In which Cherry is offensive.

[cherry]

The dreck that some people seem to think constitutes proper English -- or that they seem to believe constitutes usage of the English language at all -- continues to amaze me.

I am not speaking of some of more questionable literature published professionally, or of some of the more amusing fan fiction out there.

There are a surprisingly high number of my fellow engineering students whom I honestly consider to be barely literate. When it comes to group reports or labs, I find that I tend to have to go through each page to ensure that it is written at least at a fifth-grade level.

It occurs to me that I may come across as rather elitist, and that the simplest recourse would simply be ceasing to care. I would never claim that my grammar is impeccable -- goodness knows, it's much easier for me to catch mistakes in papers or stories someone other than myself has written -- but I find it more and more frustrating that so many people around me seem to have failed to achieve a basic competency in their native tongue.

There is simply no way in which "These data Suggests that solar gain through thermal mass is no economical" is is a sentence. There just isn't.

Comments

[kiarasayre.livejournal.com]

"These data Suggests that solar gain through thermal mass is no economical"

...that is just physically painful.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

It causes me to make whimpering noises, yes.

[cyberducks.livejournal.com]

Don't feel bad about being annoyed by this. I see atrocious spelling and grammar everyday by people who have graduated from college, by people who don't speak and write English as a second language - unlike me. The saddest part is that most of these people know that they are barely literate and have the intelligence to improve if they just put a little effort in. But they don't want to - it's not important to them.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

It bothers me when people seem to consider basic linguistical skills not worth acquiring. These are people who will be professionals, and they just can't seem to comprehend the basics of effective communication.

[elvenjen4.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I work in high tech in Silicon Valley. Welcome to my life. :)

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

*clings*

They just -- GAH. Being able to express yourselves effectively and professionally is a GOOD thing.

[fullycompletely.livejournal.com]

You think you're offending anyone? Dude, the required English class for Eng students at the U of A was legendary. We called it English for Retards. It was like, THIS IS A SENTENCE, use it to write your papers that no one else in the world will understand. Class dismissed. It was this big deal if an Arts student could sneak their way into registering for it.

And yeah, my grammar's horrendous, the fuck do I care? I can still judge. :P

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

We have a class generally referred to as Speak-and-Spell, but it's actually an oral and written communications class. It's quite good if you're willing to work with it, but so many people blow it off or consider it worthless.

Sadly enough, we don't currently have an English requirement. Some disciplines do, but there's nothing college-wide.

[jcflygurl.livejournal.com]

My freshman year I volunteered to edit a collaborative report for an Education class I was in. I was appalled to find that some of these kids managed to get into Berkeley with the things they were writing. I'm not being snooty about it either; these kids probably shouldn't have been allowed to graduate high school. I wasn't face!palming as I read the stuff because I'm an English major, I was face!palming simply because I was a human being.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

It's incredibly frustrating, isn't it? I, personally, have no formal English training outside of high school, and I find that I sometimes tend to do better than people who have taken numerous English and humanities courses.

It blows the mind, doesn't it?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bounce_/]

They're not ESL students, are they? Besides which, most ESL students know to get their work checked before submitting it if they've anything near that level of difficulty with it. As such, they need to learn basic English grammer and usage and then learn to apply it.

I'd be appalled if the year 8 and 9 students I used to tutor handed in something like that. People shouldn't be able to get to a tertiary level what that degree of written ability in their native language. (The fact that I'd well below that level in French is beside the point. I know enough to get someone to check over my work in any other languages because I'm not STUPID)

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

The people in question are not ESL students -- in my experience, they tend to do a tad more poorly, but I give them a bit more slack.

It's not that people aren't smart enough to figure these things out, it's that the emphasis on communication skills just isn't there in so many of the technical professions. This makes me sad.