Re: Spelling and grammar on this l

[Kim Ballard <ballardk -at- MACE -dot- CC -dot- PURDUE -dot- EDU>]

'Gordon Meyer' writes in an earlier message

> Actually, the response you got was pretty much the same as if
> you walked into a room full of strangers and told them how poorly
> they dressed and spoke.  Most people would ignore you, or give you
> the cold shoulder, but a few would probably be obliged to correct
> your observations.  So don't feel picked on, consider it the natural
> reaction to your prodding.


I'll have to disagree with Gordon on two points.  First he forgot to
include explicitly one of the responses the post also got--people tried
to explain why some of the mechanical errors occurred, and I don't
think we thought of it as necessarily 'correcting" the poster.

My second quibble with Gordon's suggestion is that the types of clues
available for communication in person aren't always available over the
networks. Let me try to extend the analogy Gordon offers so that
someone in the room of apparently poorly dressed people (I'll drop the
talk for now) could offer an explantion without an attempt to
'correct' the apparent rudeness of the remark.

In this scenario, I guess if someone new to the roomful of commrades
 entered the party and commented on the suprisingly poor or
inappropriate dress of the crowd assembled, then
maybe someone in the group would explain that the folks had all agreed
to dress down that night or would explain that there was some reason
for the poor dress despite the ability of the group to dress in a
more expensive or (depending) professionally acceptable manner.

More importantly, the poorly dressed folks may be able to detect
genuine surprise in the voice of the speakers as in, "Wow, you're all
fairly well-heeled folks and you're attending a professional function
in shoddy clothes.  This doesn't fit my expectation." Which, when I
say this, *can* sound genuine, not snotty. Perhaps the person who
posted her(?) surprise at the mechanical looseness of the posts on
this list was genuinely surprised. I don't know how many times in
social situations people have said (sometimes in a snotty voice,
sometimes in genuine surprise), "Wow, you have to write for a living
and you just said a sentence with a preposition at the end." Or some
such comment based on the presumed assumption that a writer/English
teacher's main  preoccupation is mechanical correctness.

Too many  long post this morning. I really can't keep this up and get
to work on time!
-------------
Kim Ballard
Purdue University
ballardk -at- mace -dot- cc -dot- purdue -dot- edu