Disappointment with the grammar and spelling of some TA users
I've noticed that many of the forum discussions that TA has tweeted lately have contained glaring grammatical and spelling errors. I find this disappointing and even personally embarrassing as it inevitably reflects not only on the original poster but on the forum as a whole and, by extension, the larger atheist community. I know written communication isn't everything, and it certainly isn't a high priority among the public generally, but we should try to meet a higher standard. Given the unlikelihood that individual posters will suddenly take more care when writing, I think the operators of the site's Twitter feed should consider not tweeting discussion titles with serious errors.
That's one poster's opinion, for whatever it's worth.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on -
...being a Donkey with people with people with LD, ADD I think not.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. Do you censor everything you say because someone might be offended or feel hurt? That's pretty hard to believe. For example, you never say anything that might make a Christian feel bad?
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on -
It's improper to end a sentence with a preposition - I believe the correct query would be, "to what are you referring?"
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on
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Umm, I believe most modern grammarians have dropped the rule about not ending sentences with prepositions, except perhaps in academic writing.
Anyway, I heard a story once about someone criticizing Churchill for ending a sentence with a preposition, to which he is said to have quipped, "This is a situation up with which I will not put!"
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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RE: "I believe most modern grammarians have dropped the rule about not ending sentences with prepositions, except perhaps in academic writing."
OMG - are you saying that the English language is evolving? SAY it isn't so!
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Permalink Reply by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on -
We forgive you and will love you anyway.
Now don't be speakin' fer all of us like that, pardner. :)
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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on -
I agree.
The evolution line gets pulled out a bit too easily. It really only makes a point against those that adopt an extremely proscriptive approach to language. I believe most people fall somewhere in the middle ground. Language is symbolic representation. In order for it to work, there has to be some consensus on what the symbols mean. By that logic, language has to be more proscriptive than descriptive. Even errors or intentional novel usage typically only works because it reflects standard usage closely enough that readers can make sense of it.
It is largely the same with organic evolution. From generation to generation we know that most of the genetic information is copied directly from the parents. Mutations and gene expression errors do occur, but in most cases they are deleterious. Wide scale changes or errors are almost certainly going to be fatal. Some degree of change and diversity is required for the health of the species, but a great deal of stability is also required.
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Permalink Reply by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on
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Some have even defended this illiteracy as part of the evolutionary growth of language.
OK, I'll bite, this time. To whom are you referring?
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on
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I'm referring to all of those who defend misuse because this is how language changes such that the mistake of today might be the standard English of tomorrow.
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Permalink Reply by Danny Sanchez on -
I used that crap argument in high school when my english teachers graded my papers unfavorably.
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