In the age of Google, the lazy will inherit the Earth
So, I'm an admitted social networking profile junkie. And, I tend to read WAY more blogs than I ought to. What has all of this yielded? Knowledge that people are too stupid, or at least too lazy to even Google for items they don't know, or even to run the now-ubiquitous spellcheck.
And, the worst part is, this isn't even email, private between two people. It's out there for the world to see! I am more and more convinced that people don't understand what "your comments will be visible worldwide," even means.
Here is but one example, from: http://burbia.com/node/754
"cold stone is going cold
- submitted by jason11 on 02/06/2007
cold stone is going cold dead. remember frujan gladje (sp??) exactly. krispe cream. add cold stone to the list of disappearing"
Cold Stone, and proper sentence structure, that is.
Not a capitalized proper noun in the whole thing, nor a single capital to start a sentence.
Frusen Glädjé. I know it's hard to remember, but I Googled it. It took three seconds. Actually, the Google auto-complete guessed, before I got the "Frus" typed in, that I was after "Frusen Glädjé." Then, it was all cut-and-paste.
It's "Krispy Kreme," not "krispe cream." That's a brand that still exists. It's got a website for crying out loud!
And punctuation... There are a ton of periods in the comment, but not so much one, you know, at the end of the comment.
Now, that's a lot of problems for a comment that's, let's see, twenty words long. If I had submitted that sort of writing to any English teacher I had in school, I would have been summarily demoted, with extreme prejudice, to the prior grade.
There's a cool gajillion examples of this in the online world. At what point did our lives get so busy, or we get so lazy, that using a backspace key every once in a while is just not doable?
And, the worst part is, this isn't even email, private between two people. It's out there for the world to see! I am more and more convinced that people don't understand what "your comments will be visible worldwide," even means.
Here is but one example, from: http://burbia.com/node/754
"cold stone is going cold
- submitted by jason11 on 02/06/2007
cold stone is going cold dead. remember frujan gladje (sp??) exactly. krispe cream. add cold stone to the list of disappearing"
Cold Stone, and proper sentence structure, that is.
Not a capitalized proper noun in the whole thing, nor a single capital to start a sentence.
Frusen Glädjé. I know it's hard to remember, but I Googled it. It took three seconds. Actually, the Google auto-complete guessed, before I got the "Frus" typed in, that I was after "Frusen Glädjé." Then, it was all cut-and-paste.
It's "Krispy Kreme," not "krispe cream." That's a brand that still exists. It's got a website for crying out loud!
And punctuation... There are a ton of periods in the comment, but not so much one, you know, at the end of the comment.
Now, that's a lot of problems for a comment that's, let's see, twenty words long. If I had submitted that sort of writing to any English teacher I had in school, I would have been summarily demoted, with extreme prejudice, to the prior grade.
There's a cool gajillion examples of this in the online world. At what point did our lives get so busy, or we get so lazy, that using a backspace key every once in a while is just not doable?
posted by Mark of NOLA at 7:56 AM
6 Comments:
Mark,
Thank goodness you've written some more on your blogspot! I've thoroughly enjoyed each and every entry and hope you'll keep writing as often as the mood strikes you. And, yes, your detail to spelling and grammar are noticeable and appreciated!
Amber Smoot Kelley
Mark, you are my favorite person of the day! I, too, am completely anal about spelling and punctuation. I don't mean "anal" in a bad way, either. One of the classes I'm taking online requires that we answer discussion questions in a forum. I cringe every time I read some of the posts from other students. Most of whom are fresh out of high school and should remember the basic rules of punctuation. You would have a field day! I am paranoid about being grammatically correct to the point of spell-checking, verifying words in the dictionary, and proof-reading 3 or 4 times. (I'll probably proof-read this 4 or 5 because now you've made me nervous!). Anyway, although reading your blogs for the first time, I love them. Thank you for giving me something to read that doesn't make me wonder if and where the writer got an education at all.
While I really enjoy your sentiment here, I must say that I do have a bit of a problem with someone ranting about proper grammar (i.e. capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc.) when he/she commits many glaring errors him/herself. This blog is so riddled with fragments, comma splices, and misplaced modifiers that your English teacher may very well have asked you to do it again. Also, please don't point out others' spelling errors and rant about using spell-check when you spell "capital" as "captial." Please practice what you preach, my dear; it packs a bigger punch that way.
i dunno what yer talking bout. if i had to guess, i'd say laziness. myself point and case...or not. -danella
and haha, you have to admit it's pretty funny that you ranted about spell check and as above comment noted- you misspelled a word yourself (i'm sure it was a typo-but still, spellcheck would have caught it). =) danella
Anonymous 1 (of the "really enjoy your sentiment") comment:
Thanks... On reread there were probably three corrections that NEEDED making, in addition to the "captial" one.
I was curious how long it would take for someone to fry me on my own grammar. Now I know: not too long at all! ;-)
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