blake wrote on Sat, 11 Aug 2007 17:32:55 GMT:
??>> blake wrote on Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:41:08 GMT:
??>>
??>>>> In article
??>>>> >, friese@c
??>>>> omcast.net says...
??>>>>>> Thanks for your thoughtful post, you make a good
??>>>>>> point. I am a writer by trade and I suppose that
??>>>>>> grammar is more important to me than it is to 99.9% of
??>>>>>> people.
??>>>>>>
??>>>>>> Even so, I am surprised by how resistant most people
??>>>>>> are to learning anything. I guess that's just human
??>>>>>> nature and I should learn to deal with it. -- Peter
??>>>>>> Aitken
??>>>>>
??>>>>> And thank you, Peter, for your thoughtful reply. It
??>>>>> seems that both of us put great value in grammar. Yes,
??>>>>> you probably should learn to deal with its misuse,
??>>>>> although I can assure you it's not easy!
??>>>>>
??>>>>> Felice
??>>>>>
??>>>> I find bad grammar a lot easier to take in spoken
??>>>> English. When you are speaking with someone you have
??>>>> tone of voice, phrasing, facial expression, and body
??>>>> language to help get the meaning across. When things are
??>>>> written, it's a lot harder. There are none of these
??>>>> helpers so you have to rely 100% on the words (although
??>>>> the "smiley face" and other emoticons can help).
??>>
bm>>> your claims to being any kind of writer at all are
bm>>> demolished by your advocating emoticons. jaysus.
??>>
??>> I do mostly agree with you Blake but not in avoiding
??>> emoticons when posting to news groups, not that I'd use
??>> them in *formal* or technical writing. IMHO, they are
??>> often a useful and facile way to indicate that you are
??>> joking or being a little tongue-in-cheek and don't want to
??>> be taken seriously. They can have similar uses to acronyms
??>> like IMHO that acknowledge that you know others may not
??>> agree. I used to sometimes use (g) instead of :-) but not
??>> everyone got it! There are many people, including me, who
??>> have Microsoft Word set to autocorrect things like :-) to
??>> the smiley for informal correspondence.
??>>
??>> James Silverton
bm> i guess you are right insofar as it's a matter of taste. i
bm> just don't like them. (i installed a new version of, i
bm> think, eudora, that had the emoticon-to-'pretty' pictures
bm> feature, and that drove me straight up the wall. thank god
bm> it was easy to disable, or i'd have junked the software
bm> entirely.) besides, i hate to telegraph a joke, or point
bm> out that it is one.
bm> i dislike the initialisms also ('imho'), because not
bm> everyone knows what they mean. besides, this isn't instant
bm> messaging or a telegram; you can afford to spell things
bm> out.
bm> but i'm just a cranky old man. your mileage may vary, as
bm> they say on teh intarwebs.
As you imply, IYHO! To each their own but I think you are in a
small minority and fighting a war that was lost decades ago!
(Don't bother taking up my apparent lack of grammatical number
agreement. I quite long ago decided that I agreed with The Times
of London about gender neutral pronouns :-)
To tell the truth, I think it is fun to puzzle out things like
AFAIK and you can always ask if you can't do it.
Best wishes!
James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland
E-mail, with obvious alterations:
not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not