On 3/14/14, 10:54 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 3/14/2014 10:28 AM, F*O*A*D wrote:
On 3/14/14, 9:37 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 3/14/2014 8:22 AM, F*O*A*D wrote:

On 3/14/14, 1:47 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
We are not trying to sell guitars to English majors.


More advocacy for the dumbing down of 'Merica and 'Mericans.

Fortunately, the clients for the handful of websites I design and
maintain are sticklers for proper English. This forum,
wrecked.boats, is
the appropriate outlet for trash talk and careless, trashy use of
language.


Nothing to do with the dumbing down of anybody. The idea is to get a
message across using fundamentally understandable and acceptable
language and structure.

I was more interested in being awarded a $800K contract for a thin film
deposition system or handed a check for $1,700 for a guitar than
receiving an "A" for using proper grammar or sentence structure.





And that attitude - the acceptance of substandard English - contributes
to the dumbing down of 'Merica.


I thought you were a "progressive". Culture, language and demographics
change and all that stuff.

How many people do you know today that speak or write English in the
same manner as Shakespeare or the Pilgrims? Go visit Plymouth
Plantation and try to understand what the role players are saying. I
guess we are all "dumbed down", including you.




Proper evolution in business and social language and the art of using
language do not have to include sloppiness and lack of attention to
spelling, grammar and usage. It's good to avoid broken language, slang,
and jargon in formal speech and writing. If we don't, we end up speaking
and writing in a hundred varieties of patois or lingua francas.

If I visit a commercial website *full* of language errors, I attribute
that to sloppiness and laziness on the part of the site's sponsor, and
assume the sponsor's business is run in a sloppy fashion, too. If I see
a contract proposal full of the same sorts of errors, the warning
signals go off, because if the language is sloppy, the fulfillment is
likely to be, too, and that means disputes down the road.

I sometimes partner with a web designer in India who is involved with
the labor movement there. He's a first-rate designer and programmer, and
he speaks and writes English at a level that makes it easy for us to
communicate and laugh at each other when we stumble on a word or phrase.
He has the stereotypical accent of an Indian who speaks English. As
talented as he is, I wouldn't let him write a word of final copy for the
websites I manage. He knows our language, but his knowledge of idiomatic
'Mericanese is lacking.