventions of ancient Greek, you would
have had more than one line so that it could be done boustrophedon[1] style.
As the ox ploughs IIRC (or plows if you prefer). I don't know if there are
any examples of the Romans using that, and the Greeks only did it
sometimes, probably to annoy people on mailing lists :-)
poc
12:21 p.m.
On 02/01/2013 05:48 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
What's the problem? I merely used the conventions of ancient
Greek and
Roman writing (though strictly speaking I should have put it all in
upper case), and you clearly understood it. Isn't the content more
important than the style?
If you really wanted to follow the conventions of ancient Greek, you
would have had more than one line so that it could be done
boustrophedon[1] style.
[1]I'm astonished. Twice. Not only did my spelling checker recognize
that word, I got it right!
12:14 p.m.
I do hope you realize I was being sarcastic?....I was trying to point out
that some people's definition of "cool" was whatever and whomever was in
the lime light at the moment....sorry if you took it seriously.....t'wasnt
my intention....
On Jan 31, 2013 4:38 PM, "Joe Zeff" <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
On 01/31/2013 12:20 PM, Eddie G. O'Connor Jr. wrote:
> To answer....look at society: Sarah Palin.....Mit Romney.......Lance
> Armstrong....Kanye West.....the Kardashians!....LoL! Are they not the
> very pinnacle...nay the epitome of "Cool"?...
>
As far as Sarah Palin goes, my impression was that people liked her
because she wasn't ashamed of her opinions and she never pretended to be
anything except what she was. Calling Mit Romney an ignoramus only shows
that you didn't like his political opinions and think that that makes it OK
to call him names. That tells me more about you than of him but I'm going
to drop the subject RIGHT NOW because I don't consider it OK to do that and
I prefer to live up to my principles.
No, I don't consider anybody on that list "the epitome of cool," because I
remember when there were people like Kookie, who really were cool.
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10:44 a.m.
On 02/01/2013 01:43 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 11:16 +0000, g wrote:
<>
> there are way too many on this list that live such a life that
they do
> not believe that their way is the only way to do things.
You might want to re-parse that.
most true. ;)
} there are way too many on this list that live such a life that
} they believe that their way is the only way to do things.
poc
thank you for noting.
all i can say is that it was late and i wa up too many hours.
--
peace out.
tc.hago,
g
.
in a free world without fences, who needs gates.
9:11 a.m.
On Fri, 1 Feb 2013, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 01.02.2013 15:21, schrieb Bill Oliver:
> On Fri, 1 Feb 2013, Reindl Harald wrote:
>
>>> Harald, you're in error. Many German speaking people consider style of
writing you are using here, to be rude,
>>> disrespectful and childish - I am one of these
>>
>> fine that i work with people for which is content more
>> important than style - the other way is childish for me
>
> Is that why you don't comment your code :-)?
40-60 % of my code are comments and they are usually
written before the code is implemented and the code
as long debugged as it does what the comment says
that is a completly different topic
code-comments are for quality and documentation
over the years - uppercase letters are the as useless
as in written communication
Ah, I see. Style is important when you think it's important, even if others don't
want to bother with it. It's not important when you don't want to bother with it,
even though others think it's important. Sort of like wearing plaid pants and purple
sneakers to work. There's people who think that if someone has 60% of their code as
comment, then they are just being chatty, not making their work clear.
It's not a completely different topic. I might complain that "You know, using
"//" to denote a comment is *completely* arbitrary. I could just as easily use
"/&." So I think I will, and screw all those compilers who think that they
can force me to write in a way I don't want to.
But it turns out that, if you want to talk to the compiler and not have it confused and
have your work tossed out, you really have to use the convention. Because the
*convention* serves a purpose, even if the actual rules are sometimes arbitrary.
Talking to people is pretty much the same.
I might think that wearing plaid pants and purple sneakers is just fine. And in some
circumstances it might be. But when I go to court and stand in front of a jury, or when I
go to the penthouse offices and talk to CEOs, or when I go to the Pentagon and talk to a
four-star general (and I've done them all), plaid pants and purple sneakers just
don't cut it.
