Spelling, grammar, and life.

[MJAmok]

I wrestled with myself for a while before deciding to post this.

I assume I will offend a few people, and I will address that later.

Pat Daly commented recently, that a particular individual's spelling was "consistently magnificent". I couldn't agree more. But that individual is not alone. There are a handful of members whose writing is mind boggling. I can not imagine how our educational system allowed that to happen. Let's assume they are not dyslexic or otherwise impaired. It is a shame in the true sense of the word.

I'm not talking here about the occasional typo, or the "cute" spelling (e.g. tonite or tuff). Rather, a fundamental inability to communicate effectively in writing. Anyone can make common errors like sentance vs sentence, or definately vs definitely. But to spell 'certainly' as 'surtainly' (repeatedly) or to use the word 'do' instead of 'due' routinely, is something to be taken seriously.

Indeed, it is hard to be taken seriously, with this kind of writing. A few times I have been mistakenly convinced that a post was a joke. Yet, these individuals simply blow off the problem with the casual "yeah, I know I can't spell".

My advice? If you want to succeed in the world, and want to give yourself a more promising future, spend less time driving a race car and more learning your language. I guarantee, that for 99% of the population, (including people who frequent this site) those skills will prove significantly more valuable. And, I don't mean relying on spell check. That is like refusing to learn to add because the calculator works just fine.

As to offending people... I believe that the people of whom I write have been done a disservice their whole lives. No one it seems, including those who were paid to help them, gave them the kind of feedback necessary to improve their lives. I think that is a cultural problem in this country. Everyone is afraid of offending everyone else. Mediocrity and worse are tolerated to the detriment of individuals and society.

So, I'm doing my part. I am standing up at the risk of offending your sensibilities, in the hope that I can help someone who needs it.

[dalyduo]

Are you offering a spelling and grammar clinic Michael? :-)

I teach a voice & diction class at NYU and you would be slack-jawed at the grammar and spelling I see on a regular basis in written homework assignments. Some of it has evolved from the culture of Instant Messaging and E-Mails where fractured grammar and spelling is considered hip.
If your writing skills are weak to begin with, you've got no standard from which to correct yourself and language skills deteriorate further over time. I also wonder what is happening in school systems that graduate students with such poor language skills.

On the public speaking front, many students use so much vocal garbage that they are neither aware of it nor hear it in others. (Vg words are fill words used to stall, fill awkward silence, or maintain control in a verbally combative environment that don't add to or move the thought forward. Umm, uhh, like, ya-know, are common as is upspeak. Upspeak is the habit of going up at the end of phrases and/or sentences.) People generally use vocal garbage because they feel they will look stupid if they leave a pause or silence between thoughts or because most of the people around them use it constantly. In fact they sound dumber by filling the space with garbage words or speaking in patterns. When there is no incentive or understanding of the value in speaking correctly, the sadly low standard you speak of is blissfully maintained.

I don't think you can shame someone into caring when they don't have a basic appreciation of good writing or don't think it matters, and their peer group doesn't support it either. The place where they hit the wall is in the business world where intelligence & performance is judged by your ability to write and speak the language.

I'm not sure why, but in the last year or so I've seen a higher level of interest in good writing and public speaking skills. More students seem to realize their ability to succeed and be competitive in business or in life is directly tied to their ability to write and present their thoughts.

So perhaps there is hope.

Originally Posted by MJAmok

So, I'm doing my part. I am standing up at the risk of offending your sensibilities, in the hope that I can help someone who needs it.

[cheekychica]

I completely agree with you, MJAmok. Spelling and grammar have become so bad that my university is offering a 1 credit summer course (twice during the summer) that focuses solely on grammar. Having had an education in English that had an intense focus (and insistence) on proper grammar, I can't believe the number of people who don't (or won't) speak and write correctly. You're right -- most of the time, grammar and spelling mistakes are accidental and/or don't affect the readers' ability to understand what is being said. However, I have read and edited everything from college essays to articles to (a few select) posts here that had me going back to re-read a sentence 2-3 times before I can work out where the punctuation, spelling, and capitalization need to be corrected before I can understand what the person is saying. (Semantics can also be an issue, but I guess I shouldn't be too picky!)

Having friends who work in the educational system, I know how hard it can be to drill these rules into students' heads -- let alone insuring that they stay there! But MJAmok couldn't be more right when he says that these simple (and they really are) rules can greatly improve the way in which a person is regarded. One thing I have noticed is a growing trend in students who aren't following a humanities track in college who don't think spelling and grammar matter because English isn't their major. Just a week ago, a girl came up to me, asking me to edit/tailor her final accounting paper, and told me that her teacher wasn't grading on grammar -- she just needed help cutting it from 10 to 8 pages (granted, her grammar isn't too bad).

Formal writing isn't a style that many people can avoid, and yet people do not take the time to improve on their writing. One shouldn't have to rely on Word's spelling and grammar check (because, really, it can be annoying when it tells you to correct something you know isn't a mistake), it can be a starting point for people to brush up on their basic grammar rules. That little dancing computer that opens with Word usually pops up a balloon that explains the grammar rule the checker is correcting.

