h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

perHaps

i just think this is stupid and dont like people who dont punctuate either but sometimes it is even harder to read something properly punctuated than something not all forums or should that be fora get sidetracked and occasionally even a single message gets sidetracked i hope you dont mind reading all this but i wanted to prove the point of whoever was complaining about lowercases and no punctuation

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Doctor Spock saw all this from a different perspective

My handwriting suffers mostly because I when I write down what I'm thinking, I can never write quickly enough to catch the nuances or exact wording that I hear in my head while composing the writing. Consequently, I've learnt to type (and although I'm a wretched typist, I'm a terrific speller, so I can proof my stuff and send clear text) to deal with this problem (and also because typing was the one skill in school that I KNEW would be useful; I've yet to use anything I learnt in math, woodshop, or metalwork. Only electricity was of slight benefit).

I prefer reading properly punctuated and capitalised words because that allows my eye to travel easily across the text. Having i instead of I makes me think the letter's detached from the word it belongs to and I go scanning for it. And one of my personal quirks is that an i standing alone sounds in my head "e", which leads to all kinds of momentary confusion.

I imagine that once the W3C comes out with standards for everything web-related, all of this will be resolved.

Fruitbat

I think they must; Chemists have no trouble reading what doctors write, although there's no way to check to make sure that the medication they provide is what was prescribed because of the state of the original writing....

Fruitbat

..and as that well known Arthenian philosopher Socrates said on page 3200 of his legendry, boring, life work "I might be wrong"

Another bright insight. Let them eat cake, some frog sheila

What you don't seem to understand is that all aspects of the written word exist to aid comprehension. Arbitrarily dismissing any of these rules (which have evolved over the year - they weren't invented by a bunch of crabby jerks to make your life difficult) makes your writing more difficult to understand, and because the Internet is composed of words it makes your writing easier for people to ignore. After all, people will reason, if you don't grasp (or appear to grasp) the simple rules, how can they place any weight on the information or ideas you're trying to put over.

Just a thought.

Persistent use of lower case may be more complex than we think. Sure, like all forms of feeble or trivial rebellion against order it may well be a manifestation of the user's lack of self worth.

On the other hand, users who adopt this style may well not do so if using another medium, such as typed or handwritten documents - in those circumstances, I suspect that they come running back to basic grammatical rules with their tails between their legs.

So why should this practice be so prolific on email?

Two points on this.
1. I used to work at The School of Pharmacy many moons ago and the
undergrad pharmacists had equally as bad writing as doctors.That is probably how they can decipher the Doctors writing.
2. Accountants are also known for their appauling writing.(Maybe this is something to do with cooking the books!!!)

Once, when being berated by a school teacher at the age of 10, I claimed that my poor handwriting was the fault of my father, who is a physician. I told her that genetics were a deciding factor in the matter.

She went so far as to call my parents to see if this was true.

I had a rough time in her class after that, but at least my parents got a good laugh out of the deal.

I have to admit that I don not always use capital letters properly when e-mailing of posting on the internet. This is mainly because I forget or can't be bothered to press the shift key.
I also have some trouble with spelling, it is one of the skills I never really mastered at school. I get quite offended when people criticise this as I am trying my best and can't do much more without taking 10 minutes to spell check my writing, which would be quite limiting in conversations (especially in chat rooms).

It is my understanding that poor handwriting as it relates to physicians is mainly due to the fact that most of them suffer from Myopia. This is a result of several years of pre-med and then medschool, with their heads burried in text books, and all nighters studying for whatever exam they have the next day.

This is not helped at all when they are working 90 hour weeks as an intern either. Myopia and a severe lack of sleep certainly do not help ones handwriting.

Then again that is just my opinion, I could be wrong.

b00111111

I blame Microsh*t. Word automatically capitallises the first letter of a sentence, so most people just type it in in lowercases and let Word fix it for them. Then when they start using another program, they forget to press shift.

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My handwriting suffers when I am thinking quickly too. I also have the problem that most handwriting teachers at primary school are right-handed. This is good for the majority of the population, but I'm a lefty. Schools should have 1 left-handed teacher for writing classes for us. So my handwriting is appalling. I don't plan to become a physician/chemist/pharmacist. But in three years I should become a doctor of physics. So maybe bead handwriting determines the profession you go into.

I also have the problem that my typing suffers when I think quickly. Letters become altered in order, as some fingers are faster than others. I aslo occasionally lift my finger off the shift key too early, or put it down too late, with the effect of having (capital)space small letter or eg eNgland happening.

I tend to pick up on some of these as I type - my brain says " no that's not right", but I rarely look at the screen unless it is work to be handed in, so my typos are often allowed to continue.

And, forgive the ignorance but what is W3C? and why do they have the power to improve my private emails to my friends? or anything else that I may choose pruposefully to be badly typed?

Ditto to all of that.

I remeber one time in particular when I joined the first half of one word to the second half of the next. When I went back to read it latter it took a while to figure out what I'd done.

I don't mind when people make the odd mistake in their posts. I usually preview my text before posting it, and I still miss a mistake or two. It happens. After all, you can't really expect people on this site to paste their text into a word processor to check the spelling. I have, however, seen posts on other sites that had such bad spelling and grammar that all meaning was lost. Nobody could understand what the guy was trying to say.

What bothers me though, is when people make _consistent_ grammatical errors, such as using "then" when they should have used "than", using "it's" when they should have used "its", etc. I never bring these mistakes up in the conversation, though, because it's just distracting (just like when one tries to be gender-independent in his/her writing - it only attracts attention to itself).

So some people have a few troubles with their spelling and grammar. That's not such a terrible thing. But it IS terrible when it happens in the media (TV and newspapers). I see more and more spelling and grammatical errors in newspapers and magazines these days. That bothers me.

And the best (worst?) example I've seen to date? I was watching TLC (The Learning Channel) on TV one night, and they showed an ad for one of their shows about people stealing on the job. At the end of the ad they filled the entire screen with three huge words: "COUGHT ON TAPE". Lovely.

Pretty sad, isn't it? And don't get me started with people who use numeric digits as contractions (e.g., "sk8"), like they think they're being wonderfully inventive and cool, or something. To me, it means, "I don't know how to spell 'skate'".

The reason there are more spelling and grammatical errors in newspapers and magazines these days can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of mega-rich press barons like Rupert Murdoch.

Once all their sub editors were issued with computers with a spell check feature, the old-style proof readers were made redundant

So, it's actually the fault of MicroSoft, probably, for selling the software to Rupert & co. in the 1st place

;^)#
just beating the rush & slamming the Gates¹


¹Brought to you by Bruces Bad Pun of the Day® recycling program

Most print media firms use Macs. The industry standard software is Quark Xpress, PhotoShop and Freehand.

The mistake most media firms made was keeping on old-style subs, some of which years later have still not come to grips with the technology.

Until the 80s, in most countries, a sub pasted copy onto a sheet of pad paper and gave it to printers to set. Skilled typesetters corrected any errors they spotted. Then proofreaders corrected grammar and mistakes of fact.

These checks and balances worked successfully over many decades.

Welcome to the left handed conspiracy, http://www.h2g2.com/A94006. Join the conversation, please.
Problems with typing are universal and it might be noted that the qwerty keyboard was designed to make typing slower, otherwise early typewriters tangled all their levers up. Anti-engonomics, one might say.