[CLUE-Talk] Looks like our brains match \w+

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 14:19, Timothy C. Klein wrote:
> * Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier (jzb at dissociatedpress.net) wrote:
> > On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 08:51, Jef Barnhart wrote:
> > > Teh one thing that I have been getting used to id the misspelling of
> > > teh.
> > 
> > I was somewhat discouraged to see this study -- it just provides one
> > more excuse for people who don't bother to spellcheck. 
> 
> Don't get discouraged -- before the printing press, there was no notion
> of standardized spelling in English.  Chaucer has no sense of consistent
> spelling -- if you read _The Canterbury Tales_, you can find the same word
> spelled differently in the same tale.
> 
> Chaucer did fine -- so will we.

Hey, when Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales there was no notion of
personal hygiene or indoor plumbing as we know it today either... I'm in
no hurry to revisit those conditions. 

The difference here is that we *do* have a standardized system. There's
a reason why we have standardized spelling and rules for punctuation and
grammar... I don't think it's a good thing to have a casual attitude
towards the degradation of the language. 

If you're willing to settle for rudimentary communication, perhaps
you're right -- but I think we can aim higher than that. 

> This is actually a cultural thing -- it has nothing to do with how well
> written English communicates.  We see misspelling as a sign of lack of
> intelligence, lack of seriousness, lack of education, even lack of
> culture.  But that can change, and it won't harm the communicative
> ability of English at all.

I disagree - sometimes you can get by with poor spelling and not change
the meaning of a sentence or paragraph or whatever. On other occasions,
a misspelled word can mean a world of difference. 

I don't see an occasional misspelling as a lack of intelligence or as
laziness -- but I do see consistent grammatical errors, faulty
punctuation and poor spelling as a sign of laziness or stupidity (or
both). Typos are one thing - a refusal to learn or follow the rules of
your native language are another. 

It *does* harm the communicative ability of English. Think about people
that speak English as a second (or third, fourth, fifth...) language --
a sentence that contains one or more misspelled words can be quite a
hassle for them. If you're writing for an audience, you shouldn't assume
that all of the readers will be native English speakers. 

Here's an example -- if I write "My friend and I went buy the store
today" instead of "My friend and I went by the store today" -- you'll
parse that just fine. However, a person who is not a native speaker may
be thrown by that. Did the writer mean that he and his friend *bought*
the store? I see people using "buy" to mean "by" all the time, but I'm
sure there are better examples. 

I don't think I even need to explain the need for precision in language
when writing technical materials, instructional guides, medical
directions and so on. 

I dearly hope that people continue to see poor spelling and grammar as a
fault rather than simply accepting lower standards. There's simply no
excuse for anyone with a high school education to be unable or unwilling
to use the language properly. 

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
jzb at dissociatedpress.net
Aim: zonkerjoe
http://www.dissociatedpress.net