Re: Is grammar important?

[Tracy Boyington <tracy_boyington -at- OKVOTECH -dot- ORG>]

> > About six months ago, I read a book on
> > procedures writing that said "Numerous studies
> > have concluded that there is no correlation at all between
> > effective technical communications and grammar".
>
> I cannot credit the validity of this statement. Grammar, along with
> spelling and punctuation, are the tools we use to communicate clearly.
> If these elements are not used correctly (i.e., as accepted and expected
> by the audience), communication will not be clear nor will information
> be disseminated.

Maybe I'm just feeling disgruntled today, but I'm wondering if most
readers even recognize proper grammar. And I don't mean the basic
sentence structure (as in Arlen's "Red pig green hand blue." example), I
mean things like noun-verb agreement, the difference between "who" and
"that," and don't even get me started on apostrophes! Even the most
intelligent people don't recognize when their own writing is
grammatically incorrect or when they misspell a word, so how do we know
they accept and expect it from us? Sometimes it seems that very few of
us care or even notice...

<sigh> I guess I *am* feeling disgruntled... a good time for a long
weekend!
Tracy
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Tracy Boyington   mailto:tracy_boyington -at- okvotech -dot- org
Oklahoma Dept. of Vocational & Technical Education
Stillwater, OK, USA
http://www.okvotech.org/cimc/home.htm
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