You are free to use "i" instead of "I." You can jut out your chin and
say how people who use conventional styles are rigid morons. But recognize that most of
them will think you are a self-indulgent moron and, worse, an arrogant one who is more
concerned with himself than with others.
billo
8:28 a.m.
Am 01.02.2013 15:21, schrieb Bill Oliver:
On Fri, 1 Feb 2013, Reindl Harald wrote:
>> Harald, you're in error. Many German speaking people consider style of
writing you are using here, to be rude,
>> disrespectful and childish - I am one of these
>
> fine that i work with people for which is content more
> important than style - the other way is childish for me
Is that why you don't comment your code :-)?
40-60 % of my code are comments and they are usually
written before the code is implemented and the code
as long debugged as it does what the comment says
that is a completly different topic
code-comments are for quality and documentation
over the years - uppercase letters are the as useless
as in written communication
8:21 a.m.
On Fri, 1 Feb 2013, Reindl Harald wrote:
>
> Harald, you're in error. Many German speaking people consider style of writing
you are using here, to be rude,
> disrespectful and childish - I am one of these
fine that i work with people for which is content more
important than style - the other way is childish for me
Is that why you don't comment your code :-)?
Style and content are like form and function. Ignoring one harms the
other.
billo
7:48 a.m.
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 14:41 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 01.02.2013 14:37, schrieb Patrick O'Callaghan:
> On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 09:53 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:
>>
>> Am 01.02.2013 07:29, schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
>>> On 02/01/2013 01:44 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Am 01.02.2013 01:35, schrieb Patrick O'Callaghan:
>>>>> Reading is not done letter by letter or word by
>>>>> word, but in larger units, and every time I see 'i'
>>>>> instead of 'I', it interrupts my train of comprehension
>>>>
>>>> well, that is your personal problem
>>>>
>>>> in fact here in german speaking countries there are
>>>> way more words which are normally not written lowercase
>>>> at all but nobody has a problem these days read sms, email
>>>> and so on without a single uppercase letter
>>>
>>> Harald, you're in error. Many German speaking people consider style of
writing you are using here, to be rude,
>>> disrespectful and childish - I am one of these
>>
>> fine that i work with people for which is content more
>> important than style - the other way is childish for me
>
> wellthatstherestofusputinourplacethenisntit
this is as laughable as your thread at all
if you do not realize the differene between writing 'i' instead of 'I'
or write lowercase at all and strip out spaces between words i fear
nobody can help you
What's the problem? I merely used the conventions of ancient Greek and
Roman writing (though strictly speaking I should have put it all in
upper case), and you clearly understood it. Isn't the content more
important than the style?
poc
7:43 a.m.
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 11:16 +0000, g wrote:
On 02/01/2013 05:38 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
<>
> This list is better off without the grammar, spelling, and style police.
> If you can't figure out what someone is saying then "you" should not
> feel obliged to read it or answer it.
thank you. i could not agree with you more.
there are way too many on this list that live such a life that they do
not believe that their way is the only way to do things.
You might want to re-parse that.
poc
7:41 a.m.
Am 01.02.2013 14:37, schrieb Patrick O'Callaghan:
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 09:53 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:
>
> Am 01.02.2013 07:29, schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
>> On 02/01/2013 01:44 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
>>>
>>> Am 01.02.2013 01:35, schrieb Patrick O'Callaghan:
>>>> Reading is not done letter by letter or word by
>>>> word, but in larger units, and every time I see 'i'
>>>> instead of 'I', it interrupts my train of comprehension
>>>
>>> well, that is your personal problem
>>>
>>> in fact here in german speaking countries there are
>>> way more words which are normally not written lowercase
>>> at all but nobody has a problem these days read sms, email
>>> and so on without a single uppercase letter
>>
>> Harald, you're in error. Many German speaking people consider style of
writing you are using here, to be rude,
>> disrespectful and childish - I am one of these
>
> fine that i work with people for which is content more
> important than style - the other way is childish for me
wellthatstherestofusputinourplacethenisntit
this is as laughable as your thread at all
if you do not realize the differene between writing 'i' instead of 'I'
or write lowercase at all and strip out spaces between words i fear
nobody can help you
7:37 a.m.
