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Subject:Re: Is Grammer Important? Ubetcha! From:Dan Brinegar <vr2link -at- VR2LINK -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 21 May 1998 23:48:12 -0600
On Thursday, May 21, 1998 8:09 AM Lisa Higgins[SMTP:lisarea -at- LUCENT -dot- COM]
wrote:
>Speaker will are you if 'grammar' in no a readability of human
>native any difference language make!
>
Gosh, I get messages like this from my customers all the time -- native
english speakers, even. At least my French, Spanish, or German customers
use their own grammar and english words, so I can usually decipher the
message ;-D
But I must be very careful when replying to my customers outside of the
southwestern US -- or non net-geeks -- yer gonna hafta pay attention to
that junk ya take fer granted.
As I'm updating a manual I wrote a year ago, and adding info from FAQs
written since then by others, I'm very acutely aware of the grammar I used
then... I spent a couple of hours this morning just finding embarrassing
"Muir-isms [1]" and straightening them out... not because they were
inappropriate (folks still seem to like the informal tone of the book), but
because they were inaccurate or ambiguous.
Footnote: [1] John Muir, author of _How to keep your Volkswagen alive..._,
King of the Affected Casual Language Approach to communicating technical
information to non-technical readers,
Dan Brinegar
Lead Support Hero,
NowTools! Electronic Commerce Support
