On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 00:35 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 13:44 -0700, Craig White wrote:
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 15:07 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 01/31/2013 12:52 PM, Frank Murphy wrote:
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000 Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan@gmail.com wrote:
Way way OT:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when
- their Shift key is clearly not broken,
Could be various reasons. It's a multi-cultural list. English as 2nd or 3rd language. users may not have a western-style keyboard. Maybe dyslexic (in rare case spell-check could complicate matters)
I **AM** dyslexic and live and die by my speel ckecher.
my oldest brother is probably the smartest person I know - and he was dyslexic too. He is also a graduate chemical engineer, former union organizer, economics professor (masters degree) and it's obvious that while spelling and grammar checkers are a must for people with these problems, the truth is that it's about effective communication and I don't have much patience for those who want to insist on rules of communication rather than just appreciate the communication.
If it were either/or, I would agree with you, but that's a straw man and a false dichotomy. With the exception of dyslexics (who AFAIK tend to be of above-average intelligence), it's not a question of either you communicate effectively or you follow grammar rules. Grammar rules exist in order to make communication more effective by reducing the amount of cognitive dissonance. Reading is not done letter by letter or word by word, but in larger units, and every time I see 'i' instead of 'I', it interrupts my train of comprehension, even for a a few milliseconds. What's good about that?
---- It's clear that you want this e-mail list, informal as it is to respect your sense of proper grammar. It won't and your diatribes won't change that but might scare people away.
My wife (Chinese - been here 2 1/2 years) speaks better English than many Americans. Some people are lazy, sloppy and probably know better but just don't care. Some people are dyslexic. Some are merely adopting fast/informal methods of other communication methods. Some just simply struggle with English. There's no straw man argument... but - if it makes you happy, we can just declare the "Patrick O'Callaghan" rule by getting it added to the Fedora Users Mailing List Guidelines so you have a fully loaded weapon to attack with. Sheesh
Reminds me of a book that I bought that looked interesting... "Eats Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss." It was about the need for things like punctuation to clarify the intent of something. In the end, the author includes a number of self adhesive commas, apostrophes, periods, semi-colons and colons so one can fix the world's signage guerrilla style. Yes, it's that absurd.
It doesn't matter.