Comment by leetcrew
5 years ago
does it actually matter that people don't all the grammar rules or how to spell things? an english sentence contains a lot of parity data. when you do know all the rules, it can be painful to see the mistakes people make, but confusing "principle" with "principal" or using "who" when you should have used "whom" doesn't really obscure the meaning of the sentence.
when it comes to formal correspondence, spellcheck is always there to help. or better yet, get a copywriter or technical writer to help you and go back to your main responsibilities.
> does it actually matter that people don't all the grammar rules or how to spell things?
It does if you hold the view that teaching someone to speak and write is teaching them them think.
If that is correct than if someone does not know how to speak and write in a grammatically correct fashion then the implication is that they do not know how to think properly.
Even if there isn't a perfect 1to1 mapping between grammatically correct writing and thinking skills, I still think it's a good proxy for measuring a persons ability to think because in general the more you read, the better you get at writing, and the more you read, the more you know.*
* the traditional caveats apply with garbage in, garbage out.
> It does if you hold the view that teaching someone to speak and write is teaching them *them think*.
> If that is correct *than* if someone does not know how to speak and write in a grammatically correct fashion then the implication is that they do not know how to think properly.
And you immediately defeat yourself with your own argument.
Nobody ever has, nor should strive to, follow every grammatical rule perfectly. Errors only matter if they create actual ambiguity; if you understand my intent, then I have used language effectively.
As human thought evolves, language should too. Poets are always breaking rules in the name of art, and many of those changes get codified as new rules. Shakespeare simply made up dozens of words that we use today without a second thought. Over the last decade, modern poets steeped in the culture of sarcasm have given the word "literally" a new meaning. Those deviations and inventions made sense, both to the speakers and listeners, so new words, rules, and understandings were created. The only people left confused are the prescriptionists who cling to outdated rules that describe how people used to talk.
As long as humans can turn these AI assistants off and share their imperfect creativity, I'm not too concerned.
> Nobody ever has, nor should strive to, follow every grammatical rule perfectly.
Actually, this is untrue; people automatically follow the rules of their language with extreme accuracy. They don't "strive" only in that following the rules doesn't involve any conscious effort.
This is behind the principle articulated for HTML of "be strict in what you emit and liberal in what you accept". That is how people behave when speaking. But it's not something they're capable of doing in HTML, and trying to apply it there was a mistake.
> Errors only matter if they create actual ambiguity; if you understand my intent, then I have used language effectively.
This isn't right either, in a couple of more serious ways:
First, ambiguity is always present regardless of whether any errors have been made or not. A fun example of ambiguity I noticed recently is "Flemish is more influenced by French than Dutch". Perfect grammar, but the two obvious parses have opposite meanings. Ambiguity arising from a grammatical error is no more serious than ambiguity arising from a lack of errors.
Second, the major problem with failing to follow the grammar of a language is that it prevents your audience from knowing whether they understand you or not. One thing I can say if you speak to me in broken English is that you aren't aware of the rules of English. Given that, even your apparently flawless sentences might have been intended to mean something quite different from what they would mean if spoken by an English speaker.
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> if you understand my intent, then I have used language effectively.
I'll agree as far as it goes, but it ignores the burden of understanding on the the part of your interlocutor.
Have you ever been in a conversation where either you or the other party didn't speak the language well? It is a strain on all parties, even if sufficient information was transmitted and understood. I might consider this merely sufficient or barely "effective". I'd hope we aim for clearly expressing oneself without causing strain on your conversation partner or reader.
A good deal of what people quibble over regarding "grammar" has more to do with good style (whatever that means to you -- proper use of less/fewer, who/whom, capitalization and punctuation, etc) and achieving a certain verbal register.
You're not even wrong.
> It does if you hold the view that teaching someone to speak and write is teaching them them think.
I don't hold that view. at least, I don't think effective communication requires mastering the formal rules of a natural language. I'm not even sure communication itself is that closely tied to complex thought. I've known a few brilliant engineers whose english was barely sufficient for work. perhaps they were quite elegant in their native tongues; I wouldn't be able to say.
> I'm not even sure communication itself is that closely tied to complex thought.
I think it does in some respect; our language's grammar and vocabulary litteraly govern the way we see the world, after all[1]. As a personal anecdote, I'm ESL and write as a hobby, both in my native language and English, and I do feel the differences (and limitations) in the way my mind works depending on language.
I know that my inadequacies in English mean that my style is different. Descriptions and reasonings are simpler. In my native language, I can easily use word plays, ambiguities, be bolder and "more clever" (or less stupid :p). In English, I unconsciously keep things less complex. I'm a different author, and so the worlds I describe in my texts are simpler, too.
English is also far more "pragmatic" than my birth language. I can't word things the same way. Thus, my thinking as an "English writer" is far more rational and cause-to-effect-ish.
It's like any tool: you can absolutely use a programming language through tutorial and google searches, but you have to truly master it to really understand its concepts, to really use it to do something cleverly and intelligently -- and you won't plan a complex task the very same way in two different programming languages.
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110314132531.h...
does it actually matter that people don't all the grammar rules or how to spell things?
Does it matter if someone does not write with perfect grammar and spelling? Probably not.
However at some point you have drifted so far from normal conventions that you are no longer communicating effectively. You can make reasonable arguments about both prescriptivism and descriptivism but if your spelling and grammar are so bad that someone can't understand you then you're not a descriptivist, you're just wrong.
I have encountered this more often than I'd like in professional settings. I work in software development, a field where precision is important, so if I'm looking at your job application and it's full of basic language errors then I absolutely will judge you for that.
Yes, clarity and grammar matter. For example, with your lack of capitalization, I wouldn't know if you were trying to help your Uncle Jack off a horse or your uncle jack off a horse.
Though no one has ever written either of those sentences for any reason other than to put up a strawman to tear down in their defense of grammar.
I'm a fan of learning grammar well, to be clear, and wish mine were better, but this is not a good argument for grammar mattering.
okay, you can also come up with plenty of examples of ambiguous parses that don't require violating any grammar rules. fortunately humans are a bit more intelligent than compilers and can use their knowledge of context to settle on the more reasonable interpretation.
But why make other humans do extra work to parse you? It’s arrogant in the extreme to say ‘that’s good enough you figure it out’.
Even scanning text is jarring when the rules aren’t followed, takes extra time to comprehend and adds to the minor irritants of daily life and will have people judging you, even subconsciously, as unintelligent.
> does it actually matter that people don't all the grammar rules
No.
*ducks*
ironic, but it actually supports my point so I'll leave it that way :)
I for one blame the Grammar-Nazis and their anti-semantic ways
ok, i'll let myself out.
Good writing is probably like dressing up. It's not just what people think of you, you think of yourself better too.