In a shocking turn of events that will likely send ripples through the world of social media, spelling counts!
Wall Street Journal claims that engineers need to write competently, even in email.
What astonishes me more than the intrepid, semi-literate engineer described in the article are the legions of college students and even self-described writers who can’t write a coherent English sentence. How does someone manage to graduate from university, regardless of major, still confusing “our” and “are”? How do they pass the basic English course that’s part of every general ed curriculum I’ve ever heard of?
As for the so-called writers who seem to think that they’ll get published using lolcatz-style as their “voice” because they don’t understand basic grammar…good luck with that. In fact, please pitch the same editors and agents I pitch.
Thank you.
Proof reading helps — even at the Wall Street Journal. Please note that the third paragraph of the Answer in the piece from the link missed an article: “…may not know he is great engineer.” would be better if it read: “…may not know he is a great engineer.” Even journalists need to check things carefully.
By: FAH on August 29, 2009
at 6:51 pm
You might also be interested in this recent education blog entry. It answers many of your questions.
I happen to agree with the author. The war is over. The bad guys won.
By: Miss Friday on September 5, 2009
at 1:22 pm
‘Excellent choice of words’ and ‘clarity of sentence structure’ are two of the factors that distinguish good writers from bad writers from excellent writers. These *are* hard to do, and professional full-time writers spend countless hours of rewriting to tweak their words and the structure of their sentences. The harsh and brutal truth: some children will NEVER be good at these things.
My deepest wish, which was touched on in some of the comments to the initial post: please, please, please teach grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Teach the bloody 5-paragraph essay structure, writing to an outline, and all those other evil creativity-constricting forms–even sonnets.
Why? Because if you’ve never learned the rules and how to follow them, you won’t ever be able to break them with style, wit, and grace.
Oh, and there’s one group of folks out in the wide world who still know the rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling; they care about those rules too. Those are the editors. Any child of the current generation who thinks s/he will become a published author despite his/her grammar-free writing has an ugly and self-esteem squishing surprise coming to him/her.
By: lizscott on September 5, 2009
at 7:55 pm