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> 2. There is a diminishing marginal return on accuracy and
> preciseness in most communication. It may be worth the effort to
> proof read an e-mail message once before hitting the send key, but
> insisting on perfection, or near perfection in communication may not
> be cost effective, depending on the purpose of the communication.
> In our e-mail here, a reasonable level of accuracy and preciseness
> is appropriate. Demanding (of yourself, or others) a near perfect
> script in this forum may have several unwanted results. The
> free-flow of ideas may be inhibited, slowed or discouraged.
I think this is a good point. There have to be tradeoffs in any
form of communication, both in how much work one can expect to
expend to use a particular format and in how perfect that format
must be.
If I send out my resume, it's reasonable to expect that I'll have to
be very precise in spelling and such. Electronic mail of an
informal nature, such as what we read on this list, need not be
excruciatingly perfect; we are colleagues, and we should be willing
to look past typos and minor grammatical errors to grasp the message
within. Insistence upon strict standards smacks of pedantry; I
would certainly classify anyone (in _this_ group) who flamed me for
my misspelled words an anal retentive.
If you have an editor that doesn't allow spellchecking, perhaps you
will want to compose your messages in an ASCII file and then import
that file into your mailer. It isn't necessary; use it only if you
believe your professional credibility is damaged by doing otherwise.
Let's lighten up a bit here, folks; further flames, comments, and
arguments should go offline.
--
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