[Tuthmosis]

It's a common misconception that posting on this forum has no bearing on, or is no reflection of, your "real" life.

I recently got the message below, unsolicited, from a repped member of the forum who's been dinged with a yellow card or two in the past for his habitual use of textspeak (e.g., non-existent capitalization and texting-style punctuation).

As an otherwise solid, generous forum contributor, he agreed to let me share his message (redacted for his privacy) with the community.

Note: The job doesn't directly involve writing, corresponding with clients electronically, or traditional office-work.

Anonymous RVF Member Wrote:

Tuth, you will like this because it involves something you hate: poor capitalization. I just got turned down for a [REDACTED] job because they said my emails were unprofessional and lacked punctuation and capitalization and made me look unprofessional. They did hook me up with another place though and said I would get another shot later in the year because my [REDACTED] skills were solid.

On a side note, when they first gave me the news that I was not getting hired because of lack of professionalism, I thought it was because they were saying I gamed too many of the other [REDACTED] (a lot of them are hot), but they either didn't care or didn't know. One of the girls was in the room at the time as well, which made it all the better.

In other words: sloppy writing is worse than "sexual harassment."



What you write in the forum, in other words, is a good indicator of your communication skills, work ethic, attention to detail, general presentation, level of considerateness toward your peers, self-awareness, and other important cues. My experience has shown there is a strong correlation between low-quality writing and low-value members (and often level of game). Don't get me wrong: For every senior member who's guilty of slipping into textspeak, there are 10 newbies that do. If you don't believe me, just spend a little time in the newbie forum. Even more interesting is how consistently younger guys (say college-age and below) don't even understand what they're doing wrong--even when 5 other guys have called them out in the thread they started.

Newbie PM Wrote:

Dear Tuthmosis

I would like to understand what you want to sys to me.

Please expain to me what I should have done wrong.

What does that mean "Using textspeak" ?

You knwo what? Pay me pack the 21 Dollars I payed than you can "bann" me bad person forever.

Waiting for expanantion.

[philosophical_recovery]

I've kept myself from getting some job offers, many years ago, by being lazy and sloppy with resume checking. Apathy affects how people perceive you. Start giving a shit about how you present yourself. The skills transfer over to other areas, like picking up women that take care of themselves.

It's very rare to find someone with technical skill who writes terribly. No good examples are coming to mind, because it is so infrequent. They had to learn how to communicate well to get where they are today. It pisses me off to no end when a native English speaker is so lazy that they get steamrolled in ability by someone speaking their fourth language, one that doesn't even share a character set with English. Those people give a shit. It shows.

[Tytalus]

I believe it. I can't say that my quality of writing here is always top notch since most of my messages are shorter... But yeah, what you do, is what do, you know?

[kmhour]

(06-14-2015 12:28 PM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:  

It's very rare to find someone with technical skill who writes terribly. No good examples are coming to mind, because it is so infrequent.

I'm not sure what you mean by "technical skill" (or if you meant the opposite as the second sentence seems to indicate) but in my experience particularly engineers but also math and programmer types are some of the worst written communicators I've come across.

Having the ability (and/or desire and patience) to clearly and articulately communicate in (and out of) the technical world is a huge boon and immediately sets you aside as someone who isn't just a foot soldier. The most brilliant analysis or calculation is generally worthless if you can't get that point across effectively.

[Quintus Curtius]

I've always admired the hardcore stance from Tuthmosis here on proper written form and diction, and I've said so before. People aren't learning it in schools anymore, so someone has to do it.

Literacy standards have been on a downward trajectory for some time in our culture, so it's a good thing to get a zero-tolerance policy on this.

The moderator job here is a hard one: he has to monitor not only content, but form as well.

[Days of Broken Arrows]

As a professional journalist, the insistence on proper grammar and syntax was one thing that attracted me to the forum.

As I like to say, we think in words. So the more words we actively use, the better thinkers we become. It's been said that most of the advances in sciences and the arts have happened amongst English-speaking people because the language is so expansive and nuanced and allows for "bigger" and more innovative thought.

When we constrict and/or degrade that language, we make our own thought processes "smaller." We have less of an arsenal from which to draw when we're processing information and communicating that information.

