Tuesday, July 08, 2008

When I see public discourse,

...sometimes I wonder why we bother sending young people to school, and then to college. Why so?

Well, not only do I see sloppy writing and logic (sometimes, sigh, from my own hand), but worse yet, I have seen many people claiming that using sound spelling, grammar, and logic is really "only for academia." If this doesn't scare you, it should; education is, or at least ought to be, training for life. To say "these rules only apply to academic work" proves only that the speaker completely missed the point of education. Judging by what I've seen, the group of those missing the point has a quorum.

6 comments:

Gino said...

i am guilty of bad grammar as well.

but, as i blog, i blog as i'm speaking to you, using the same grammar much of the time.
i treat the blog as an informal medium

W.B. Picklesworth said...

I'm with you on that, not because my grammar and spelling are anywhere close to perfect, but because I'd like for them to be so. It can become snobbish pretty quickly though, so I've tried to keep my own inclinations quiet in recent times.

Anonymous said...

Do you get brownie points for actually knowing that you're screwing up grammatically; but you're just not sure how to do it properly.

I'm with Gino; in the blogosphere it's just be yourself. Nobody is going to be grading me, or firing me, if I screw up; although I do try my best to follow simple rules.

Gino said...

not to mention, sometimes i KNOW the grammar is bad, and post it for effect.

i do try to avoid mispellings,though.

Bike Bubba said...

Here's my take; when we use poor grammar, speling, and logic when we "blog," we're training ourselves to do so--and thus it becomes harder to write well when we need to.

Put differently, I've met people who think that good grammar and spelling are not even necessary in a work environment--and then they wonder why nobody understands what they're saying.

Bike Bubba said...

Ben makes a good point about looking snobbish in this area; I'd simply suggest that a great way to avoid this is simply to use the language properly ourselves, endorse it for others, but not to play "grammar cop" with those who do not. Those who deliberately use sloppy grammar will figure out the consequences soon enough when others ask "what on earth are you trying to say?"