Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site decwrl.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot From: chabot@amber.DEC (Lisa S. Chabot) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: Minor Catharsis Message-ID: <3804@decwrl.UUCP> Date: Mon, 1-Oct-84 17:26:21 EDT Article-I.D.: decwrl.3804 Posted: Mon Oct 1 17:26:21 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 2-Oct-84 06:42:44 EDT Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP Organization: DEC Engineering Network Lines: 46 I agree with almost all of the points in Christian's letter, but not this one entirely. Christian W. Stassen == > > ... people who pick someone else's article apart for spelling or grammar > mistakes are (all but) admitting that they can't really find anything else > in it weak enough to pick upon. Not necessarily. These grammer/speling (-: tee hee :-) fanatics might actually be expressing a desire that the author do improve her/his writing, so that the reader might then be *able* to understand the message that the author is attempting to convey. And some people use wrong words (even beyond the homonym problems)--sometimes it's very hard to make out what is being said. This is a written medium, and attempting to communicate in a it without attention to the even basic rules about sentence structure, or attention to appropriate word choice, makes the effort seem ridiculous. In this view, then, a flame on the order of "Your sentences don't make sense" can actually be interpreted to mean "Your sentences don't even make sense--you're clearly a fuzzy thinker". --- Typographical errors do count--any experienced programmer knows this. (-: gee what happens when you treat your compiler like you treat the net--it barfs at you when you misspell things :-) On the other hand, many of us are admitted human beings, and as such you're supposed to be able to tolerate minor flaws in spelling and still extract content. --- Now, on the lighter side, an escapee article from net.jokes may indicate that someday the AI programs resident on the net may too learn to misspell: "That may be difficult to believe, but we are learning astonishing things about computers every day. "With such machines, anything is possible, jealousy and even murder." --Trang Shi Wu, in an article by Mickey McGuire entitled "Jealous Computer Kills Top Scientist" in the 10 July 1984 issue of Weekly World News --- L S Chabot UUCP: ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot ARPA: ...chabot%amber.DEC@decwrl.ARPA USMell: deck, MR03-won/K2O, Too I-earn Whey, Marrellburrow, Masachewsits O1752