Theo Bekkers said:No, you're not confused. We all are. I don't reply to Lotte because I never
know which is her text and which is the previous poster's. I've pointed this
out to her before but she appears to think it is the problem of the reader
not of the writer. <shrug>.
That's an attitude that I find utterly reprehensible. (Please note: this
comment, and the following rant, is not directed at Lotte per se. It's a
culmination of years of frustrations, caused by the seeming indifference
of people towards making themselves understood, and is a general rant
about the state of affairs prevailing upon the Intenet. If you, yes you,
the individual sitting at the terminal reading this text, think it's
directed at you personally, you're wrong. And you probably should invest
in a few good lessons on English grammar if you're so touchy about it. 😉
There seems to be a general prevailing attitude of "it's good enough,
you know what you're saying, so why are you so up tight about it?" I'm a
busy guy (although you might not know it if you look at my accumulated
postings ... 🙂 I don't have time to decipher poor punctuation, bad
spelling, or SMSisms. If your post contains one of those three, odds are
good I'll skip it and go to the next one. If it contains two, the odds
become excellent. If it contains all three, I can guarantee you I won't
bother.
You are but one person. The people reading what you write will be many.
Hundreds? Thousands? I don't know. Clear, concise writing that can be
comprehended without needing google, an internal spell checker, or
careful interpretation will save, cumulatively, hours of man hours.
I accept that typos happen; I tend to not quibble about one or two
misteaks. It's when the whole damn post is filled with misspellings, or
errant punctuation, or SMSisms (I *hate* reading "ur" for "your" -- it's
two freaking characters, for crying out loud; the former reads like some
sort of verbal pause!) that I start looking around for my axe (far more
viscerally satisfying than a shotgun.)
The same sort of thing applies for quotation. Remember that cycleforums
is a Usenet gateway, and it can be next to impossible to tell who said
what if you aren't careful about quoting. Although I'll grant that (a) I
don't know what cycleforums does; and (b) I don't know how easy/hard it
makes it to do proper quoting once the post hits the NNTP server.
Rant mode off.
--
My Usenet From: address now expires after two weeks. If you email me, and
the mail bounces, try changing the bit before the "@ to usenet".
