I disagree with the notion that correct use of the English language is less important these days. I'll explain the reasons why.

1. It has been a bugbear of mine (and quite time-consuming) that I constantly need to edit posts on this forum for clarity. I am not an English teacher by any means, nor to do I know it all when it comes to communicating in English however it is preferred that people make an effort to get the basics right. For the last four to five weeks, I have found it necessary to trawl through all posts and correct literally hundreds of errors. I've spent the last two nights adding dozens of words that are commonly misspelt to the forum's language filter - originally designed to filter out foul language - but as this function has never been used for that purpose, I am using it to correct poor spelling.

2. Note that this is an Australian website and the English dialect used here is EN-AU and no other. One exception is those who don't live in Australia. But for the rest of us, we should be talking in the Queen's English. Kindly adjust your web browser's language settings to EN-AU.

3. When people search for information, they usually get the spelling of the search terms correct. If the information they are looking for is not in the same dialect, they either won't find it or the search engine will rank the information with the poor spelling down the list of results.

4. Typing a series of sentences with an endless string of lower case lettering and an absence of punctuation makes the user look like they are paying scant regard to the intelligence of those they are talking to, even if this is not intended. It is not hard to do it properly and takes only a small amount of extra effort to post a query that is structured correctly.

5. In order for queries and information to look professional and credible, the above points are quite important. The forum software cannot do it all for us, so some effort is required. One example (and I really hate this) is the misuse of the words lose and loose. Lose means misplace. Loose means not tight. But without the addition of complex fuzzy logic, I cannot automate the correct use of these words, which are spelt correctly when used correctly.

In finishing, there is an excellent article in Radio Waves about how to contribute an article. It explains how the Editor's style manual will be used to guarantee correct format, structure, spelling and grammar, placement of supporting information such as photos, etc. To keep some consistency I'd like to see a similar approach adopted here. There is an important tool available to all members and it's been in place for many years now. It is called the 'Edit' button, located at the foot of every post each member makes. Members should proof-read their comments before and after posting them. Use the edit button to correct mistakes or add further information.

I had a high school English teacher promise a grade of F if we used the wrong one of these words in a composition: there, they're and their. It does bug me too. Though I'm sure I get other grammar uses wrong.

I try to write stuff so people reading it can understand what I'm trying to express. I called it "intelligibility" and a good friend who was an English major in college said it's "clarity of thought". Posting to internet forums for the past 30 years, you learn to anticipate how someone could read what I wrote, and the possible misinterpretations they might get, vs what I meant to express.

Hopefully, people can make sense of my articles I wrote up at my website wa2ise.com, that the grammar isn't too messed up...

I think one of the 'tricks' to use - as highlighted in the Radio Waves article - is to just say what you mean, without filling sentences with useless extra words, which some refer to as creative writing. I tend to agree with this because I am not a reader of novels. I never liked long, drawn out stories only to read the result of the big mystery on the last page so it doesn't seem pertinent to bring that style into an article on a radio restoration.

The article gives some good examples of that too.

Interesting that my English teacher was of the opinion that was the path I should have taken, rather than principally chemistry. It retrospectively been a more stable career.

One of the things with forums & technical articles, is to qualify the statement where there is risk of ambiguity. Often you are dealing with dead heads that won't learn, or some that are trying hard to learn. That makes things interesting.

As I have noted before, having editorial staff in technical publications, who have no foundation in the subject, are a risk. It only takes them to alter one word, perhaps omit it, or change; perhaps omit it, to destroy and make meaningless, the entire article.

Back in the eighties, I was working in a factory & we found it impossible to employ large bodies of school leavers & dropouts. They were, for all intent & purposes useless as they were illiterate: What were the schools doing? Teaching them necessary life skills was not one.

Marc

These days I cringe when I see how the current generation holds a pen.
We were taught in grade 3 how to use a fountain pen and how to hold it correctly and it was drummed into us.
It always seemed to me to be the most efficient way to hold it but now I watch most holding a pen with their hand in a sort of disabled manner.
It looks really awkward and their handwriting suffers for it.
But I guess handwriting is a dying art.

Yes a bit like this, from Back to the Future 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMy1zO8m8sM

Hi Brad, as somebody that left school rather early, I have always struggled to write clear copy!
I really should learn a bit more about "English" and find out a bit more of the technical side of it.

I did not learn to speak or write at school. Unfortunately I was treated as a "slow" child by the system.
That relegated me to the back of the class with the other "slow" children. Not a wonderful place when you were also short sighted!
When an exasperated Teacher would shout at me something like "Cannot you see what is written clearly on the board?"
Being a literal brained person I would answer the question exactly: "No, I cannot".
That's when they hit you with the cane for being impudent!
Being hit also puzzled me, I had not idea why they were doing that.

Fortunately I had a Mother and Sister that taught me mainly by the process of reading to me newspapers and magazines.
I then learnt to write by copying the same text that I had heard and matched the words to the phonetics.

Lastly, after reading your considered thoughts on posting text on the site and taking care to remove any obvious bloopers, may I hit you over the head with something in your post #18 in "tech talk"? (I am trying not to snigger)...………...

Quote:
"Back when I was repairing a fair few radios I used to buy capacitors of Steve Savell."

OK pupils, can anybody tell me what is wrong with this sentence???

"OF???"

I'll go away now and cringe at how many bloopers I leave in my posts!!!!!

Fred.

G'day Fred, I didn't get the cane but did get plenty of the strap. Those were the days - when we all really looked forward to being at school.

You are right. Of and Off are like Lose and Loose. I am covered though, as I mentioned before that I wasn't perfect. Also, a spelling checker (which Microsoft has spent the last year or so butchering to the point of uselessness in Windows 10) won't pick up lose or loose, of, or off, where or wear, etc.