Textspeak is both degrading and constricting to the language. I'm bewildered that English teachers now allow it to be used in class. This is more significant than people realize.

Why? Because with previous generations, their slang expressions helped expand the language. Grant, maybe we didn't need expressions like "groovy," "far out," or "gnarly." But if you think about it, maybe we did. Each reflects a distinct "vibe" or state of mind. Each conjures images of something.

Textspeak does the opposite. It lessens what we can think and how we can interpret something.

When you have a micro-language you develop a society of people with micro-minds. Maybe this a reason for the rise we're seeing in intolerance of ideas that don't fit "the narrative." People can't see beyond the "OMG" factor.

Post script: Does anyone read the HBD Chick blog? If so, don't you think it's ironic that a woman who dedicates her time to sifting through concepts related to intelligence refuses to capitalize?

[Praetor Lupus]

Some of the emails I get in work from colleagues who left school well before text messaging was a thing make me despair.

Surely it can't be that difficult to learn how to spell and punctuate properly in a language you are surrounded by every day.

[Peregrine]

There is a reason why Newspeak eliminated, combined, and truncated words rather than expanded and added them.

[Lizard King]

for OP, and all grammar Nazis.

[Cattle Rustler]

Tuth should provide resume reviewing services.

I know mine could certainly use it when I enter the "looking for a new job market" next year.

[Foolsgo1d]

I have seen enough advertisements and emails from professionals to know that it isn't just young people with text speak and internet lingo doing this. It is laziness but sometimes when you see multiple miss-spellings and typo's you're wondering how the hell they can ask for serious replies when they themselves cannot be arsed to do it.

[Gmac]

Not surprised, I always knew my grammar OCD would pay off.

[mikado]

I have quite good english skills, but sometimes I can make mistakes when I write, because I am a francophone first.
Not everyone here is from the Anglosphere.

[Lizard King]

(06-14-2015 04:13 PM)mikado Wrote:  

I have quite good english skills, but sometimes I can make mistakes when I write, because I am a francophone first.
Not everyone here is from the Anglosphere.

Most people here are either well traveled, or well educated, sometimes both. Those types of people recognise when someone is using a second language and they get cut some slack.

[Quintus Curtius]

(06-14-2015 04:13 PM)mikado Wrote:  

I have quite good english skills, but sometimes I can make mistakes when I write, because I am a francophone first.
Not everyone here is from the Anglosphere.

No problems at all, man. No one has ever been criticized for using English as a second language. It's not grammar mistakes that are the problem, it's text jargon.

What gets criticized is lazy use of textspeak, which is something entirely different.

In fact, I'm willing to bet that only native speakers of a language use lazy textspeak in that language.

People who write English as second language tend to take more care in their sentence construction than do native speakers. When I write in languages I've studied as second languages, I like to err on the side of formality. Native speakers want to see you do this.

[MMX2010]

Here's an excerpt from an article.

------------

A few years back, I did an interview on the possible effects of instant messaging (IM) on the writing of teenagers. The other guest, himself a polished writer, extolled the benefits that IM seemed destined to have upon the next generation’s writing abilities. I countered with the proverbial case of monkeys and typewriters: however long they pound away, they are unlikely to produce Shakespeare.

More recently, I have begun to suspect that the situation is even more troubling. Could it actually be that the more we write online, the worse writers we become? I’m not talking about whether the usual litany of acronyms and abbreviations (such as 2 for “to” or “two,” or btw for “by the way”) is seeping into everyday writing, or whether our e-mails are laced with misspelled words or minimalist punctuation. Rather, my concern is more profound: is the sheer fact that we are replacing so much of our spoken interaction with written exchanges gradually eroding a public sense that the quality of writing matters?

I vividly recall an article in early 2000, in which the reviewer despaired over the profusion of spelling and punctuation mistakes he had found in the text at hand (which, incidentally, had been published by a highly respected press). Worse still, he noted, this book was not unique. Sardonically, he mused that about ten years earlier, all competent proofreaders must have disappeared. But is the problem actually the proofreaders? Or might it be that we the readers (who ourselves are often writers) are less fussy than we used to be? Is it that we could proofread — we know the rules — but no longer care to do so?

