A friend of mine was telling me how much he liked his new "Parad a gym" brand speakers were.

Took me a while to realize he meant "paradigm".

I also hate when the word is used with "shift" or "A new". Almost invariably, it's used by people only interested in sounding hip, in a business sort of way.

If they follow it up with "I feel like roadkill on the information superhighway", the driving need inside me to bash them over the head with a laptop is almost unsurmountable.

bobover3 (imported) wrote: Sun Sep 26, 2010 8:59 pm Incorrect grammar and usage is RUDE. It expresses contempt for those with whom one is pretending to communicate.

My pet peeve is the use of "advocate for" in place of advocate. Even the NY Times might write "he advocated for peace" in place of "he advocated peace." In this context, "for" is meaningless.

But expressions like "advocate for", "where are we at", "at this point in time" (for "now"), and the use of "presently" for "at present" rather than its correct meaning "soon" are not bad grammar; they are bad style and you can get that from the Supreme Court. Under Rehnquist we had decisions in which "since" was used to mean "because" but none of this is rude or expresses contempt for the audience (we have obscenities for that) it expresses a tin ear to the possibilities of English, an insensitivity to detail and precision, but if you feel otherwise, how do tolerate Tea Party signs with such illiteracies as "Protect Are Childrens Future"? Or do you consider those people unconscionably rude?

StefanIsMe (imported) wrote: Fri Sep 24, 2010 10:50 pm I've had applicants at work, high school grads, who's emails are filled with "Ya that sounds good ok ill be there 2morrow lol" bullshit. I'll even call them on it, and the responses I get are frequently along the lines of "Yeah, but you know what I mean, and isn't that the real point? Just to get your point across and be understood?"

I admit, in some ways I do personally subscribe to that belief. So long as the idea behind the words is successfully communicated, the fine points of grammar are not important. However, I do have my limits.

Under no circumstances is using the abominable texting slang acceptable. This especially applies in professional or educational matters. I wouldn't expect to be hired at McDonalds, with a reply such as the one above.

That said, I am not an English major, and I have never aspired to be one. I have no problems splitting infinitives, dangling participles, or ending sentences with prepositions. Since the majority of my writing is informal, occurring on message boards and the like, these do not strike me as major flaws. Similarly, on those occasions where I do injure the language, no offence is intended toward the reader. If you have understood my point, then the language has served its purpose.

I generally disagree that incorrect grammar is rude, or expresses contempt to the recipient. It may indicate a lack of knowledge about the finer points of the English language. It may spring from a learning disability or other impairment. It may even simply result from a person being more concerned with the idea they are attempting to communicate than the medium they are using to communicate. To me, none of those show contempt. It's the ideas being communicated that show a person's intentions.

To put my point in perspective:

What you wrote above, TheOtherSide, would be perfectly acceptable to me as a business response; I don't worry about split infinitives, etc.

The only thing that irks me so much is as you say, the "texting" slang. I don't demand perfection, certainly not from myself, but it's a question of TRYING. Of at least giving one the impression that you in some remote way have grasped the concept that textspeak is utterly inadmissible in a business environment.

Problem is, some kids (and I mean folks in their 20's) honest to God, like, ya know, Noh Kidng eh lol, think it's okay to write like I just did when sending emails at work.

And many of them argue that I'm wrong, that I'm too 'hung up on old ways". I call bullshit to that. It's their own lazyness, their disrespect, that pisses me off and makes me delete their applications. Again, I'm not talking 'fine points' of language here; I'm talking L33T-y, TTL, Lol-ly fake-English-because-my-time-is-too-important-to-type-full-words-for-you ignorance.

And I look forward to them picking up my garbage from the back of a truck next year.

Of course, they are not all like that. I had one friend of another applicant a few months ago ask me why he got the job and his buddy didn't. All I did was show him one paragraph of email of his beside one of his friends. The friends reaction was "Holy shit!" when he saw what his buddy had written; it was pure 100% text-speak as a response to an interview meeting.

k, TTL, C U L8r 2morrow guys !! (pptphtphthpthtptphtht)