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 09:53 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 01.02.2013 07:29, schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
> On 02/01/2013 01:44 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
>>
>> Am 01.02.2013 01:35, schrieb Patrick O'Callaghan:
>>> Reading is not done letter by letter or word by
>>> word, but in larger units, and every time I see 'i'
>>> instead of 'I', it interrupts my train of comprehension
>>
>> well, that is your personal problem
>>
>> in fact here in german speaking countries there are
>> way more words which are normally not written lowercase
>> at all but nobody has a problem these days read sms, email
>> and so on without a single uppercase letter
>
> Harald, you're in error. Many German speaking people consider style of writing
you are using here, to be rude,
> disrespectful and childish - I am one of these
fine that i work with people for which is content more
important than style - the other way is childish for me
wellthatstherestofusputinourplacethenisntit
poc
7:35 a.m.
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 23:19 -0800, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 01/31/2013 09:52 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
> I know you could care less, but she sees your posts as being indirectly critical of
her, her background, and her education. I would tell you what she said, but it
doesn't translate well into English.
Yes, I could care less. I suspect that what you meant is "you couldn't
care less." As it is, I regret hearing that your wife feels that way;
please assure her that some of us, at least, were only writing about
native English speakers who mangle their own language.
+1
poc
7:35 a.m.
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 23:14 -0800, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 01/31/2013 08:42 PM, Tim wrote:
> The misuse of "loose" and "lose" bugs me the most, second is
probably
> "dose" instead of "does." But seeing someone type in all-caps
tends to
> be far more annoying that someone posting in all-lower-case.
Let us not forget the people who can't be bothered to learn the
difference between there, their and they're and simply use thier for all
of them.
Not to mention your and you're, its and it's and doubtless many others.
I've got a little list.
They never will be missed.
Love it (though it's "would", not "will" :-)
poc
6:07 a.m.
On 1 February 2013 00:27, Dan Thurman <dant(a)cdkkt.com> wrote:
On 01/31/2013 07:55 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Way way OT:
>
> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i",
> poc
Maybe Apple started it? ;)
In that case anyone doing it probably owes royalties. The mailing list
might need to institute a fine to pay them.
--
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk
6:05 a.m.
On 31 January 2013 23:37, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
> "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1)
> their Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet
> e.e. cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
> minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
> expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
> teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
> want to know.
Speaking of that, I never understood why is the "I" capitalized in
English?
Or, to rephrase it in your words, what's with the "I"? ;-)
To begin with, I don't know of any other language which capitalizes
this word. Also, while my English teachers were always very
explicit that the "I" should always be capitalized, none of them has
ever managed to give me a reasonable answer _why_ this is so.
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_%28pronoun%29 claims there is
no known reason. However it's unusual in being a single-letter word so
the suggestions of illegibility of single letter lowercase and
accidental introduction are probably strong factors. Also remember
that *lower* case is the more recent invention,
While I agree with you that correct spelling is something worth
taking
care of in e-mail communication, I was always wondering about the
completely "randomized" spelling rules in English language. Or rather
the utter absence of any real rules. In other languages, those
rules often actually make sense, and make the language easier to read
and write.
For example, the concept of "spelling competitions" in elementary
schools was completely foreign to me until I heard about it from English
schoolchildren. In most other languages, knowing how to properly spell
words does not need any advanced knowledge, and basically is not
considered to be a skill worth competing over.
