Re: OFFTOPIC: One for us coders

trice@california.com
Date: 06/20/96


On Fri, 21 Jun 1996, Joshua Mentzer wrote:

>    Well, can't speak for all my kind, but in general if a programmer thought
> the same way as other human beings they would care about grammer and all 
> that in their messages..
>    Maybe it's that when coding we have to stay so much inside the lines 
> and a little typo can mess the whole system that we like to set the tides 
> right by making more typos and staying outside of the lines in our 
> messages and righting.
>    or maybe, everyone isn't as anal as that.

Of course, it couldn't be that they can't take worth a damn.  I for one, 
do care about my grammar and spelling.  I try to fix typos if I spot 
them, but that's only when I'm still typing.  I don't proof-read it after 
the message.  Here's the thing.  If not everyone speaks English, then I 
think the people that have a higher learning in the language should spend 
more time using proper English.  Although not from person experience, I 
think it'd be difficult for a non-English speaker to pick up on a billion 
different acronyms and short-hand versions of things.

Use the full spelling of words, obey capitilization (your not e.e. 
cummings, you know), fix any "major" typos (I, for one, don't care if you 
accidently forget a 'c' in a word, as long as what you were trying to say 
is clear), don't use bad grammar.

Like stated in the original message, the message about displaying the 
condition of your opponent during combat was unintelligeable.  I would 
have responded had I not decided the person was complete idiot and not 
worth the five minutes to respond.  I can understand a few typos, even 
quite a few, but when everything's lowercase, there's no real sentence 
structure, and no convient parantheses around things (like "eg"), it 
makes a message not worth the time to read or respond to.

	-dak



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 12/18/00 PST