Also, having a personal writing style that may slightly bend the standard, elementary school grammar rules isn't a bad thing. I have one. But there's a difference between bending the rules to purposefully affect one's writing and blatantly disregarding the rules without caring about the affect doing so has on one's writing.

As MJAmok said, I hope not to offend anyone with this post. I'm not surprised that dalyduo even more eloquently elaborated on the benefits of speaking and writing properly!

[MJAmok]

Pat

I wasn't trying to shame anyone into doing something.

I suspect that these issues are never confronted at all. Seemingly not by educators and certainly not by peer groups. Perhaps a fear of causing shame is what prevents people from speaking up.

Why is it a bad thing to inform someone of their error and suggest they get help? Isn't that how we learn? It should be considered more offensive to accept this behavior than to attempt to correct it!

[badgersid]

NOW I FEEL AWFULL.BUT THE FACT THAT I GOT PAID TREE HUNDRED ANDTHERTY TREE TOUSAND THIS YEAR TO COACH THE SOPRANO'S MAKE'S IT ALL WORTH WHILE

PAT WHERE ARE YOU WHEN I NEED YOU.

[dalyduo]

Michael,

I wasn't suggesting you were trying to shame anyone, just pointing out that if the person or people who are in error by your standard, don't have the same standard or awareness that you do, they won't know what you're talking about or what the error is. You won't get any traction with them unless they know why your standard is better than the one they're already using. Bit of a Catch-22.

Sid,

IF U R MAKIN' A FREAKIN' TURD OF A MILION BUCKS TEECHIN DEM SOPRANO'S TA SQWAAK U SUR ASS HELL DONT NEAD MEE. 'NFACT I SHUD B AWDITTIONIN FER U!

How'm I doin? :-)

[badgersid]

WELL SAID VERY ELOQUENT

[rhpearson]

Originally Posted by dalyduo

I teach a voice & diction class at NYU and you would be slack-jawed at the grammar and spelling I see on a regular basis in written homework assignments.

I recall thinking that it was amazing what I saw in written assignments when I was a teaching assistant at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario) nearly ten years ago. The first batch of essays blew me away; I then gave a "clinic" during a tutorial one night. It did little good.

One kid, who managed to misspell the same word three different ways on one page--yes, one page!--told me that it wasn't his fault, he had a "odd editing" process. This was his excuse for handing in a paper that not only missed the point, but even missed the spell check!

Somehow though, unlike my peers, I never managed to get an essay written by someone who was smoking up while they wrote it at the last minute. I could have used the entertainment value of an essay that strayed off course with a discussion of "halucinogenic bread", as one fellow TA was lucky enough to receive.

The use of the internet and its influence on the decline of English was not yet relevant for my students. One thing I do notice--for which we must be somewhat forgiving--is that for many internet users today English is a second or third language. Often people are spelling things as they sound, not as they should be.

Ultimately, among my group of students, none cared if they wrote well enough to do more than eke out a pass in a history course. As a general survey, it was largely filled with students whose major was in other areas. That doesn't excuse them, but it was their excuse.

I expect for those who should know better, the apathy is the reason why they shortcut the language.

[cheekychica]

What's interesting about the effects of the Internet on users' writing/spelling/grammar is that, while it has negative effects in some cases, in others, the frequent use of E-mail and AIM have increased some people's typing speed an accuracy. Personally, I know my typing has improved since I started using AIM 5 or 6 years ago. (Though I have been told by friends that my AIM etiquette is "bad" because I actually do type everything out and avoid acronyms like 'brb', 'rotfl', 'u', 'plz', etc. like the plague.) But dalyduo was right when he said that people won't know what they're doing wrong if they don't already have the grammar/spelling skills in place.

So,
Pros of the internet/AIM:
Increased typing speed and accuracy, as long as one is already committed to proper spelling and grammar -- it really helps with those long essays! Much less time spent spell-checking at the end!

Cons of the internet/AIM:
WAAAAAY too many people who don't care whether they can write, but still do, leading to an influx of horridly written blogs, sites, etc., which says to their readers, "It's OK to write poorly, people will still read it."

The best place to start, of course, is in the classroom at an early age. Unfortunately, there are so many schools where the teachers have bigger problems than actually getting a proper lesson across to their students... Then it all falls to the poor Title 1 teachers to improve the students' reading/writing skills. That's why MJAmok's starting this thread was a good idea. It never hurts to brush up one's grammar!

[cheekychica]

Also, in an effort to improve our overall writing/spelling/grammar, Merriam-Webster offers a word-a-day feature. Fittingly,



The Word of the Day for May 19, 2005 is: zaftig • \ZAHF-tig\ • adj
: having a full rounded figure : pleasingly plump

Example sentence:
The Flemish painters were masters of the oil medium, rendering zaftig beauties, robust burghers, hunting scenes, and allegorical subjects with subtle interplays of light and color.

