2 Feb
2004
2 Feb
'04
5:58 p.m.
On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Teo Zenios wrote:
As time goes on and I type 95% of my correspondence
instead of writing it to
paper with pen I find my handwriting has grown worse then in my school days
and I rely more on a spellchecker then proofreading. If I did writing for a
living, or better yet proofread technical writing on a daily basis my skills
probably would not have grown worse with time.
I write exclusively on my computer and my writing has stayed the same
(i.e. nigh impeccable!)
Twenty years from now I would be embarrassed to read
something I posted
earlier that was technically incorrect and wouldn't worry too much about an
obvious spelling mistake. I don't think topics posted on this mailinglist
are going to be published, but people will be googling through it to get
technical information.
Your messages ARE being published. It's called the WORLD WIDE WEB. What
you write online stays around forever these days.
Judging from your reply if I would have written a book
outlining the real
origins of the universe you would quit reading it after you found the 3rd
spelling or grammar mistake?
I would. It doesn't bode well for the quality of the rest of the work
and doesn't give me a good impression of the author. It could mean that
the work was so bad that no reputable publisher would take it on, and so
instead it was either self-published, and was not proofread, therefore
further losing credibility, or the proofreader of the low budget
publisher wasn't very good, which would further impugn the work. So,
theoretically, I could pass over one of the most important scientific
treatises of the century, but based on past experience reading poorly
written works, I would doubt it.
Granted if I did print such a book I would have
it proofread by experts in English grammar, but I feel that the knowledge
your trying to convey is more important then the few easy to spot errors in
grammar. In a perfect world everybody would have the same skills in
everything, but that's not the way things are. I will take correct content
over correct grammar anyday.
But how can you determine if the content is good if you can't decipher the
text because the grammer is so poor?
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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