But English spelling is soooo contrived that people had to invent
spell-checkers to deal with it. :-D
And let's not even start with the even more contrived problem of the
proper *pronunciation* of the written English. ;-)
Actually, these two are coupled in a way that's not obvious to a
non-native speaker (and many native speakers too). English spelling
reflects pronunciation quite closely, what makes it difficult is that
many graphemes are re-used. You can hear some of this in the
difference between American and British accents where Webster's
spellings seem to correspond to changes in pronunction (sometimes
quite extreme, ax for ask). Remember most speakers learn the language
before they learn the writing system, learning foreign languages is
done backwards in a way. Also many other languages that haven't
relentlessly revised their spelling rules also make use of graphemes.
English has a lot of loan words of different origins which is a
contributing factor. If you don't believe people compete over spelling
in other languages you might want to have a look at Chinese.
--
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk
5:16 a.m.
On 02/01/2013 05:38 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
<>
This list is better off without the grammar, spelling, and style
police.
If you can't figure out what someone is saying then "you" should not
feel obliged to read it or answer it.
thank you. i could not agree with you more.
there are way too many on this list that live such a life that they do
not believe that their way is the only way to do things.
--
peace out.
tc.hago,
g
.
in a free world without fences, who needs gates.
5 a.m.
On Fri, 01 Feb 2013 05:32:47 +0000
Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 15:12 +1030, Tim wrote:
> The misuse of "loose" and "lose" bugs me the most, second is
> probably "dose" instead of "does."
I'm with you there. Also the confusion between "choose" and
"chose".
Also your and you're, it's and its. ;-)
HTH, :-)
Marko
2:53 a.m.
Am 01.02.2013 07:29, schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
On 02/01/2013 01:44 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
>
> Am 01.02.2013 01:35, schrieb Patrick O'Callaghan:
>> Reading is not done letter by letter or word by
>> word, but in larger units, and every time I see 'i'
>> instead of 'I', it interrupts my train of comprehension
>
> well, that is your personal problem
>
> in fact here in german speaking countries there are
> way more words which are normally not written lowercase
> at all but nobody has a problem these days read sms, email
> and so on without a single uppercase letter
Harald, you're in error. Many German speaking people consider style of writing you
are using here, to be rude,
disrespectful and childish - I am one of these
fine that i work with people for which is content more
important than style - the other way is childish for me
11:56 a.m.
Quoting Robert Moskowitz <rgm(a)htt-consult.com>:
On 01/31/2013 10:55 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Way way OT:
>
> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i",
> not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their
> Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e.
> cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
> minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
> expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
> teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
> want to know.
Well, what about using a microscopic keyboard image on an iThing while
in the subway? Could that have anything to do with it?
>
> Sorry, this has been bugging me for ages and I had just had to get this
> off my chest. Feel free to ignore.
The expect their grammer checker to automagically fix this for them.
Their smartphones SMS messaging does this, so why not their email
client?
Some people did not learn on a Royal Typewriter to get exposed to
proper typing techniques. I BARELY made it to 40wpm to pass that
class back in '64!
And I hated reading e.e cummings back then. Robert Frost was more my speed.
"I have miles to go before I sleep."
--
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--
If all the advertising in the world were to shut down tomorrow, would people
still go on buying more soap, eating more apples, giving their children more
vitamins, roughage, milk, olive oil, scooters and laxatives, learning more
languages by iPod, hearing more virtuosos by radio, re-decorating their
houses, refreshing themselves with more non-alcoholic thirst-quenchers,
cooking more new, appetizing dishes, affording themselves that little extra
touch which means so much? Or would the whole desperate whirligig slow
down, and the exhausted public relapse upon plain grub and elbow-grease?
--- Dorothy L Sayers, in Murder Must Advertise
10:35 p.m.
Allegedly, on or about 31 January 2013, Craig White sent:
better get used to it and other language simplifications encouraged
by
SMS/tweeting/etc. It's only going to increase. There's younger
generations that simply aren't likely to feel bound your rules.
Grammar snobbery is just going to turn you into an unhappy PITA.