In 2003, John McWhorter wrote Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care, in which he argued that contemporary Americans, unlike earlier generations and unlike many other cultures, do not particularly care about their language. In McWhorter’s words, “Americans after the 1960s have lived in a country with less pride in its language than any other society in recorded history.” While I believe McWhorter is substantially correct, his point is not the one I am making here. My own argument is that the inordinate amount of text that literate Americans produce is diminishing our sense of written craftsmanship. Ultimately, bad writing is driving good writing out of circulation.

[The Beast1]

On certain posts my spelling and grammar are egregious. It makes me cringe.

I wish I could go back to my middle school English books for practice.

[Tuthmosis]

The problem isn't English being a second-language for guys. Guys get tremendous leeway on that front; not everyone has the same language background or writing skills. You're only expected to write considerately, not like Ernest Hemingway.

I find that non-Anglophones who use that use that excuse--sending it to me in responses to notifications for 20-percenters--aren't flagged for normal errors everyone makes, including native speakers. They somehow, as foreigners, have managed to learn idiomatic things like LMAO or BTW but not something even more basic (and therefore more likely to learn wherever they learned the rest of their English) like using the space bar. I can also think of no language class or book that teaches that capitalization is irrelevant to the English language.

[mouzone]

As a non-anglophone i appreciate the constructive criticism.

Us foreigners use a lot of english "text speak" mixed in our own language, the american influence is unstoppable and our own language is degenerating as well, which bothers me too. I'm glad there are fora like these who care about proper grammar, it will only help me with my english. I don't understand why anyone would have an issue with that.

[mouzone]

double post.

[CactusCat589]

(06-14-2015 06:47 PM)Tuthmosis Wrote:  

The problem isn't English being a second-language for guys. Guys get tremendous leeway on that front; not everyone has the same language background or writing skills. You're only expected to write considerately, not like Ernest Hemingway.

It'd be amazing if the mods did raise literacy standards to Ernest Hemingway levels. We'd all splinter off into various subgroups dedicated to writers like Thomas Wolfe and Twain. Then there'd be the black sheep posters who'd stir up shit by posting in the styles of Joyce or Faulkner, and hardcore oddballs whose every post would be meta in homage to books like Flowers for Algernon.

[sylo]

I hate to be this person...but really? Dude was sending work emails like that? Must have missed the common sense train.

[Suits]

(06-14-2015 08:24 PM)CactusCat589 Wrote:  

(06-14-2015 06:47 PM)Tuthmosis Wrote:  

The problem isn't English being a second-language for guys. Guys get tremendous leeway on that front; not everyone has the same language background or writing skills. You're only expected to write considerately, not like Ernest Hemingway.

It'd be amazing if the mods did raise literacy standards to Ernest Hemingway levels. We'd all splinter off into various subgroups dedicated to writers like Thomas Wolfe and Twain. Then there'd be the black sheep posters who'd stir up shit by posting in the styles of Joyce or Faulkner, and hardcore oddballs whose every post would be meta in homage to books like Flowers for Algernon.

Best post eva! (Sorry Tuth).

Best post ever. This might be the most amusing thing I've every read at the RVF.

(Couldn't handle the shame of using textspeak in this thread of all places).

[getdownonit]

I'm uncertain of the forum's official stance on the Oxford comma, clarification of which would benefit its membership, myself and the moderator.

[Merenguero]

(06-14-2015 11:57 PM)getdownonit Wrote:  

I'm uncertain of the forum's official stance on the Oxford comma, clarification of which would benefit its membership, myself and the moderator.

I was always wondering what that was even called and I always use it. I know Harvard educated lawyers who don't use it, but I have been using it my whole life. I really don't know which way is correct.

Somebody corrected me on a Spanish term a few weeks ago and I usually say "fuck you" to those types because a) I've been speaking, reading, and writing Spanish my whole life and b) People who do that are usually insecure people trying to one-up me for some iinexplicable reason, but I researched the term and although it's not 100% clear whether it's correct, I now think the person was right.