Brad you are right about Microsoft breaking or removing features in products to force you to pay for a premium product.

I write manuals. They need lots of diagrams and screenshots.

Word Draw used to work in Word 2003 but M$ has been successively breaking functionality and compatibility with each release.
Which is why I no longer use M$ Office, I use Open Office. Much better.
OO has a very nice polyline function and closed polygons can be filled with anything you like.

The Office spelling checker found its way into Internet Explorer and later, Edge. In the beginning it worked well but for some reason they have managed to mess it up bigtime and I know it's got nothing to do with my laptop because the same is happening on my work laptop and desktop. When things like this happen, Microsoft have a track record of taking a year or two to correct the issue.

Their product evaluation and testing department seems to be as good as Microsoft's leadership these days. EG: Microsoft once had a virtually 100% marketshare in the smartphone market and they handed that to Google and Apple on a silver plate with useless and unimaginitive morons at the helm of the company. Bill Gates wouldn't have allowed that even with a loaded gun pointed at his head.

I still use Office at home because I use it at work too on work-supplied computers. It means I don't have to learn to drive again. When using computers these days I have little tolerance for them, regardless of the OS or loaded software.

Of and Off

My Year 3 teacher would say the correct grammar is "buy from".

Unfortunately I was treated as a "slow" child by the system. That relegated me to the back of the class with the other "slow" children.

Hopefully, that situation has improved greatly these days in most schools.

The reading recovery program that I sponsored and team-managed in some local schools for a number of years is designed, by a charity dedicated to addressing learning difficulties, to help kids who are falling behind with reading. There's a well recognised connection between kids who are behind in reading and trouble-making in class, owing to their inability to participate fully in lessons.

The program was structured to get problem readers up to speed within 10 weeks, and it had some very dramatic results. One Year 2 boy that I was assigned to spent most of the first 45 minute session telling me that he was hopeless and just couldn't read. I countered with I don't believe that at all. The turnaround was gradual but consistent. At week 7 he told me not to help him with words that were difficult because he wanted to work them out himself. At the end of the 10 week period, during the certificates of accomplishment party, his mother hugged me. She said he was a happy and confident school kid now. I told her that he did all the work. That's just one of the dozens of success stories from our team. The moral is: Catch them early and give them a ton of attention and encouragement via a structured program.

A key criterion when schools applied for this program was that they were not to nominate kids who had specific learning difficulties. Those kids require specialist intervention. Many of the kids we helped were from homes where English is not spoken at home and whose parents may be illiterate in their own languages (and I encountered a number of those in the adult literacy classes at TAFE), so the kids were never read to at bedtime and there may be no books in the home either.

Many schools applied for the program, but we only able to cater to those which were reasonably local to the team of volunteers. I was aware from the applicant lists that many disadvantaged schools were crying out for any such help.

I am aware that many primary schools have days when parents and friends come in for an hour on rostered days to help with reading under direction of the class teachers. I have done that a few times in recent years.

Fred,,  Actually  Fred you're a Clever man, The things you have done and still continue to do Take a good mind.
My school days were spent in Trouble. I was never at school, I was at the beach or in the City, and then by 15, I was in the workforce. But the memories I do have of school are being hit with the strap every day for not black shoes; or skipping school or not doing homework, The teaches were all ancient with ancient out date attitudes. Looking back now they actually did me a favour because I left at 14, , Job at 15 and that meant by the time I was 21 I had already been in the workforce for 6 years and I was cashed up, So if that had not been the case and I stayed at school until 17 or 18,I would of never been able to go around the world at 21, So it meant I was able to squeeze a lot more into my life in terms of the things I wanted to do in the world. If I die tomorrow  I've done all the things I wanted to do so far.

GTC, I tend to use "from" when buying from a store. It probably does sound better.

Pete, I hope you have quite a few more years left in you yet. Looking back at my time at school, I personally believe that many of the teachers gained their jobs as such by operating to a system based on mis-trust and deprivation. Some of the teachers I had genuinely cared for all those they taught or tried to teach. Others were just a pack of morons. Some would wield the strap as if they enoyed it and me and my classmates, when drawn to that fate, by not completing homework, shirt tails hanging out or red juice from Sunny Boys all over the front of our uniforms, we'd be systematically flogged by those we defined as strap-happy. Because we knew those particular teachers enjoyed what they were doing we'd stand in front of the platform and take our medicine and then walk back to our places before being prompted to, which annoyed the crap out of them and because we refused to start blubbering in front of our classmates it infuriated them even more.

And these bastards had the hide to sit there for 50 minutes at a time teaching us Christian doctrine. They were just hypocrites. Sometimes I came home with purple hands but they never broke my spirit and to all the ones that would sit on their arses in the common room and gossip about us and say crap like "so and so will never amount to anything, he doesn't do a scrap of work", well, I was one of the ones that did amount to something.

Don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with having a strong system of discipline and I don't have any issue with corporal punishment but it is like anything else. There's a time for it and a time not for it. Some teachers didn't seem to know where this line was drawn in the sand.

Well, Brad, my dear old mum thought it would be a good Idea to send me too the brothers! I was a wild kid and she thought it may help .
I went to Oak Hill. But as I have said, I was on the books but not there.. She meant well and Mum and I got on great .
But I also worked for a school and left in 2012 , I worked with people who suffer Autism and my past and lack of education and refusing to conform help me understand them better .All my clients were non-verbal . I liked my job there ,but I came to a point in time when my head was full and when that happens its time to move on ,
Now I'm in Albury starting a new life again and it was 4 bloody Degrees this morning! What a start Hey !

Pete