Of course, one can have their revenge by using proper language when
talking to / writing to these youngsters, and make them equally flumuxed
when trying to understand what you've written. ;-)
I say that, mainly, in jest. But it's been my experience with some
modern teenagers, that their grasp of language is rather poor. Never
mind the written word, even the odd three-syllable word in spoken
language, with nothing much more unusual than the words being used in
this email, from you and I, gets blank stares and needs explaining and
rewording.
And why might that be? Because reading and writing, more specifically
being taught both of them, fell out of fashion. I don't mean something
heavy like learning Shakespeare by heart, or latin, just plain old
ordinary language of the current day. Some of the year 12's work, that
I looked at, bordered on remedial primary school. In just about all
ways; length, grammar, punctuation, and very immature language. If they
spent anything more than about five minutes on it, I'd be really
appalled.
While you might call it "grammar snobbery," it does them no favour when
they can't read or right well enough to apply for a job and keep it.
Some even can't follow the instructions for applying to the job. Which
relates to a second failing of our current education system, thinking
that you don't actually having to do what you're told to do. And you
can see the follow-through of that in various ways, thinking that the
road rules and laws of the land are something that other people have to
adhere to.
--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.6.11-5.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Jan 8 21:40:51 UTC 2013 x86_64
All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point
trying to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the
public lists.
7:41 p.m.
On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 12:37:47AM +0100, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
> "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1)
> their Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet
> e.e. cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
> minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
> expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
> teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
> want to know.
Speaking of that, I never understood why is the "I" capitalized in
English?
my first/last two pennies: "very early on", typesetters had
difficulty telling the difference between "i" and "j" since
manuscripts were written in longhand.
I heard this in grade school, tho, so it may have been made up
to keep students quiet.
Or, to rephrase it in your words, what's with the "I"?
;-)
To begin with, I don't know of any other language which capitalizes
this word. Also, while my English teachers were always very
explicit that the "I" should always be capitalized, none of them has
ever managed to give me a reasonable answer _why_ this is so.
While I agree with you that correct spelling is something worth taking
care of in e-mail communication, I was always wondering about the
completely "randomized" spelling rules in English language. Or rather
the utter absence of any real rules. In other languages, those
rules often actually make sense, and make the language easier to read
and write.
For example, the concept of "spelling competitions" in elementary
schools was completely foreign to me until I heard about it from English
schoolchildren. In most other languages, knowing how to properly spell
words does not need any advanced knowledge, and basically is not
considered to be a skill worth competing over.
But English spelling is soooo contrived that people had to invent
spell-checkers to deal with it. :-D
And let's not even start with the even more contrived problem of the
proper *pronunciation* of the written English. ;-)
Best, :-)
Marko
--
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--
Gary Kline kline(a)thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix
Twenty-six years of service to the Unix community.
3:20 p.m.
On 1/31/2013 1:07 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
My copy of this is back in the mid-90s:
Vy Knot?
Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways
of improving efficiency in communications between Government
departments.
European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
unnecessarily difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough,
through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme
of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of
course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by
participating nations.
In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's'
instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities
would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced
by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this
klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters
kould be made with one less letter.
There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was
announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'.
This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter in print.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are
possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double leters
whish have always been a deterent to akurate speling. We would al
agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful.
Therefor we kould drop them and kontinu to read and writ as though
nothing had hapend.
By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would
be reseptiv to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze
funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a
'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o' kould be dropd from vords
kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer
kombinations of leters. Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud
eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no
mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud find it ezi tu understand ech
ozer. Ze drems of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.
Thank you ... I really enjoyed reading it (and was easily able to read
the whole article ... while my Thunderbird spell-check starting choking
on the third paragraph)
Paul
7:20 p.m.
On 02/02/2013 10:33 AM, Lailah wrote:
El vie, 01-02-2013 a las 13:19 -0800, Joe Zeff escribió:
> On 02/01/2013 01:05 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 8:26 PM, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us
<mailto:joe@zeff.us>
> > <mailto:joe@zeff.us>> wrote:
> >
> > As an example, does anybody reading this know what I mean by "an
> > identical cousin?"