Did you know?
"Real women have curves," as a 2002 movie title proclaimed. They are pleasingly plump, full-figured, shapely, womanly, curvy, curvaceous, voluptuous, statuesque. They are, in a word, zaftig. "Zaftig" has been juicing up our language since the 1930s (the same decade that gave us Yiddish-derived "futz," "hoo-ha," "nosh," and "schmaltz," not to mention "lox"). It comes from the Yiddish "zaftik," which means "juicy" or "succulent" and which in turn derives from "zaft," meaning "juice" or "sap."


Here's the link where you can sign up to receive the word of the day:
http://www.startsampling.com/sm/wod/register.iphtml

And here is the link to the word of the day archive:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/wodcalendar.pl

(Yes, yes, I am an English nerd. )

[sydude]

Originally Posted by cheekychica

It comes from the Yiddish "zaftik," which means "juicy"

As of tomorrow morning, we are changing the name of this site to:

TEAM ZAFTIK RACING

And please don't kvetch to me if you don't like it!

[cheekychica]

How else to reply, but with

[rhpearson]

Pure brilliance!

Just imagine next time out when the word zaftig is floating around the paddock; I could say LOL, or I could say there will be some laughter

R

Originally Posted by cheekychica

The Word of the Day for May 19, 2005 is: zaftig • \ZAHF-tig\ • adj
: having a full rounded figure : pleasingly plump

Did you know?
... It comes from the Yiddish "zaftik," which means "juicy" or "succulent" and which in turn derives from "zaft," meaning "juice" or "sap."

[cdh]

Originally Posted by sydude

As of tomorrow morning, we are changing the name of this site to:
TEAM ZAFTIK RACING

If you go with the Team Zaftik Racing I think you should refrain from any Zaftik Pit Girl Galleries (sorry everyone, cdh has gone over the edge).......

[dalyduo]

Doug,

Brilliant!

Too Good! Now we need a Team Zaftik Racing banner choice!

[cheekychica]

Actually, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Mae West, etc. were zaftik, and considered to be the beauties of their day (and are still 'classically beautiful'). Anorectics? Really not that hot.

[sydude]

Originally Posted by dalyduo

Doug,

Brilliant!

Too Good! Now we need a Team Zaftik Racing banner choice!

There's an old saying...

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it!

Check out your new style choice.

[dalyduo]

I love it! You've got to keep that as a choice! Don't call it "joke" Call it "Team Zaftik Racing" It's wonderful.

Originally Posted by sydude

There's an old saying...

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it!

Check out your new style choice.

[cdh]

Originally Posted by cheekychica

Actually, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Mae West, etc. were zaftik, and considered to be the beauties of their day (and are still 'classically beautiful'). Anorectics? Really not that hot.

Round 2.....................amazing how threads mutate

[dalyduo]

Yes, Spot on Doug.
Sy, Now you've got to update that Team Zaftik Racing banner!

[cheekychica]

How about the pic of Marlene Dietrich on the chair in the top hat, corset, and hot pants from Die blaue Engel?

[badgersid]

So it now seem's that i am(according to these recent post's) one of the beautufull people.AHH but i knew that all along

[cdh]

I had chosen this one first (too scary!) opted instead for Mae, possibilities endless, ok, next topic

Originally Posted by cheekychica

How about the pic of Marlene Dietrich on the chair in the top hat, corset, and hot pants from Die blaue Engel?

[cheekychica]

Personally, I love that picture of Marlene. Die neue Frau, und so weiter. She has lots of other great ones to choose from, though:

http://www.frank-sinatra.de/dietrich.jpg
http://www.harleysons.de/Marlene%20Dietrich%201943.jpg
http://www.netzwerk-mediatheken.de/i...lauerEngel.jpg
http://www.timemachinetoys.com/toypi...neDietrich.JPG
http://www.skylighters.org/photos/pinups/dietrich2.jpg
http://www.aski.org/kb3_01/kb320031.jpg

Or, Marilyn as Marlene:
http://www.marilynmonroe.ca/camera/g...n/mmarlene.jpg

[MJAmok]

Sorry I missed all the fun!

Just to close out my thoughts on the original subject... I was not advocating the use of 'formal writing' for posts, or that anyone need to be a master of the finer points of the language. Simply that we should at least try to cover the basics.

As the old saying goes... It may be better to keep your mouth closed and be thought the fool, than to open it, and remove all doubt.

[MJAmok]

I wanted to post this clip a long time ago, but forgot. Doug's Princess Bride post today inspired me!

English?

It doesn't seem to want to connect from this server, so you may have to cut and paste!

http://drewmike.file-place.com/english.wav

[cheekychica]

Just saw "zaftig" turn up in an interview with Jeremy Piven. I like the way he thinks; it's so contrary to pop culture.

"She's the ultimate shiksa goddess, and she's underage. But I prefer a curvier, more zaftig woman." -- Jeremy Piven, speaking about Lindsay Lohan

http://movies.msn.com/movies/hotgossipb4