> >
> >
> > Not I, but then I'm only 63.
> >
> > poc
>
> So am I. Follow this link and try not to kick yourself:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Duke_Show
I never see that in my life. People, I know is fun to make jokes with
TV series and movies and the like, but think that this is an
international list. The Whole World hasn't any due to know all of
your stuff.
I learned this with RFC 2410, the Null Cypher for IPsec.
I was chair for IPsec at the time and I encouraged the authors to have
fun with the RFC. We have a lot of fun tidbits in various RFCs beyond
the April 1st RFCs. Read 2410, it CAN be fun, but a lot on non-US
people will NOT get it. Plus now almost 20 years later, the issues with
ITAR have been forgotten by even US developers.
But when I worked on IPsec certification in ICSAlabs (I helped set up
the ICSAlabs IPsec certification process) we got a asian implementation
that would not interoperate with any other product for the Null cypher.
I won't go into details, but they took parts of the jokes in 2410
seriously and implemented them; wrongly. So every other product that
got this right dropped the ISAKMP handshake with their product. There
were some REALLY upset people in that company over this.
So I learned a real lesson on care in writing were people will come
along later without the context.
7:49 p.m.
On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 17:16 -0800, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 02/01/2013 04:52 PM, Craig White wrote:
> It's clear that you want this e-mail list, informal as it is to respect
> your sense of proper grammar.
No, it's not "his sense of proper grammar," it's proper grammar as
it's
been taught in schools in every English speaking country for over a
century now.
----
but we're not in school here. There's no grades. The few who feel
lowered by having to trudge through all the e-mails with bad grammar can
find other lists where good grammar is actually a useful endeavor.
----
As I see it, there are three reasons people's grammar on this
list falls
short. This is an international list and not all of the members have
English as their first (or even second) language. My attitude is that
they're doing the best they can and as long as I can work out what they
originally meant, that's all that matters. Second, there are native
English speakers who either were never taught properly in school (I have
a friend who has trouble with homonyms, using "flue" for "flew" and
other such errors because of problems when she was young.) And, of
course, there are the people who were exposed to proper grammar, syntax
and word usage but simply don't care. On some mailing lists, people in
both of the latter two groups would be flamed for their errors. On this
one, I keep my opinions to myself because I can't see any way it could
possibly help and many ways it could end up making trouble for everybody.
----
As you see it? Who cares? I am not interested in hearing your personal
ambitions, your political beliefs or discussing your morals. Has
absolutely nothing to do with Fedora.
People intent on shaming others to comply with their phobias pertaining
to grammar, style and spelling errors should find another outlet to
satisfy their OCD needs.
----
Now, of course, we're in a long, OT discussion of the issue and I
think
that if nothing else, it's let all of us who don't like bad grammar to
air our opinions instead of bottling them up as we'd normally do. No, I
don't expect this to result in any change, but who knows; somebody might
decide to be more careful because they'd never realized how it looks to
others.
----
well let me give you a clue on how it looks to at least one person...
overwrought, overbearing, pointless and self-indulgent.
The judgmental, snobbish, elitist opinions are clearly going to cause
more people not to post than they will encourage.
Probably in another form, another time and space (and medium), you and
Patrick and I might become best of friends but I gotta tell you, get
over yourself and your opinions and focus on something that actually
matters.
Craig
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4110
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4114
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109 comments
27 participants
participants (27)
-
Andras Simon -
Antonio Olivares -
Craig White -
Dan Thurman -
Dave Stevens -
David G. Miller (aka DaveAtFraud) -
Doug -
Ed Greshko -
EGO-II.1 -
Frank Murphy -
g -
Gary Kline -
Ian Malone -
jdow -
Joe Zeff -
Mark LaPierre -
Marko Vojinovic -
Matthew Miller -
Patrick O'Callaghan -
Paul Allen Newell -
Ralf Corsepius -
Reindl Harald -
Robert Moskowitz -
Roger -
Sylvia Sánchez -
Tim -
William Oliver